I had this dream some time ago that woke me up in a cold sweat. I decided to write it down immediately after awaking (on my Toshiba when I still had it), so I could write it in enough detail while it was still fresh on my mind.
The setting is my parents’ home in Canada, where I grew up and have spent months intermittently over the last few years home from being abroad. For some reason the neighborhood has become crime infested in the dream. We are living in this home of my childhood, and everyone is staying away from windows to avoid stray bullets. It seems surreal to me, like I want to know how this happened, and all my family members are confused as to why I’m surprised and shocked about it, because this has become a normal part of their lives.
My dad is looking out the living room window at something, and as I go join him, he pushes me away and said “I don’t want him to see you too”. Clueless as to what he’s referring to, I step back, and turn to go down the hallway and enter my mother’s office, where I could also look out the window and see the same street, and I saw a red car go by slowly, with some kind of gangster slowly surveying our house not so discreetly. I tread back away from the window in to the hallway again to try making sense of what the driver of this car could be doing, and why was he surveying our house like so.
Everyone in the house is pacing around nervously except me. I’m still confused as to what is going on. So I go towards the window my dad is looking out again to which he acknowledges my standing next to him, but doesn’t stop me this time. He tells me “There’s more of them”. I look, and the same car drives by, but this time with a passenger and someone in the back seat. It’s obvious all of them have weapons and the one in the passenger seat has some kind of walky-talky. When they look directly in our window, we step to the sides and duck really quickly in case they’re going to open fire, they would not see us through the window.
My dad tells everyone to hide and get to their places, and everyone in the kitchen behind our living room leaves, but me–unable to really understand or sense what the urgency is to this situation. As I’m scrambling around the kitchen and hallway, praying in the Spirit for understanding as to what is going on and what role I’m to play in this scenario of which I still don’t understand, I hear my dad half yell/half grumble, “oh no!” I hurry to where he is, and I see the same car, but now full with about five people, pulling into our driveway, and they all start getting out, cocking their rifles and loading their pistols. I had no idea who they were or why they were coming, but I back away and my dad and I both take off to other areas of the house.
I run to my room, and improvise a hideout in my closet, behind the clothes and to the side out of casual view, knowing that this will not save my life, but it will by me a moment or two of time to try thinking of something else by the time one of these armed men make it to my room in their pursuit of me and the others.
I hear gunfire. I hear screaming. I hear people shouting at others to “shut up” followed by gunfire, then silence. I’m painfully aware we are being terrorized violently with the threat of death, in our own home. Finally a young woman enters my room, forcing my mother with her to the floor in here. She starts looking around and throwing things around, looking under the bed, and then the closet where upon moving the hanging clothes out of the way, she discovers me hiding. She puts her gun to my face and tells me to come out and not to make any sudden moves. I comply.
As I get out of the closet, she tells me to get on my knees. As I do so, she puts the gun directly in my face again and says “you’re the one we’re looking for.” Still having no idea what this is about, I give off a facial expression to indicate I’m confused.
“Renounce Him” she says to me, as she cocks the pistol. I simply nod my head in disagreement, and close my eyes, expecting it to be the last time I will get to. She repeats her demand, but I do the same. She asks me if I realize the consequences of my failure to comply, to which I said “yeah; I get to go home.” This infuriates her, and my mom tells me not to do anything stupid, to which this woman turns to her and screams at her to shut up. The young woman turns back to me and repeats her demand.
Many things start racing through my mind. Unfortunately, I start to ask Jesus in my mind for forgiveness for sin I knew at the moment was separating me from him. I realize that I wasn’t as ready as I should have been to be with Him. I didn’t anticipate my life to be taken from me this early, and not necessarily in this fashion, but I knew I didn’t feel ready. I probably never will either, but this was different–I was plagued with guilt. As quickly as I could think of it, I was asking Jesus to cleanse me with His blood, knowing He would, but lacking the confidence I needed to ask Him, because in my life (in the dream) I knew/felt I had sin in my life I was attached to and had not been living in freedom over.
I knew this was a dream, but it was so potent and realistic, that I had no reason to fear being shot, because it was just a dream. However, it didn’t make me less nervous about the fact I was given a moment to re-assess my life. I knew I was not and had not completely surrendered my life to Him as it was, and now I was never going to have the chance to live a more sold-out life of service to Him, because my short time on earth was being cut shorter.
I told my young tormentor, I was not going to renounce Him, and BANG!
I woke up.
It was so exhilarating, but I lay there for at least an hour in the early hours of the morning, processing that dream, realizing the Lord had allowed me to have it for a reason. It was not a ‘nightmare’ or just my mind re-assessing images I’d seen or opened myself to recently—this was a costly lesson the Lord was teaching me in the deepest places of my being, because that’s the best place He can reach us sometimes.
