Dream or Premonition?
Have you ever woke up from a dream and wondered if it was just a dream or if it was a premonition?

I don’t sleep well. I haven’t for years… and when I do sleep, I have crazy dreams.

Dreams that wake me up at 3am freaked out and straining to hear the silence in my house. I’ll lay there in the dark paralyzed with anxiety and a racing heart because I’m sure someone has broken in and is about to attack me at any moment. Those kinds of dreams I blame on late night TV like Law and Order SVU or some crazy B rated movie about serial killers that suck me into the story and then creep into my dreams. I admit I may be susceptible to such anxiety because I live alone and the key chain pepper spray my boss once bought me after having my wallet stolen, if I could find it, wouldn’t even make a difference in such an emergency situation. I can’t even remember if the key chain pepper spray is in a kitchen drawer or the bedroom. I guess I could throw books at an intruder, if there ever was an intruder. Perhaps I should invest in a baseball bat… I mean I am the kind of woman who has a shovel now, even if it is a loaner.

Vampires, monsters and aliens make appearances in my dreams quite often. When I was younger I used to believe that vampires lived in my closet and if I closed my eyes they would open the closet door and kill me. That 80’s cult movie The Lost Boys had a horrible affect on my dreams. An Interview with a Vampire only reinforced my youthful fears. But zombie movies are the worst! Because of the original Night of the Living Dead movie I’ve spent countless nights dreaming about zombie arms and hands reaching for me, grabbing me, pulling me closer so they can bite my face off! As a result I tend to stay away from horror movies. My friends however, occasionally talk me into watching a horror movie with them but I always forewarn them that I might be staying on their couch afterward. When the Ring came out a couple years ago I was conned into seeing it by a friend. Afterward I forever had dreams that the girl in the Ring was crawling out of the TV in my bedroom with that horrible face and I couldn’t get away from her. They constantly replay that movie on cable now and I skip over it faster than you can blink. Even the Tom Cruise blockbuster War of the Worlds had me dreaming about aliens stealing my soul and vaporizing my body.

The power of suggestion TV and movies have on our subconscious is amazing…

Of course I have the regular kind of dreams too. Dreams about family, friends, work, jumbled mundane details of my daily life and the occasional Cinderella fantasies after watching too many chick flicks. I swear I’ve been Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman more times than I can count. And lately Mr. Darcy has been the Prince Charming in my dreams.

But when is a dream more than a dream? When is a dream a premonition? When is a dream a sense that something is about to occur, a foreboding of the future, a truth revealed? Granted the TV/movie influenced dreams aren’t premonitions. It’s the ordinary ones, the daily life ones that can cease being a dream and become a premonition.

In my life, I’ve had two dreams that were premonitions. I believe God revealed the truth I needed in those dreams so that I could act appropriately when the time came. Those premonitions had everything to do with the reason I’m no longer married. At the time, I prayed for those premonitions to be dreams and not be true. My ex-husband swore I was just dreaming. He lied. Looking back, I’m thankful God gave me those premonitions. They prepared me for the most difficult time of my life.

I haven’t had a dream that was a premonition since. But the other night I had a dream that felt more like a premonition than a dream. This premonition wasn’t full of loss or pain like before, this one was hopeful. This one was a future.

Dream or premonition? The only way to know is if the dream comes true...  posted by Matildakay at 11:13 PM