Moving in the right direction
Moving in the right direction
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I had that dream again last night. The same nightmare I’d been having for years, but with a twist. I been having this nightmare where I am driving in the car. It’s night. It’s dark and there is a lot of traffic. As I’m driving it’s getting darker. My eyes are getting darker, dimmer. I can’t pull over. I can’t stop. Someone will rear end me. I have to keep driving but it’s getting harder and harder to see. The dread of hitting someone with my car is growing in my heart. Finally, my eyes have completely gone black and I am still driving down the road in a car I cannot stop. Complete and absolute terror has me in its grip and there is no escape.
When I wake up my heart is trip hammering and I am gasping for breath. It’s just this side of when I have asthma attacks and wake up gasping for breath. Terrifying and more than anything I long to be out of this body, away from this pain and lack of air.
I told this dream to my beloved son Gaberpup one day when we were in the truck together. I don’t even know if he took a moment but if he did, in a moment he told me what was going on. “You are in a car, and you are driving and then you can’t see. You are scared of hitting someone but you don’t hit anyone. You are scared of crashing but you don’t crash. You keep on driving. The next time you have that dream you’ve got to stop being afraid and relax. Somehow God is keeping you from crashing. From hurting yourself or anyone else.”
“Relax? When I’m behind the wheel and I’m in control. How can I possibly do that?”
“When you realize you’re not in control. He is.”
To my hearing Gabe has just told me I need to flap my arms and fly to the moon. No matter how hard I try I simply am incapable of doing this thing he has said. He continues. “What do you think about before you go to bed?”
“I think about all the things I am gonna do and all the people I am gonna help when I am rich from all those books I write finally selling.”
“Ok. Stop that.”
“Huh?”
“Stop thinking about money and what you are going to do with it.”
“But this is the most fun I have in my entire life. Gifting people and taking away their pain. I’m gonna have copper gutters and all kinda things.”
“Yeah, you will but until you do you gotta stop focusing on them. You are programming your mind to think about money and it’s working out in your subconscious in the form of this bad dream.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You want money for good things but don’t know how to get it. It’s beyond your control. Like driving a car at night when you can’t see. It simply can’t be done. Your mind is tired of wrestling with this conundrum so it’s thrown it back in your face saying I can’t figure this one out so I’m giving it back to you. The way you stop having this nightmare pops is to stop thinking about money. Stop worrying about it. Stop daydreaming about it. Stop planning to spend what you don’t have on you and your friends and people in need.
God will care for the poor and if he wants to use you to do it he’s more than able to make you rich. And if wants to use Bill Gates or Warren Buffett or Franklin Graham he can do that too. It’s not up to you. It’s not on you. You are no more responsible to give what you don’t have than Stevie Wonder is to drive a car from here to LA.”
It was amazing to listen to this wisdom flowing from my beloved son. Wisdom he didn’t have a moment ago. One of the gifts God has given him is words of wisdom. I acted on his words. It was hard reprograming my brain. I had to force myself to do it but I did. I’d think of gardening or flowers or God. Anything to break the cycle, shatter the chain. And it worked. Since that day I started following the advice God gave my son Gabriel I have slept like a baby and not had that dream or any bad dreams except for a time or two when a demon floated by and messed with me giving me the old icy finger up the spine trick they love so much. I tossed him out in the name of Jesus of Nazareth like I told that old woman years ago in the seventies and I was living in Shiloh that long defuncted commune.
Me and a team of twenty-year olds were traveling up the Alcan Highway, one of the longest gravel roads in the world and for sureies not the nicest one. We stopped for gas in Whitehorse or Dead Mule or Possum Bite. And old woman came up to me and me being the friendly sort started talking to her. She had a problem. The demon that lived in her husband wanted to come into her. Her husband had died and the wretch had an evil spirit living in him. I don’t know was he floating above the bed or his head spinning around or what. I just know through a series of bad choices he had opened himself up to evil and evil had seen the welcome mat, moved right in and set up shop. When the man went to his eternal reward—one you definitely want to avoid and can do so if you call on the name of Jesus and ask his forgiveness, something this wretched person never did, he left but the demon stayed here. Demons don’t go to hell when their host dies. That comes later. They just go looking for a new home to live in. They like living in bodies because they are spirits and don’t have one of their own.
Each night the demon would come to the old woman and whisper how it missed living in her husband’s body and wanted to come into her. She was no fool and wasn’t having any. It was wearing her down and she didn’t know what to do. As she’s telling me this the hairs on the back of my head are standing up straight. As I write this forty five years later the hairs on my arm at attention. When she finished my eyes got really bright. I knew exactly what she had to do. This one I had cold just like Gaber knew exactly what to tell me when I told him about my ongoing nightmare.
“Lady, the next time that wicked spirit come knocking you tell him in the name of Jesus of Nazareth the Lord rebuke thee!” There is power in the name of Jesus. The disciples cast out demons in this name. The bible tells me in the book of James, “You believe in one God. Good. The demons also believe and tremble with fear.” God had things perfectly timed so that old woman I only met one time and had a problem would come across me while we were gassing up in Snake Cough Canada. She got what she needed, I coulda used a Snicker but didn’t get one. We went on up to Anchorage and set up a half-way house for hitchhikers, she went home and threw the bum out on his ear. Maybe he ended up in a Pole Cat or some hapless toad. A snake woulda been too good for the likes of him.
Demons don’t bother me much these days. The one assigned to hassle me trips me up every now and then. One time when he did I heard him laughing at me. I thought about it and laughed at him. Erwin Lutzer, former pastor of Moody Bible Institute once said over the radio when Satan tries to remind you of your past remind him of his future. “The wicked shall be turned into Hell and all the nations that forgot God.”
I haven’t had that driving the car at night bad dream since I took Gabe’s advice but the other day I had it again, but this time with a twist. All the other times I am alone at night. This time Gabe is in the car with me and it’s daytime. We are discussing something and I notice the windows are all covered with fog and rain droplets so you can’t really see anything. Maybe some shadows is all. Oh, and he is in the backseat. I’m somewhere else but I can’t even get to the steering wheel. Something is preventing that. Oh, and we are driving backwards. I tell him, “Gabe I’m scared.” He looks around and takes in the situation. We are stuck in the car but this time you not alone. I’m here with you pops. He is with me to comfort me. We can’t see out the windows but at least this time it’s daytime. There is daylight streaming through the car windows and that makes everything less scary. Instead of going forward we are driving in reverse so that is different. That’s new.
Gabe tells me we’re gonna get through this. It’s a bad situation but we are in this together and together with God’s help we are gonna turn this freaking car around, wipe those freaking windows clean and get back in the driver’s seat. Get on the right road and continue or journey through life together. Things are better when you’ve got someone along with the ride to keep you company. We haven’t’ got all the answers. Still got more questions than answers but we are together and its daylight. The night has past. We have each other and it a whole lot better than driving in the dark alone. The End.