On Having Conversations with God...

He spoke first, because in these things, He always speaks first. And for this woman, He starts most conversations with a dream:

My Kingdom is like this even as it becomes the kingdom of this world, it is like a woman who stands visiting most companionably with another woman who in real life is but a mere acquaintance. In the dream, the two of them are standing in a kitchen where this acquaintenance-become-friend has been preparing food, when suddenly the dreamer's body becomes as a fountain and begins spraying water everywhere. The dreamer says to the woman cooking, "This will never do because these coats will get wet if they stay in here with me." Indeed, a coatrack on wheels with many uniform coats hanging along both its poles stands in the middle of the room. So the woman and her friend decide to move the coats into an adjoining room, one they can see through an interior window. So they do move the coats, and then they peer through the window to see the state of the coats in their new environment. The coats remain dry in this other room, so the women are satisfied with their work.

More things happened after these events in this dream, but for now it is enough to say that the woman assumed what she always assumes when these conversations begin: she assumed that when the time came for her to understand the parable, the conversation would resume.

So months went by and the woman practically forgot the dream that started this particular interaction, until one day, He came whispering in her ear:

Have you noticed that you have "strangely" come to be deep prayer partners with this very woman I showed you in that dream some time ago? This very day you are "there" in the place where the vision and the reality meet.

And the dreamer caught her breath, in a sudden flash remembering the dream and realizing that a marker in time had been inserted into both the dream and her life, a marker in the form of this friendship with this woman. So she returned to the dream, visiting it again in her mind. She asked friends to pray with her, even this very woman. Also, she prayed for herself:

Oh, God. Help me know how I am to live this next part. How am I to know what these coats are? What is the water that issues forth from me? What do I do as this parable moves into reality?

So He led her to verses:

Psa 36:9
For with thee [is] the fountain of life: in thy light shall we see light.
Pro 13:14
The law of the wise [is] a fountain of life, to depart from the snares of death.
Pro 14:27
The fear of the LORD [is] a fountain of life, to depart from the snares of death.
Rev 21:6
And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.

And she began to realize that the water was wisdom that would issue forth from her, and it was how she would be for a gift and a judgment somehow, but these were yet beyond her ability to measure.
All the more she prayed:

Oh, God, what are the coats, for they come next? How am I to know when I move them? And, I must know what they are before I can move forward?

And He said, "You need to know more than that, for you are not yet fully aware of the part about the water. First you must understand more than just what the water is, but also how it is in you."

So the dreamer stopped trying to race forward, remembering the stress-free leisure of her God, and she began to study more on the water. She began to meditate the life that is not just a fountain but also a gift. She thought of herself and what might be the value she carried to the One who would give such a gift, and slowly she began to see where she is still lacking--for in a word, her definition of "gift" was marred. Her husband has told her this many times, but only now does she begin to see it for herself: she is a woman who feels "unworthy" of gifts unless they somehow benefit others as well as herself; or she is uncomfortable receiving them unless they are simply the giving of something she would need to get anyway, a survival item, that can be "called" a gift because it comes at a time when a gift is most commonly deemed fitting, a holiday or birthday, etc. So she begins to consider what it would be like to receive a gift that needed no other benefit than to please her, no secondary gain for anyone else. And the thought was a wonder to her, even as she questioned whether such consideration meant she was opening an agreement with selfishness in her heart. So she said this to her God:

You are right. I do need to consider more deeply what it means for me to be a fountain. This is a blind spot for me. Am I turning toward You or away from You in this train of thought? The sense I got in the dream was that I was nearly bursting with the water. I could not contain it, nor even direct its flow because I was so full to overflowing with that water. I was not so much a channel for the water to flow through as a container under pressure from which it had no choice but to spray. If something were to be "exempt" from receiving the wisdom that would issue forth from me like water, then the only option was to completely remove it from my presence. Is that right, God? Am I on the right track?

And that very night as the dreamer sat reading before going to bed, she happened upon the following quote, which was His confirmation and answer to her question, in the words of both the dream He gave her and of Bernard of Clairvaux:

If you are wise, you will show yourself rather as a reservoir than a canal. A canal spreads abroad water as it receives it, but a reservoir waits until it is filled before overflowing, and thus without loss to itself [it shares] its superabundant waters."

So today she waits as the reservoir fills, and in the meantime, considers some of the many other conversations between herself and her God.