Dream with Actresses

Last night I woke up at 7am to the sun peaking through a window without blackout curtains in the Hyatt of Downtown Tampa. I got up and felt awful, investigated the blinds an found a hidden layer with a black out plastic drop-down device and transformed my room into darkness again. There I laid with thoughts turning as I found my way back to sleep again and didn’t wake until nearly 1 in the afternoon. But on the second journey into sleep, I brought back a gift with me – a dream.

I was at a track-like field with few others there. And going in and out of the dressing/gym type rooms I ran into a few characters I recognized. They were famous actresses. I can’t remember now who they were by name but a shimmer of their faces remains in my subconscious thought. I remember feeling a bit surprised that they were there at the same event I’d been called to. We were there to run a race of some sort – to a do a type of event.

Then, in the back rooms I was going from room to room preparing for my race and in the first room I put on one of the women’s slippers that were far too big for my feet, tripped on the long toes and nearly fell face first out of the loft. One of the other women watched me from a doorway and asked, “Oh my gosh, are you ok?” Then I found my way to the bathroom to get my face ready and realized that my eyelashes were a huge mess. They were way too big for my face and had doubled up and twisted together. They were fake eyelashes I’d applied who knows how long ago.

Interestingly, yesterday on my flights I had an eyelash issue. I didn’t cut the little strips short enough and one of the inside pieces came unglued and was sticking out. I was embarrassed and visited the bathroom often trying to fix it with no success.

Trying to be someone I’m not is exhausting. And trying to figure out who I am and what God’s will is for my life is equally draining as I seem to be sifting through many rooms of memories and forthcoming ideas on a daily basis. I lean on my faith wondering if I was meant to share in a greater capacity the events of my past with others as a calling but on the night of 9/9 I received a very troubling dream of a woman named Melissa (I met her in this job) trying to kill me with a cult of murderers who were hunting me. They believed that I deserved death because I had taken a photo with her. She said in my dream, “Remember that time we took a photo and you stood in front of me?” Then she told me to hug my child goodbye in warning that they were about to devour me.

The people who have entered my life speaking the Christian messages have repeatedly tried to devour me in various ways. And yes, most of them attacked me for my physical appearance casting shame onto me for anything that could be considered beautiful or attractive in a physical sense. A woman who had become my very best friend through years of struggle later exited my life calling me a “harlot” for going on dates with a man after my husband shockingly divorced me. Shortly after I watched a sermon by a man named John Piper claiming that if a man divorces his wife, she is expected to stay single and pray for the marriage to be put back together or else she’s sinning. How would he know? Has even been divorced or had a spouse cheat and abandoned him? Who do these people think they are speaking for God and exercising power and authority to condemn the path and purpose of others from a self-made pedestal? How many souls have they misled?

I felt a spark of inspiration a few weeks ago when I attended an event at a place called Believe LA. Aisha Hinds was on a panel among others and she told her story about how 9/11 (a tragedy) made her seek to leave New York and go to LA following God’s inner voice. She hated it and cried everyday feeling out of place. She worked at a hotel, (not in movies) and it was in that space where God shifted everything in one single moment. A hotel guest asked if she “happened to be an actress” and then requested her headshot. Fast forward 24 years later she’s one of the biggest names in a show called 911. The irony of it all is no coincedence.

Today is 9/11. I’m in Tampa about to get dressed and fly to Austin where a dream of mine in a fictional book once took place. I don’t know why Austin is the city I chose to be the scene of Skyla’s story. I may never understand the little pieces of imagination that somehow have brought hope into my own dark night of the soul when I have wanted to quit and throw up my hands and just disappear into the nothing.

Today I feel the theme is to disconnect from everything (social media and the voices of others demanding my servitude or trying to direct my path in career or purpose) and to enter into the rest of Jesus. I feel he’s telling me through this dream that I don’t need to try to fit into another’s shoes or cover the windows of my soul with thick lashes but instead to just be me and let my light shine (in the eyes) as I interact with whoever he sends into my path. I feel God’s telling me that he will place me on the track he’s designed for me to walk and I’ll just arrive there – without fighting to find it myself.

There will be a moment orchestrated by God when I will be at the right place at the right time and the window of opportunity will be opened where I will know “This is what HE has done.”

This project from the beginning was about Surrendering to God’s will. At the crossroads I found myself standing in between two worlds – the life I created by my will and doing and a life that God wants to author where I don’t get to know what comes next or control the outcome. One world happens in the doing and the other happens in the receiving. Perhaps the reason I’m so exhausted in all areas of my life is because I’ve been doing for as long as I can remember. Stuck in survival mode since I was a child trying to run away from pain, prisons and various forms of abuse to find a place of peace where I might belong. But each decision I’ve ever had to make has been done in chaos and panic. I’ve been swimming upstream for so long (decades) and wearing so many different pairs of shoes I never got to pause and figure out which ones truly fit my feet.

So in this time I see why God is showing me so much. Dave not having a place for me to stay when I need it is protecting me from entering another relationship out of necessity. If it were God’s will it would’ve been perfectly aligned. And all the voices from Texas that reach out telling me “you need to come back – God wants you back here doing real estate” have come with no offer. They don’t have an open home for me to live in or a job for me to support myself – just a voice of opinion that places heavy weights of expectations on my shoulders with no solutions that back their speech. This is often the case though isn’t it? The ones who believe they have a connection with God tell everyone else what they should be doing and they never stop to ask about the sovereign puzzle pieces of PEACE that we are meant to seek to enter into his rest. Door close when God determines it’s time to close them. And another opens by His design to keep us on path to HIS WILL.

I don’t want to walk in anyone’s plans anymore. I want to see all things as obstacles and opinions that have no bearing unless God shines a light of confirmation and beauty into the thing with a spark of hope that sends my spirit into a connection of bliss and excitement.

As I conclude this entry I just want to say to myself that I’m happy I didn’t get all the things I’ve wanted. And although these journals may seem like a waste of time when the outside world screams louder and louder of all things it wants me to go to war with, I know this too will have a purpose in it all I’ll soon see. If only to reflect back upon and remind me of his presence in the paintbrush of here and there I’ll again rejoice that God’s will is perfect and beautiful.

Time will tell where this road leads. I commit to wearing the shoes God gave me to wear and to walk in peace knowing that he has already went before me and all things are working for my good and his Glory.