Home at Last (Part Two)

Dream on… Dream on… Dream until your dream comes true! (from Dream On,Copyright 1973 by Aerosmith)

I first visited this place as a student. Instead of taking courses in dream interpretation closer to home in Ohio, Dave and I both had a strange sense that I was to come to North Carolina. Financially, it would cost about the same for either trip, so we figured, “Why not?” A few weeks after my first trip and my first class, I had the dream:

Dave and I were riding in another man’s car. At first we thought it was a really cool car, but after a while we realized it wasn’t what we’d expected. We were on our way to drop off the car and pick up our own. It was night and very dark on the winding, unpaved road. Dave had to watch the road carefully as I watched for the house. Driving slowly uphill we passed a road, then a mailbox. The house number we were looking for was on the mailbox. Just past the mailbox I saw a light down below the road. “Dave! That’s the house! We have to back up. The driveway is back there, before the mailbox.” He didn’t believe me at first, until he backed up a bit and could see the dimly lit house.

The driveway was more like a short road that wound its way down to the house. Our red Ford Explorer was parked on a concrete pad to the left of the house under a carport of some type. To the right was a wrap-around porch; the far wall of the first floor of the house was more windows than walls, including the front door. Because there was only room for one car in the carport, we tried to park the car we’d been driving to the right side of the driveway to make room to back our car out. But the car itself kept trying to force its way into the space where our own car was parked. Dave tried a number of times, but the same thing kept happening.

An elderly, somewhat frail looking woman was in the back seat behind Dave. She offered to give it a try, so Dave stepped out to observe as she repeatedly tried to park the car with no success. From Dave’s viewpoint outside the car, he was able to see what the problem was and knew what to do. That’s where the dream ended.

At the time of the dream, Dave and I had been involved in a church project that looked and sounded to be everything we believed church should be about. At first we were very excited to be a part of it all, but over time we realized that all was not as it was presented to be. I had been praying that night about our role in the project and whether we should even be involved. If not, I was asking how we could graciously beg our leave without being accusatory or rejecting of the people involved.

For two years, my sole understanding of the dream was that we needed to exit the church project and “go pick up our own car.” In dream language, I’ve learned that a car often represents the dreamer’s work or life purpose. According to the dream, we had something of our own to do, and we needed to find where it was “parked” and go get it. Although we still didn’t know what “it” truly was, the dream looked pretty straight forward until about two months after we moved to North Carolina.

In Part Three, I'll tell you why this dream is so significant to us today. Thanks for reading...