Introduction

Reading Between the Lions

At the time of this writing, I’ve been alive almost forty-five years. That’s 16,425 days or 394,200 hours or 23,652,000 minutes. And of those 23.6-plus million minutes, there is one minute in my history that has been incredibly pivotal, incredibly holy.

Oddly enough, I slept through that one minute. But I awoke with an unshakable “knowing” that the sixty-second dream I had experienced would have a deeply profound meaning for me for the rest of my life and perhaps for many others. If I could only be faithful to what had been entrusted to me in that dream. This book is my attempt to do just that.

It was the fall of 2011. I was snuggled beneath my goose down comforter, limbs wound tightly around my full-length body pillow, when God slipped into my slumber and brilliantly brush-stroked a cryptic message that was simply too marvelous for my own brain to have produced on its own. In this dream I was standing out in the middle of a sun-ripened, golden wheat field, wearing a flowing white dress. Perched on each side of me, one to the left and one to the right, were two majestic lions. I had my arms positioned at my sides with my hands dangling in front of their heads, as if I could be petting their manes. However, my hands weren’t on their fur. My hands were in their mouths!

I sensed that I should be terrified that the powerful jaws of two such mighty beasts were enveloping my defenseless hands. But I noticed that I was experiencing absolutely no pain, no blood, and certainly no fear in this dream.

I did have a fleeting moment of concern that if my hands are occupied in these two lions’ mouths, then how will I ever get anything done? Yet there seemed to be a mysterious peace blanketing me completely.

I awoke, suspecting that until I’d thoroughly analyzed and successfully deciphered this dream, there’d be no rest or satisfaction for my soul. I was right.

But what could it all mean?

A few days later I was talking on the phone. As the time approached for me to wrap up the call and get ready for bed, I was startled to recognize what I had been doing subconsciously over the past half hour. Although I don’t usually do this, I had been doodling with a ballpoint pen on the back of an envelope. And what I had obliviously drawn was an embarrassingly amateur sketch of a girl . . . standing in a wheat field in a flowing white dress . . . with a lion on each side of her. And, yes, you guessed it: her hands were in the lions’ mouths. No longer satisfied with disrupting my slumber, now the image was invading my waking hours too. I wasn’t sure what to make of it. Perhaps it was some sort of trumpet call proclaiming my imminent epiphany.

Sometime later, I was driving down the same road I’d traveled hundreds of times before. But this time, a particular sight caught my peripheral vision, and I found myself stomping on the brakes without even thinking, craning my neck to take it in. There on someone’s front porch steps were two small concrete lions, and farther back on the porch, closer to the house in the background, yet positioned directly between the two lions, was a white statue of an angel in a flowing gown. It was as if that angel and those two lions had some sort of divine power to suck the air right out of my lungs because that’s exactly what the sight did to me. I sat there in the car, staring out of my window, jawbone almost touching my sternum, tears rushing into the corners of my eyes. I wanted to knock on the front door and ask if there was a story behind this configuration, but I realized that this wasn’t their story. It was my story. And here it was, resurfacing once again, begging to be unraveled, longing to be understood.

I snapped a picture on my iPhone to capture the moment. It would be the first of dozens of similar photos taken. The following week I was riding my bike when suddenly what felt like a heavenly hand grabbed my head and twisted it gently to the left as if to say, Shannon, don’t miss this! With absolute amazement I recognized that of the hundreds of houses I’d passed on that bike ride, this one had set off some sort of supernatural radar: it was decorated with, yep, lion statues.

I thought it might just be a Tyler, Texas, thing to have two lions in your front yard. I found it so odd that I’d lived in this area and driven throughout this city for almost fifteen years, yet I’d never noticed a single set of lions anywhere until after I’d had this dream. Then I saw them everywhere. And in the coming months, my stone lion radar proved amazingly accurate regardless of where I was traveling. I can take you directly to stone lions perched in places as rural as Grand Ledge, Michigan, or as metropolitan as Los Angeles, California. My spiritual GPS was guiding me to them, pointing out the soul work I had yet to do. Soon my psyche began screaming, How long before you unravel the deeper meaning behind all of this?

So I set about my research in every way I knew how. I combed the Internet for the symbolic meaning of lions. I began reading books on interpreting dreams. I met with two different counselors who both had some great insights. I asked certain people to pray for me and to offer any explanations that God may impress upon them.

While I can’t say that I’ve completely solved the mystery, I will say that I’ve made significant progress. And I’ve come to believe that the dream has multiple layers of meaning. Some of those layers have been kind enough to explain themselves. Others have proven a little more shy. Or more accurately, other layers may realize that I have more growing up to do before they are ready to reveal themselves. And that’s okay. I’ve learned to trust that God will show me whatever He wants me to know, whenever He’s ready for me to know it. I’m just along for the ride, grateful to be in relationship with the God who still speaks to His people—sometimes through visions and dreams just as He did in the pages of Scripture, other times simply through ideas invading our brains or gut feelings.

“Dreams are aimed at the unfinished business of your life, showing what you need to face next, what you need to learn next.”¹
—Robert Johnson

For many months I focused entirely on the lions. I believed that they were the key symbols in this dream and contemplated every possible explanation I could imagine. Realizing that this was beyond the realm of my own intellectual capabilities, I pleaded with God to spell it out for me.

My next consideration was that the lions could actually represent either God or Satan. We see Jesus referred to as the “Lion from the tribe of Judah” (Rev. 5:5 NCV), but we also see Satan referred to as a “roaring lion looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8 NIV). But as I continued to pray, neither interpretation rang entirely true.

