Do you dream?

Some people say they never dream. Others say they dream quite often. I have heard that everyone dreams, but many people don’t remember them. The question most of us have, is not whether people really dream, but if there truly is a meaning to dreams, and if dreams really do come true.

I would like to share with you a dream I had many years ago that truly amazed me, and it let me know that maybe we should not ignore our dreams.

I grew up in a small town in Florida. Our family moved there when I was five years old. I went to elementary school at an old building made of wood and concrete. Many of my classmates’ parents had gone to this school. I loved the building. It had stairs that went up to towers, with classrooms at the top. Some of the steps in the building were wooden, and some were stone. There were sections of the building where more wood than concrete was visible, and other areas where it was more concrete or stone.

Fifth and sixth grades were in a separate building called the annex. It was added in later years, but at the time I attended that school, even the annex was an old building. It had bigger desks that were bolted to the floor, the old kind of wooden desks with the inkwell holes. The main building also had old desks with inkwell holes.

We moved away from that small town the summer between my sixth-grade year and seventh grade, but I had such fond memories of living there that I still remember details of the town to this day.

After I was an adult and married, I began to have dreams about that old school. This happened many years after we left that town. I had never returned, even for a visit. The dreams started about 15 years after we moved away. They weren’t exactly recurring dreams. They were different each time, but in my dream, I was always walking around in that old building in different areas of the school each time. Yet, something was always different from what I had remembered. One dream in particular, I remember walking up the stairs to one of those tower classrooms, and I looked down at my foot and the stairs were tiled instead of stone steps.

I had these dreams about that school for about a year. Then, one week in May, I had an opportunity to visit that town. By chance, I had to travel by car down through Florida with a male friend. I had told him about my dreams, and said I would like to stop by that town and see that old school. He agreed, and was curious himself about the school.

We got to the school about mid-morning. The building looked like it had been freshly painted, kind of an off-white color, similar to what I remembered. The annex was still there. This was in 1978, so there were no security issues. Visitors could just walk into the school with no problem. We entered the building and looked around. Everything looked different from the way it looked during my grammar school days. I couldn’t believe the changes. Floors were carpeted, rather than bare floors. There was an elevator where a stairway had been. Part of the building must have been completely torn out and rebuilt.

We went to the part of the building where the towers were. I began to walk up the stairs, but looked down at my feet and stopped still. My friend said, “Were these the steps in your dream that were tiled?” I stared at him, and he knew they were.

As we walked the hallways, a man approached us and asked if he could help us. I told him I went to this school as a child and just wanted to visit it. He introduced himself as the school principal, and said, “Just this month, we had our dedication. For about a year, we have been renovating this school.” He showed me some plaques on the wall, and I saw my sister’s name and others I knew.

I will never forget this visit, and the dreams I had before it. It has amazed me practically my whole life, and after that visit to my old school, I never again had a dream about it. It’s like that visit set my mind at ease and I was glad to see it preserved and so beautiful.

We never know what a dream may mean. This dream of mine gave me comfort and peace. Some dreams may not be so comforting, but I believe that many of them may have meaning. Perhaps the dreams are God speaking to us, giving us messages of warnings or comfort.

— May love to all,

Nancy

• • •

For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

— Ephesians 2:10