I often have dreams. I’ll have some for a while and then they might go away for a while and then resurface and try to get my attention. That was true for me this week. I have had recurring dreams where I am someplace that I do not really recognize. I try to go beyond where I am and something stops me. There is some kind of threat to not go further or deeper. The dream usually ends with no sense of what lies beyond or what lies deeper.

This week that changed. I had a dream where I was in a vacant warehouse that was open and uncared for a long while. I walked to the end and could tell that something was beyond. There may have been a building or just an entrance to something underground. There were men who were threatening and tried to stop me from going to that beyond place.

In past dreams this is where the dream stopped. All other dreams ended in frustration wondering what was beyond or below. However, somehow I made it into the beyond or below this time. There were 15-20 children who weren’t to be there but were not maltreated. They seemed happy and whole. There were also strange animals that seemed to be combinations of other animals. They were not threatening. They seemed happy and wanting to be in relationship with me. Again there was a sense that they didn’t belong in this underground place either. I just got the word that this underground place was a holding area. These children and animals are meant to come up and out.

They are meant to come into the renovated warehouse and fill it so they can then go out into the rest of the world for God’s glory and others’ benefit. I have come to understand that the children and the animals are books that are inside me. They already exist. I just need to care for them and welcome them up and out. There has been fear of not being good enough but that’s no longer the point. They already exist. My job is not to create but to pastorally bring them out. The difference between children and strange animals is the difference between non-fiction and fiction.

I commit now to finish the rough draft for my second book by the end of May of this year. After that I finish the book and publish it and then on to many mare books. There is more to do in this life than I have time to do and yet I have been paralyzed to inaction of months and years by fear of how what I write will look. Time is short. I have many books and series to write and I only have so many years and decades left.

Each of us have only so much time. The effort we give is the only positive thing we have to contribute to others. The dreams we have can motivate and guide that effort. I’ve learned that my dreams are not meant to be controlled on my part but it is mine to respond.