i dream in nightmares.

I’m one of those people who talk in their sleep.  It probably has to do with the fact that the majority of my dreams are extremely vivid and graphic nightmares, all of which are more bizarre and believable than the next.  I dream in color, high resolution and all, and I also hear music and play music in my dreams.  Most of the times, I’m in a ridiculous situation where I’m running for my life and trying to convince someone not to kill me or someone I love.  If anyone ever tried to psychoanalyze my dreams, I’m pretty sure I’d end up in an insane asylum.  But just for fun, here are some of my more recent REM ramblings and motion pictures…

Weird Dream No. 1:
There’s a party in the church basement and several of my WCEC friends are there.  I’m there with Ryan’s family, but I when someone asks me who I’m with, I tell them I’m with “the Elgars.”  While we’re in this basement, Angela leans all over me and I realize that she’s drunk.  Ryan realizes that all of the drinks are spiked, and neither he nor I had anything to drink.  He goes to find whoever spiked the drinks and tells me to run, because someone is after us (this is going to become a common theme in my dreams, so prepare yourself).  I run to the top floor of the church and realize that Ryan’s not coming with me; escape is on my own.
I try to escape; I cross to the adjacent building on wooden slats (no idea how), and all of the sudden I am in another house.  My brother shows up out of nowhere and suddenly I know we have to hide.  Also in the house, a woman named Mariam and her two little boys are also in hiding.  They are from Kabul; Mariam wears a hijab and neither she nor her sons speak to us.  It begins to get dark outside.

I notice that the neighbors are migrating out of their homes; everything that happened in the church seemed like years and years ago.  Soon, I begin to see everyone I know walking out on the lawn.  I see my friends from college moving together in packs, all of them trying to escape what seems like an attack or invasion.  Everyone is trying to escape death.  My friends from high school show up outside the window and tell me that they are going to France.  We say goodbye and part ways.  Someone is coming, and somehow I know that we have to do our best to prepare for the worst.
Frank and I try to clean up the house as much as possible, we shut all the curtains and try to convince Marian and her sons to hide.  I realize that we are minutes away our death because they are coming.  Whoever “they” are, they are different than the people who tried to hunt Ryan and I in the church.  Before we know it, gunmen break down the door and begin shooting everywhere.

I wake up.

Weird Dream No.2:
I am swimming in a large pool with a great white shark tailing my feet.  Somehow, I know the shark is malicious and that if I didn’t get out of the pool soon, that I’d die.  I overtake the shark and jump out of the water as if I was doing a stunt.  The shark follows me out of the pool — we fly into the air and out of the nearest window — I look down and realize that we were on the highest floor of an urban hotel — and as soon as we begin to fall, I blow up the hotel and the shark dies.

I wake up.

Weird Dream No.3:
I walk into an empty bedroom early in the morning, armed.  The bedsheets are rumpled and the room is a mess, indicating that an intruder was here earlier.  The only sound that I hear is a constant beeping — there’s a bomb in the room.  I quickly hurry towards the source of the beeping and discover that the bomb is in the Little Mermaid alarm clock, which has been placed on the nightstand besides the bed.  The beeping gets louder and louder, and I frantically try to turn the Little Mermaid alarm clock bomb off but I can’t.  I’m gonna die.

I wake up, and realize that the perpetually beeping Little Mermaid bomb is actually my own alarm, telling me to get up.

Weird Dream No.4:
All of my friends from InterVarsity and I are hanging out during dinner in the cafeteria.  We’re in a place that resembles Camp Andrew’s, except there is a newly installed retro diner on the campgrounds.  I grab my meal and start eating with Meredith.  By the end of our conversation, everyone begins to move outside.  The sun has set, and all of the lamps on the campground are on.  It’s uncannily quiet outside, and I notice that people stop what they were doing in order to come and join our moving herd.  We are all moving towards one direction.

