Prayer and Prophetic Dreaming...

...this is progressing far enough that I want a record of it.

I dreamed the following dream in October. I include my description of it from an email I sent to my primary prayer partner in things prophetic:

Here's that dream that prompts me to ask for some serious prayer cover. I dreamed Scott and I flew to Alaska, but that state now had a huge lake (like the size of Nebraska) in it and a mountain centered in the lake. (This is an image Scott, Nolan and I have all three dreamed at various times. Strange, huh?) Anyway, we flew in on the north side of the lake, at say midnight on a clock dial, but needed to go to about 7 pm on the dial, so we rented a car and began the long trek around clockwise. Somehow, the northern airport was the better place to land, and I don't know why we didn't take off counterclockwise except that we were intended to stop at about 4 pm on the roundabout for the following scene: as we were making the long haul, we stopped for the night at a town that had a hill with paths and cliff sides for use as a skate park. Kids from my school where I teach were skating there. Even as Scott and I were watching, the kids began doing more and more dangerous tricks. I made the comment to Scott as they jumped, "Something really bad is going to happen if they aren't more careful," and even as I spoke, a kid decided to make a huge leap off a cliffside...a jump too far to land safely. In fact, when he hit the ground the visual was so graphic it woke me up. His head exploded with his brains splattering above him on the pavement, and his right hand cracked and flew off at the wrist. As I was coming back to consciousness, this scene had just happened. We, and all the school kids present, froze for a second. The thought occurred to me, "So this is why He kept me here/took us the long way. The kids would never have known what to do right now." And as I woke, Scott and I were taking one of the kid's cell phones, dialing 911 and beginning CPR, checking for a heartbeat, etc.

The thing is, I prayed not many days before this dream about God sending a replacement for me because I'm feeling overwhelmed with the fibromyalgia, life changes, need for more money as Scott goes through his job change, etc. The response I felt I got from God was found in my coming across two of these 4 verses randomly in my daily Psalm reading. (Their significance is found in knowing that the building I work in is named the Pavilion.)
Psa 18:11 He made darkness his secret place; his pavilion round about him [were] dark waters [and] thick clouds of the skies.
Psa 27:5 For in the time of trouble he shall hide me in his pavilion: in the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me; he shall set me up upon a rock.
Psa 31:20 Thou shalt hide them in the secret of thy presence from the pride of man: thou shalt keep them secretly in a pavilion from the strife of tongues.
Jer 43:10 And say unto them, Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Behold, I will send and take Nebuchadrezzar the king of Babylon, my servant, and will set his throne upon these stones that I have hid; and he shall spread his royal pavilion over them.

The theme in these verses is that of being hidden in the pavilion. To me, it was an answer that I was to stay in the building where I was, and God would make me able. Then to have that answer from God followed by the dream seemed to say that some type of catastrophe might be the reason God was keeping me there...as a contact-point for His life with people who were falling apart as panic was rampant. It may all be nothing. It may be something to be averted with prayer. Who knows. But in any case, I've had enough divine intervention in things like this for me to decide to pause and ask for prayer. I'm hoping you guys can put serious prayer to it with and for me. I don't think anything bad is going to happen to me--according to this imagery--but there will be grief peripheral to me somehow maybe. God is wanting to prepare His people, and so prayer for wisdom is in season! Thanks for your abiding presence in all these things I bring to you. You are both real rocks for me!
Thanks and love to you both!
Debbie
P.S. I think this impending "fall" may be the result of an attack against us by forces that do not want the "story told to the angels" that is given to this school to tell, as per my previous scripture references I sent you as pertinent to us now.

I sent that one October 30, then November 1, I sent this one:

Don't know if you're already praying on this one, but I think I got a little clarification today for more prayer guidance if you'll continue to join me in it. When I typed this message to you, and I threw in that descriptor about the lake in the middle of the state we flew to being the size of Nebraska, I considered changing it to Kansas, because that seemed a more common simile, but felt a check--like I was thinking Nebraska for a reason. With a shrug I left it. Today, one on the new high school teachers who is also a pastor spoke in chapel. He made reference to the fact that he is from Nebraska...and joked about being a "corn husker." Also, he used water imagery solely in his opening prayer. I think it is a sign that he is going to have an important role in whatever happens, that he may be central, that he may be a source of refreshment...can you think of any other reasons God would be using such imagery for him? Anyway, please pray for this guy. His name is Paul. I've never shared with him the "prophetic" side of my relationship with God, but am thinking it is appropriate, so pray that his heart will be receptive for whatever God might be wanting to say to him through me.

