A scary dream about the inner city

I had kind of a scary dream last night. I dreamed that God wanted us to go live in the inner city and plant a church. It was a really terrible neighborhood. It was so bad that every house we looked at was either a meth house, or someone had been murdered there, or half of it had burned down or was in desparate need of repair. Finally we purchased a house that wasn't too bad for $20,000 and moved in. It didn't need too much work, just some blood scrubbed out of the carpet. It also really needed some bathroom updates--there was no toilet in the restroom. There was one in the livingroom, which was kind of awkward, and a porta-potty that pulled out from under the kitchen counter, but that was it. The other feature of the house that was rather disturbing was a portait of a woman's severed head in the hallway. Apparently, this woman had been asked to run a small errand for a neighbor and hadn't completed the errand in a satsifactory manner, so the neighbor decapitated her. It was her blood that was in the carpet.

The police told us that the best way to stay safe was just to never leave the house. In fact, there were federal agents lining both sides of the street with guns, ready to shoot anyone who caused trouble. While I was taking a walk, I noticed that there was a train coming down the tracks. To my horror, I noticed a big, red truck headed towards the railroad crossing and not slowing down. There was a terrible crash and the truck dissentigrated into the side of the train. Then the truck was another train, and the back end of it derailed and was flying straight towards me. I ran as fast as I could, screaming as loud as I could. I woke myself up, then. I was still saying something over and over in my mind that I can't remember now, but it had to do with Jim and Patsy.

When I went back to sleep, I continued dreaming. Now I was dreaming that Erick wanted Jay to move the car that was parked by the curb to the parking garage. I was really uncomfortable with the idea since Jay is only 14 and doesn't know how to drive, but Erick said he's be fine. I was nervous that he'd run into somebody else's car and they'd kill us. So I went out to watch while Erick gave Jay step-by-step instructions while sitting in the overstuffed leather chair with his computer on his lap. All of the neighbors gathered around to watch Jay try to move this car.

He actually did a fine job moving it, and I was quite relieved. I was so sure he was going to scratch somebody's car. The parking garage was rather unique--it was built like a cart corral. You know the way that you shove shopping carts inside each other to put them away? That was how you parked cars at this parking garage.

Apparently Jay's success in parking the car made all the difference in the community. Little children began coming up to me asking me to unbutton their coats then. We were accepted. We then had hope that maybe we would actually have success at our church plant in the inner city.

An old-fashioned summer

A couple of nights ago I dreamed that we decided that for a whole summer we would live the old fashioned way--no computers, no electricity, no internal combustion engines. We would still use our van, but we couldn't turn it on. If we wanted to go anywhere, we had to put it in neutral and start at the top of a hill so we could roll places. We could also stick our feet out the doors and push it along the road if we needed. It was a real challenge and we ended up in the ditch more often than not, so we didn't go anywhere unless we had to.

We moved out to a house in the boondocks with my in-laws and we made everything ourselves. We sat around a huge table and ate homemade ice cream. The kids were whining about how they wouldn't get to see their friends or be able to chat with them on Facebook, but I told them they didn't need to see friends this summer and that they could see them in the fall.

Then we realized that we were too far away from our church to walk and that it was all uphill so we couldn't roll to it. We debated just home churching for the summer, but then we realized that there was a Communith Church right next door and that Steve Rundel was the pastor. We decided that we should just walk there for church.

A rousing game of Laundry

Last night I dreamed that we were playing a game with lots of kids. It was kind of like our giant Candyland game that we made at church for the fall festivial, only with a twist--it had to do with laundry. When the kids landed on a color, they had to wear something out of the laundry pile that was the same color. So if Rachel, for example, landed on red, she would wear a red shirt over all the other clothes she was already wearing.

In between turns, the children had to stack themselves in neat piles in drawers, folded like neat piles of shirts. It was a very orderly game, and the children did a great job of lying still like folded laundry. Some of them we put in closets.

After so long, we had to go to lunch, so we told the kids to wait there until we got back. After a half-hour, I told Shelly VanHorn that we really needed to get back because the children had been waiting for awhile. She told me that manager Matt would have to take over, because she needed to clock out, but that I should go back and get everyone lined up. I couldn't seem to make her understand that I didn't need to get everyone lined up--they were already lined up, folded in drawers.

Rabbits to the rescue!

I dreamed last night that we had a rabbit that gave birth to two babies, but would't take care of them. She thought it felt weird to breastfeed, she said. She also was afraid it would ruin her figure. We tried to reason with her and told her that her babies would die if she didn't nurse them, but she didn't really seem to care.

So we fed them ourselves with chocolate milk from an eye dropper. We weren't sure if they were going to make it at first. They just sort of lay around with their eyes half-shut and their little bodies were getting cold, but they managed to grow and survive, even though they were on the lethargic side.

One day the Joker came and swam across the channel to the little boat where we all lived, and killed everyone on board. It was really sad and shocking. He even killed the children. Then he swam away, and everyone opened their eyes. They weren't really dead--they were just pretending to be dead. But they all knew they had to escape.

Then the little rabbits came to everyone's rescue. With the family hanging onto the rabbits' backs, the rabbits bravely swam across the channel to safety, using their long ears as paddles. It was then that we all realized that the rabbits were going to make it.

Children's museum

I know it's been forever since I've written in this blog, but it's been haunting me ever since I moved my regular blog over here. I keep seeing it and thinking, "I really shouldn't have forgotten it the way I did.
So anyway, last night I dreamed we went to the Children's Museum and Erick bought this ginormous video camera to take videos while we were there. Everytime he turned around, he'd knock people over and we'd say, "I'm so sorry, we're homeschooled" as if that explained everything.

There was also something about buying a toilet and a table from the Duggar school. Only we didn't get the table after all because it was in too bad of shape, and we didn't need the whole toilet, only part of it. So we took the guts out and the handle off and loaded the rest up into the van. Then by the time we got back in the van all the kids were crying because they didn't think we were coming back.

There was also something about ballet, a college class, and a breastfeeding baby, but I can't remember the details.