The lamps on the campground begin to flicker off.  Something is definitely wrong; there is an intruder on the campgrounds.  Suddenly, all 100 or so of us there stop in our tracks: we notice a man hiding behind some bushes in the distance.  He is armed.  Ryan starts walking towards the hidden and armed man, exposing him from his spot.  Before we all know it, gunshots fire everywhere and Ryan is in hot pursuit of the assassin — we all run and follow them.

Soon, the campgrounds turn into a parking lot, and we are running across the parking lot of a large airport.  I’m at the front of the pack now, trying to catch Ryan so I can tell him not to get hurt.  But I stop in my tracks — Ryan finally caught up to the assassin, and the two had breached the airport security checkpoint and were engaged in some seriously bloody hand-to-hand combat… [insert gross and graphic picture of hand-to-hand combat here].  I scream.

The next thing I know, all 100 or so of us are walking around in the hallways of an anonymous high school with paper bags on our heads.  I guess we’d be in trouble if they found us out.

I think 4 weird dreams are enough to post for now.  Seriously though, I think I watch too many action movies…

deconstructing the princess.

I’m glad the Brothers Grimm are quite dead, because I think Rapunzel was a hoax.  Furthermore, I think Sleeping Beauty is a tale of lies, and that every familiar damsel-in-distress story needs to be debunked.  Sure, there is a Prince Charming in each escapade, and let’s not forget the timeless tower in which the princess is locked.  But not one of those renditions is the truth.

First of all, there was never a witch.  “Witch” is just an easy category to classify any old and cantankerous woman who tires of being wrinkly and desires to be youthful and vibrant once more.  That, or they are just jealous that they can’t have babies anymore so they force unlucky families to surrender their daughters.  Fairy-tale writers need to stop typecasting the old women and leave them in peace.  Second of all, Prince Charming never fought a witch.  He might have encountered a dragon here or there, but they are irrelevant.  And most of all, the princess isn’t placed in the tower by an evil enchantress.  She isn’t induced to sleep for 100 years in the highest room in the highest tower and she sure isn’t imprisoned against her will.  Or confined to a closet by her evil stepmother.  Rather, it is quite the opposite.

You see, the princess makes her own tower.  She builds her own room away from the rest of the world.  Fairy tales have ruined everything, you see, because they paint a picture of a hopeless girl who is in dire need of a rescue.  No.  The real princess digs her own foundation, sets her own base, mixes her own concrete and slabs it on one after the other until it’s high enough to ward off the outside world.  Her tower is her haven, her security, her habitat and her comfort zone.  She is there by choice.

You see, the princess is not unfamiliar with the pangs of love.  She knows what disappointment feels like — particularly after her parents traded her in for a bunch of rapunzel leaves.  Furthermore, she has seen the horrors that occur as an outcome of love: Helen falls in love with Paris and starts a war, Bertha marries Rochester and he proceeds to lock her up in his attic, and Eponine dies for Marius despite the fact that her love is unrequited.  Oh no no no no no no… the princess is determined to avoid such tragedy.  And so she builds her own tower, plants her own bramble bushes around the tower, and makes sure to bring lots of books and albums with her so that she can enjoy Hemingway with a glass of Merlot while listening to Debussy preludes in the background.  Mmm-hmm.

Everything is hunky-dory, that is, until Prince Charming-and-a-Half arrives from over the hill with a great big demolition ball with the words “COME AWAY WITH ME” emblazoned on it.

I guess sometimes it takes smarter Prince Charmings (hence, that is why I added “and-a-Half” at the end) to woo us.  Instead of glistening white stallions and glittering ruby-studded swords, he comes with a demolition ball.  And his own copy of Hemingway and a score of Ravel’s Sonatine.

It’s a pity that the princess didn’t foresee the need for an escape latch.

That’s when you realize that you’re in deep.

year of the sevens.