Thanks and much love!
Deb

Now it is December, and we are in our new house. The move preoccupies much of my thought time, but in the last two or three days, the following things have happened:

• The weather has turned suddenly, bitterly, fatally some places, cold and snowy in the Midwest.
• I've had two dreams in the last six months that seem to matter now, ones of travel in cars with people...one more recently in which I ride in the backseat of a car driven by my boss, with his wife in the passenger seat. He drives by her request, and he drives backward through a church parking lot, fast and intently. Metaphorically, this is already beginning to happen in their lives, and the second scene of that particular dream for this couple seems tied to the "crisis" moment of the Alaska dream. Now for the last dream that seems pertinent, the one I had some months ago. In it, I travel with a group of young people, laughing and singing--with me in the driver's seat this time--when suddenly we encounter a blinding blizzard. I hit the brakes. We can see nothing, and so we travel in blind terror as the car slows with screeching tires. We get stopped just short of impact against a wall of cars...a wall of crashed cars piled too tall to see the top. While it had been bright mid-day before we hit the storm, now it was deep blue twilight. Wheile it had been warm enough to have the windows down and the wind blowing in our hair, now a quiet snow that felt ancient was falling. It already coated much of the wreckage, giving the impression many of these cars had been there a very long time. Strange travel, sudden icy terror, complete change of scene, and dark anguish. When I leave the car in this dream, I know it is my task to find a way through the wall of cars. As I'm looking around, trying to come up with an idea for this task, a group of young backpackers meet me and ask if I have a knife. I realize they have the right idea...a knife is the key. I say yes...I have a box-cutter knife my husband uses for work. (Although he doesn't have that job anymore...I feel now more that we "represented" Christ and the Bride in this dream, and He has given her the knife that should be used to break her and her companions through the wall.) But even as I get the knife out of my purse, someone else comes up with a beautiful knife, curved like a samurai's saber only small and held by a handle of rich golden enamel, creamy and expensive-looking. The young people eagerly take this knife. But I object..."That knife is only good for show! It is not made for real work! Try this one." Then one of them takes my little box cutter and runs a hand along the dull side. "This knife isn't even sharp," he says in disgust and amazement that I'd even suggest it. "But you checked it on the wrong side!" I said, but the young people were gone with their useless, pretty knife in hand. Now, I wonder if the blizzard-stage of this dream is about to hit in my actual world, and I wonder...
• ...if I am about to learn more about the imagery of that other dream, the one that covers my place of work as being somewhere around Alaska. The one I emailed to my friend. The Nebraska part was quick to reveal itself, and I have spoken to the one You seem to be beckoning to walk as that image of the water, one you beckoned into a specific service that hovers above the common-sense, visible realm; and he believes and receives Your call. But many other images of the dream are yet unknown...what is the mountain in the water? Why is the place we circle--and where all this activity happens--associated with Alaska?
• This Alaska part seems to be the one I am to inquire about next. For here is what You bring into my world: Alaska is suddenly everywhere around me. I see Alaska license plates on cars in drive-thorough restaurants here in central Indiana, something that I've only had happen once before, last summer. I see TV ads for places with names like Fairbanks. And just this morning, my littlest one brought to me a package wrapped in musical Christmas wrap. "What is this, Mommy?" I looked at it and laughed. "That is nothing, a prop we used in a play last Christmas that got stuck in one of the boxes of decorations we just opened again." We'd done The Gift of the Magi as a play last Christmas, and this was one of the "gift" props. "Can I unwrap it?" he asked. "Sure," I said, turning back to the newspaper and my own breakfast. Later, as I walked past his abandoned work, I saw the scraps of paper littered around a little wooden box, a box I'd forgotten. It was a box that originally held little jade earrings that we purchased in Alaska when we went there two summers ago. A picture of the state and the word Alaska were carved--and there's another connection, for knives can carve--into the top of the box.

So the most blatant message right now seems to be: it's time to unwrap the Alaska imagery. All I can think of right now is that the license plates I saw reminded me that it is known as the gold rush state; in fact, we have a little bottle of water with gold flecks floating in it, another souvenir from that same trip to Alaska. And that gold was one of the three gifts brought by the real magi to the Christ Child. Still, not enough to feel like I hit the point of it yet.

Whatever I am to know about this place, O God, reveal it to me. And while we're on the subject, dear God, get everyone ready for whatever this all means.