Waking or Sleeping

I don't usually tend to remember my dreams unless they are scary or completely ridiculous. But, recently I've had this recurring dream that goes something like this. I am trying to put in a contact lens into my eye except that the lens is about the size of a giant party platter. It looks exactly like a normal contact lens in its curvature and bluish tint, except that it is way too huge for my eyeball. In the dream, I am always feeling flustered and extremely upset with myself because my eye is way too small for the lens. I am never frustrated that the lens is too big for my eyeball.

Well, I mentioned this dream to Paul the other day in passing, thinking we would get a good laugh about the fact that a dream that seems so ridiculous could have me worked up into a cold sweat in the middle of the night. But instead, he paused and thought very seriously about it. Then matter-of-factly, he concluded, "Do you think it has something to with the frustration you feel when you lose sight of the vision that God has for your life?"

Ok, prophetic husband has me here. I stopped open-mouthed, ready to shoot back a witty contradiction. But in my heart I knew there was something true about what he had just said. Often, Paul has a gift of speaking truth to me in a way where it smacks me in the face. And though I don't think I've had very many dreams which had spiritual meaning attached to it, this one definitely symbolized the thing that is most frustrating for me personally about being on a very amorphous career path. The lack of structure bothers me to some extent, but it's manageable. It's the fact that it is sometimes so hard to see the bigger picture and feel the driving force for what this is all about in the long run. Though I have plenty of ambition and a long list of personal goals, I'm not good at coming up with big picture, grand vision, lofty dreams. But I need big vision in order to face my every day. And losing sight of that vision is one of my biggest fears- the notion that I will have no purpose for every day when I wake up. Which is why I think this dream left me in a cold sweat every time I had it, as if it were some sort of nightmare.

Anyway, lately I've been stumbling for what to title the forthcoming album and I think that this loss of words has been somewhat symbolic of my life lately. Today, something hit me as I rifled through some hymns to put together in a medley for the last track. Thou my best thought, by day or by night. Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.