Introducing yourself to other people is kind of weird, especially when you’re all sitting in a circle for small group. I mean, what do you normally tell a stranger, other than your name, which they will probably forget–especially if you’re with a bunch of other people? Hello, my name is Grace. Hi… I’m Chris. Jerry. Susan. I’m Megan. Uh, Steve. I’m Ellen? Jack Anderson. Greg from Havertown. Jessica… Hi I’m Ben. And I’m Kevin. You get the idea, it can be a little overwhelming. At one point in time, I used to repeat a well-rehearsed paragraph of information to others when I introduced myself to them:

“Hi, I’m Grace… I was born on the 7th day of the 7th month in the 7th year of 1980; I weight 7 pounds and the first letter of my first name is the 7th letter of the alphabet.”

If they didn’t remember me for my pretentiousness, they would have at least remembered me for all those sevens. It’s been a few years since I’ve pulled that riff off on anyone (I started to feel stupid; though it makes for good trivia). I’ve had people come up to me and tell me how lucky I must be; superstitious folks who’d gaze at me as if I were a talisman, old Chinese people who’d grin and remark that it must be because I was born in the year of the Rabbit. Weird, right? I guess I asked for it, for not having been able to shut up about myself. Oh well.

I’ve thought about the odds of being born with that many sevens in my life from time to time.  There have definitely been times when I scoffed at the idea of being super-blessed; times when life seemed completely meaningless and without direction.  And there have definitely been times when I smiled inwardly out of recognition for the super blessings that I’ve been given; times when I have been graced to see the beauty of God’s love.  With the year of 2007 closing in on the world, I couldn’t help but smile as I recollected exploits big and small from my past twelve months of living and breathing air.  This year in and of itself has been one that began in loneliness, confusion and despair: I doubted God’s love more than ever and kept my heart behind iron bars; I lost all sense of who I was and what I was born to do.  But with the incredible gift of time and grace, God–who never ceased to love me and to accept me for who I was–gradually showed me the way in which I was supposed to climb.  Miracles happened, friendships made, favor gained, opportunities opened, wisdom abounded, relationships redeemed; I was being restored.  I saw more of my weaknesses, more of my strengths; I found the voice that I never thought I’d find and stood up for things like truth and justice, love and hope.  I learned how to fight for what I love, those whom I love; I learned how to claim victories that which were mine in Christ.  Not that any of these are mastered, of course.  No… this is just the beginning.

I turned twenty this year on 07-07-07, a date that will occur once more in a hundred years.  Two decades of life already lived; two decades of choices… making mistakes, laughing, crying, being rejected, knowing joy, being accepted, addictions, idolizing, seeking, growing, escaping, winning, being jealous, telling lies, doubting, trusting, surrendering, being forgiven, being blessed–and blessings, blessings, blessings…

I’m not one to really champion New Year’s Resolutions.  I think they’re kind of tacky; like this is the one day of the year where we’re all going to consider ways in which we can improve ourselves.  I heard an awesome quote this week at a missions conference I am currently attending: “There’s a big difference between talking about something and then actually doing it.  Doing is much more important than talking.  But what is even more important that doing is being.  Being is much, much more important than doing.”

God, I want to be eager to listen, eager to hope; eager to learn and eager to grow.  I want to be slow to anger, slow to resent; slow to judge and slow to speak… prone to be joyful, prone to seek wisdom; prone to laugh and prone to simplicity.  Make me quick to let go, quick to forgive; quick to love and quick to follow You… but most of all, I want to be bold to be bold; bold to dream and bold to believe, bold to sacrifice… again and again and again.  I can’t achieve any of these things on my own… but when I am rooted in You, all of these things are possible.  Help me just to be.  Thank You for a year of the sevens, a marvelous and amazing ride of letting go again and again only to see in the end just how much more blessings I am able to reap.  Lucky girl, indeed.

You don’t need a bunch of sevens to be blessed.  You don’t need a lucky number nor do you need a lucky charm.  Ask and seek the Author of the Universe who gives and takes all… your eyes will be opened like they’ve never been opened before.  Instead of doing things in order to be blessed, just go and be blessed.  Happy New Year’s.