10: What Dreams May Come Part 4

When you think of monsters, what comes to mind?

I could think of a hundred films with monsters. Movies like Aliens, Pumpkinhead, Howling, Poltergeist, Amityville Horror, Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Halloween, Scream, Signs, Ghostbusters, Annabelle, The Conjuring, and so many more have various types of monsters. 

History also has monsters, like Napoleon or Hitler. 

We face our own monsters within sometimes due to stress, anger, hatred, fear, and other emotions conjuring an experience we must come to grips with.

Illness and ailments can be a monster, with debilitations that limit what we can do physically, mentally, or spiritually. 

The most terrifying monster is that which resides within you. It is a cunning monster and deceitful in its methodology. I don't know how such a monster gets within, but it lies to us. It says things that only a child would understand.

At that moment, it might seem like any other child, but to us, once it reveals itself, it is the beast.

Yes, I took a few lines from Poltergeist to explain that, but those lines work well. Satan is the greatest monster and does his best work when you least expect it. In ways, you might not always imagine.

In this case, Satan's ploy was to deceive me about what was happening to my body. But in the end, in this final dream, he made himself known in an unexpected way. The monster that had overtaken me revealed itself in a dream to end all vivid dreams.

This will be the darkest dream of all, so be prepared.

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The Final Dream: "Monster" (March 3, 2021, 9 AM to 9:30 AM)

I was pulling up in my driveway at home. My home is on Paulan Road. I could distinctly see the white driveway and the brown color of the house siding. The sky was gray, cloudy, and dark. I went through the garage and into the house to find it even darker inside. The only light coming into the house was from outside, which was minimal. All the blinds were closed, and I could hardly see anything throughout the house.

Standing in the kitchen, I could hear the dogs on the deck growling. Maggie, Max, and Mattie were growling outside on the deck at something. I yelled for Leslie but got no response. I tried flipping a switch in the house, but no lights would come on. The power to the house was shut off for some reason.

The dogs continued to growl right outside the backdoor onto the deck. That's when I heard it.

From on the deck, I heard the loudest roar I had ever heard. It sounded like a lion, only it seemed like a demonic lion, as I don't know any other way to describe this roar. I'd heard a lion's roar before, and this was something else. Following that roar, my dogs' growling became more intense, turning into outright aggressive barking and gnashing of teeth. I was terrified.

That's when I heard Charlie say, "It's a monster."

I saw Charlie walking past the kitchen counter and into our house's dark den. He then added, "The power is out."

I looked through the pane that allows you to see into the den from the kitchen and faintly saw Abby walking by through the darkened room, with Charlie not far behind.

I was so unnerved by what had just happened. I asked the kids, "Are you all right?" I wanted them to come to be with me so they wouldn't be alone in the dark. Also, so I wouldn't be alone in the dark.

As I looked that way, it was as if the power came back on in the house, and the light shone down from over the refrigerator. It illuminated the refrigerator and part of the hallway beside it in the entryway. When I looked at the entryway, that's when the greatest fear had overcome me in any of my dreams.

I was shuddering in the dream. My fear was overwhelming as I realized the monster was now inside the house and about to reveal itself. I kept staring toward the refrigerator, shuddering in fear and completely overwhelmed by the anticipation of what would happen. This is it, I thought.

I then jerked awake back to the real world, having dozed off on one of the beds in my parent's house that morning. In 30 minutes, I had dreamed one of the scariest dreams I had ever had. I sat there taking it all in, trying to unravel what this dream meant and unnerved for the day ahead.

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A few things about the setting:

1. The darkness I alluded to was both figurative and literal. The dream was the darkest of all four because the lights were not on in the house until the end. But the dream was also dark because of the "monster" that appeared. I'll never forget that roar that put my dogs in a heightened state of aggressiveness during the dream. Maggie was the most prominent one I could hear. That little dog had no fear. She was ferocious when she had to be, having taken on a snake before, and won. So, she did not fear taking on whatever this "monster" might be. A couple of months later, Maggie died. She had grown weaker in recent years, being 13 at the time of this dream. Her brother Max lived until August 2022, making 14+ years, just a few months shy of 15 years old. But in this dream, she was our dear Maggie and did what she would always do when she thought a threat was nearby.

2. This was the only dream to feature my children, Abby and Charlie. Charlie was the only one that spoke, and the monster scared him. My kids were alone in the dark, trying to figure out how to navigate the house and any obstacles with no lights on. I was scared for them. I was scared for myself. I wanted them to be with me so they would feel safe, and I wanted them to be ok.

3. I could feel myself shuddering in the dream when I looked toward the refrigerator. I knew something horrible would come out of the hallway to get me. But there were no footsteps. There was no sound. Just the sound of the house and when the light came on, shining down on the refrigerator, there was a calmness in the room. But in the dream, I was anything but calm and woke up with that same feeling.

4. When this dream occurred, it was the day of my meeting with my dissertation committee. I had been dreading it, uncertain of what would take place. So, I naturally thought this dream had something to do with that meeting. That something bad was coming. Something bad did happen at that meeting, but the dream was totally unrelated to the meeting itself. As I've said before, the dreams were about me and what was occurring with my body. My dissertation was certainly a confounding variable in things that led to my health concerns, but it wasn't the only cause or consideration.

So, what do all of these four dreams mean about living with diabetes? That is what the final post in this segment will illustrate. I deduced what the four dreams meant as they pertained to living with diabetes and how God had warned me the whole time about what was coming on March 31, 2021.

Tune in next week for 10: Dream Analysis as we conclude this segment.