What did ring true was that God was calling my attention to an undeniable polarity in my life coaching practice. Some of my clients beat themselves up over the least little sexual thought, feeling as if they surely had been unfaithful to their spouses and were a huge disappointment to God (neither of which was true). Others have occasionally supressed their consciences and acted out on their sexual thoughts in ways that bring incredible pain and regret later, yet they continue to feel as if they are a slave to their sexual desires (which is also untrue).

When I considered this polarity, I contemplated the position of the lions—one to my left and one to my right. I realized that the lion on the right could represent extreme right-wing thinkers, or legalists—those who beat themselves (and others) up over the smallest sexual infraction. The lion on the left could represent extreme left-wing thinkers, or liberals—those who more often turn a blind eye to their own inability to exercise sexual self-control.

I also gave careful consideration to how I have personally erred on both sides of this spectrum. There were seasons of my life, especially in my teens and early twenties, when I had an anything-goes approach to sex. Well, not anything but almost anything as long as it made me feel good and feel loved. (My definition of love at the time was obviously quite skewed.) There were also seasons after I had gotten my head screwed on a little straighter when I probably thought I was a little higher up on the Christian totem pole than others because of the “pure” lifestyle I was living, being so faithful to my husband and preaching to others about sexual integrity and all. I shudder at how I unintentionally but oh-so-naturally judged people for their sexual brokenness, wondering, Why can’t you get your act together like I have? (Pretty dangerous thinking in light of how pride comes before a fall, huh?)

I realized that either of those extremes was very unhealthy. I was reminded of how we are warned to “avoid all extremes”:

In this meaningless life of mine I have seen both of these:
the righteous perishing in their righteousness,
and the wicked living long in their wickedness.
Do not be overrighteous,
neither be overwise—
why destroy yourself?
Do not be overwicked,
and do not be a fool—
why die before your time?
It is good to grasp the one
and not let go of the other.
Whoever fears God will avoid all extremes. (Eccl. 7:15–18 NIV)

It was around this time that the concept for this book began crystalizing in my mind. I frequently thought about how in all things, including our sexual thoughts, we have to be careful to maintain a delicate balance between legalism and liberalism.

I’d never be legalistic enough to say that “all fantasy is evil.” You’ll understand why the more you read. But I’d also never be liberal enough to say, “Open your mind to whatever the heck you want!” You’ll understand that, too, the further you read.

Just as the girl in the dream was standing directly in the middle of these two lions, not veering too far to the right or to the left, we have to discover our healthy sexual balance. Imagine a child standing directly atop a seesaw, one foot on one side of the fulcrum and one foot on the other. There are moments when he will need to lean his body a little more to the right to maintain balance, other times to the left. It’s this constant motion, constant vigilance, constant flexibility, and constant sensitivity to which direction the Holy Spirit is guiding us in every situation that allows us to live right smack dab in the middle of God’s will without stumbling and falling flat on our faces!

I know this balanced approach can be a hard concept for some to grasp. It might sound as if I’m saying, “Be a fence rider!” or “Be wishy-washy instead of staking your ground and sticking to your guns!” I’m not saying that at all. I’m merely saying we need to find and maintain a healthy balance to keep our sanity in all things. We don’t diet religiously every single day of our lives, nor do we gorge ourselves every day. We go back and forth between feasting and fasting to maintain a healthy lifestyle. We don’t pinch pennies until they bleed every day, but we don’t let money sift through our hands on a daily basis either. We spend some days and save other days, hopefully saving more than we spend in the long run, but not ignoring our basic needs for the sake of hoarding money either.

The same is true with our sexual thoughts and energies. There are times when we really need to rein them in to keep from doing something stupid that will bring harm to ourselves or others. There are other times when we need to let sexual thoughts and energy flow to create the passion we all long for in marriage.

But it’s more than just finding a balance and holding steady in the middle. Life is a full-participation sport. Consider a pendulum on a clock. It has to move back and forth to create energy. We can’t hold it to the left or to the right or even directly in the middle. If the pendulum isn’t moving back and forth constantly, it’s not doing its job. The cogs of the clock won’t turn, and the face won’t reflect the correct time. What good is a clock that doesn’t give us the correct time?

Our sexuality operates in a similar manner. In our mental and spiritual laziness, we may be tempted to find a certain mental position on certain sexual topics—fantasy, for example—and just stay there, not moving either to the right or the left ever! But then we lose the sexual energy we were created to produce. No! If we want our minds, bodies, and relationships to work as they’re intended, there must be energy. There must be mental movement. At times, we may need to look to the God-given gift of mental fantasy to fuel our sexual passions and imaginations in marriage. Other times, we may need to reel in our thoughts to stay out of dangerous territory. Either way, whether we are intentionally opening our minds or trying to guard them, there are great benefits to peeling back the layers of our sexual thoughts to understand their deeper meanings. And once we’ve done so, we’re better equipped to help others do the same.

As we proceed, let us remember that God is the One who created us as both spiritual and sexual beings, so He is the only One who can expose the deeper meaning that we seek. Consider me as your tour guide for this little part of your journey. I am delighted to have the opportunity to show you some of what God has shown me thus far in regard to the topic of sexual fantasy throughout these next nine chapters. You’ll also glean additional insights from the “Behind the Curtain” special features and case studies. And, if needed, you can find specific resources in the back of the book that will help you overcome sexual challenges or addictions you or loved ones may be facing.