Especially on Halloween night, you'd think that if I were going to have a nightmare, it'd be about zombies or ghosts or masked killers. But no.
Let me remind you that the last time I had a nightmare, it was about internship placement, and it was nightmare by virtue of the fact that I woke up upset. (Turns out that even though my "nightmare" came true, I've since realized that I love it here and that this is the exactly the right site for me.)
Last night, I had another nightmare that woke me up with a jump. I'll bet it's nothing like any nightmare you've ever had.
It was a Sunday morning. For some reason, the whole worship leadership of the church sauntered into worship a couple minutes late, and no one cared or complained. I was vested, but the lead pastor decided not to wear vestments. Then, out of nowhere, he decided that he wanted to experiment with moving the altar table forward to the edge of the elevated front of the church, which was fine by me, because it bought me time to recruit someone to work the "older kids" nursery (we give 3-5 year olds the option of leaving the service after the children's sermon and then coming back during the passing of the peace, in time for communion). I asked one guy who said that he would do it, but had to leave early to go to work, and so I recruited two other women who were sisters to go down with all of them. When I got back up front, the pastor and the music director decided that the altar table really shouldn't be pushed all the way to the edge of the platform, because how was the group that leads the liturgy going to get by it to get to the microphone that they sing around? As they're moving it back, I realize that I never put this week's bulletin into my worship binder, but realize that there are a whole stack of bulletins sitting right by me, so I take one, confused because it has guitar chords written in it, and I try to ask the music director and the guy who plays the guitar if it's theirs, but they both say no. Mind you that all of this is happening during the first fifteen minutes of the service! So we sing a song, and then it's time for the children's sermon. So as I get up to invite the children up, the music director reminds me that the kids who had gone to camp were going to sing a song. So I cleverly usher the camp kids over to the director while I corral the rest of them around me and tell them that we're all going to sit together and watch the other kids sing. It works! Well, for a few minutes. Out of nowhere, one of the boys who was sitting by me - he was about 5 and was wearing footed pj's to church! - gets up, darts over to his younger sister (who was also in pj's and who was sitting on the other side of the music director), and starts hitting her! Seriously beating her up. I don't want to run in front of the kids who are singing, and I assume that someone on the other side of the room will run over to separate them, but after a few minutes and some raised eyebrows, I get up to go pull him off of her.
And then I woke up.
Call me crazy, but the possibility of (such) chaos, especially on a Sunday morning, is a terrifying thing. I can guarantee that this dream was a symptom of the fact that this has been a crazy busy week, and that I have a lot of things to accomplish (and keep track of!) for this weekend. I've been finishing up making the November youth newsletter (which should go out today, since it's November 1), but I need to come up with one more family-oriented event for the month before I can finish the newsletter. I have to finish planning a reader training workshop that I'm leading on Saturday morning and I have to finish planning the first-Sunday-of-the-month evening alternative worship for Sunday night. And I have some paperwork to do...and I have to send out a letter about this summer's youth mission trip.
So I'm busy. And I think this dream was reflective of the relative chaos of this week and my underlying fear that I'll forget to do something and find myself in a lurch.
There you go - I'll bet you didn't expect to get both nightmare AND analysis, did you? :)
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