Turned Messenger

The key to life is accepting challenges.

~Bette Davis

Every sense in my body was on high alert with sheer terror. I stood fully frozen, unable to look away while I watched a dark, monstrous wall of water coming toward me. I was in a building of some sort with giant windows. Maybe a hotel?

People I cared about were with me, but they were nameless. My feet betrayed me, frozen so that I couldn’t turn and run away from the tidal wave. I stood there stunned, watching the water come and knowing I’d soon be pulled under.

Suddenly, I was awake, sweating, with my heart pounding and my mind racing.

The tsunami had first occurred in my dreams in high school. Though I can’t remember that first nightmare, I remember that the waves came back to me uninvited throughout my teens and early twenties. Each time, I’d startle myself awake, trembling. The details were always a bit different, but the foreboding tidal waves that left me paralyzed were the same.

Somewhere along the line, I realized that dreams might hold meaning. They could be messages emerging from the subconscious to be interpreted. So, I sorted back through what I could remember, realizing that sometimes they had come just before the start of a new school year or other milestones, or when big work projects had loomed. The interpretation was obvious. The waves represented my feelings of fear and uncertainty when I was overwhelmed or stressed.

Every year or so, the tidal wave would come back for me. I’d find myself once again standing in some sort of a shelter with large glass windows or on a beach with buildings just behind me. It always felt sudden, like the light turned to darkness without warning, without a hint of storm clouds. I’d turn around from eating or laughing with some fuzzy yet familiar faces to see that giant wave suddenly appear.

When I entered working adulthood, the dreams came a few more times. My faith and self-awareness had deepened as I weathered the normal storms of life. Even still, I never thought much more of them than as a sign of stress. They were just something funny to share when a leader asked about recurring dreams during a group icebreaker.

Then, one time when the dream came back I decided to analyze it. What I unlocked was a sweet and weighty realization. I’d felt all the negative emotions but had missed a very important fact.

Those colossal waves had never actually overtaken me. Not once.

Though the dreams were scary and recurring, they never went past a stunned awareness that all that awful water was coming for me. Never was I washed away. Never did the dream end with me bobbing wildly, sinking, or gasping for gulps of air in rushing water. Never did I feel even a drop of water. Never once did I run.

That awareness left me with a whole new understanding: In hard situations, I needed to balance my feelings with facts. The fact of the dream was that though I stood before something powerful and potentially overwhelming, the bad ending never came. And the fact that I stood there frozen? That was a good thing, not a sign of weakness. I was merely recognizing that I couldn’t fight off every hardship or stressor. To properly deal with them, I must face them first — with courage.

I felt a profound faith lesson. In this life, I might have to feel all kinds of uncomfortable feelings, but I’d never be overcome.

As it turned out, those scary waves held all kinds of wisdom for me. From then on, I viewed those walls of water as a gift. They reminded me to balance out my feelings with facts. They encouraged me to deal with challenges by facing them. And they reassured me that no matter what comes, I’ll never be overcome.

I haven’t had that dream in years, but it stays with me still, a nightmare turned messenger.

— Rebecca Radicchi —