SPIRITUAL WELLNESS – Connect with your spirit! Use ways that are meaningful to you:whether that’s through your place of worship, prayer, or meditation.

Have you ever had a dream that revealed something to you? I have. It’s a sobering, humbling experience.

As I’ve been refined by age,™ there came a time when I made an intentional, conscious decision to make a change; to walk a different path than the one I had been on for half my life. I left much of what I’d previously learned by the side of the old path, like so much baggage that would no longer be needed. I felt safer and more comfortable here. This path had a certain degree of familiarity to it, yet I still walked with the uncertainty of a stranger in a new land. That’s when I had the dream.

It wasn’t a long dream, but it was a clear, poignant one. One that would not be forgotten as soon as I woke up like so many others.

In the dream, I was in a building waiting for an appointment. I had no idea where I was supposed to go until a stranger pointed me to my destination: a brick wall. Confused, I nonetheless heeded the advice, walked over to the wall and stood there simply believing I was where I was supposed to be.

When I say I stood there, I mean just that. I didn’t try to push on the wall or find some hidden lever that would make a door magically appear. I simply made my stand, waited and believed. I didn’t have to wait long.

Soon a door appeared in the wall and on the other side of the door was the brightest, whitest place I have ever seen. In that area, a figure glowed so radiantly that his physical features were obscured. Then the “essence” spoke to me as if by osmosis; directly from his heart to mine. He said, “I’ve been expecting you. I knew you would cross over.” That was the end of the dream.

The dream consumed me upon awakening. Cross over? What had I crossed over? All I knew was that, in reality, I was on a different path in my life. I don’t remember crossing over anything. Just like the saying, “We can’t see the forest for the trees,” I understood then that, “We can’t see the bridge when we’re crossing over it.”

I believe I was in the process of crossing over a chasm with self-reliance or self-will on one side and God’s will for me on the other. I was in the process of rediscovering my lost childhood faith in God, and was shown that the first step in doing so was to surrender; my will for God’s will for me. My surrender was demonstrated in my simple stand; surrendering was the knock that opened the door to the Way.

I continue to struggle to stay on the path as the years pass me by. Forks in the road and temptations continue to appear, and I am enticed to take them. I confess, I veer off the path from time to time, but not as far and wide as in my younger days. It helps to know that through faith and grace – and nothing I can do – I am always loved and welcome to return to the Way: the path to eternal life.

Faith, for me, has been a precocious child; a child who embraces me as if to stay one moment and runs away to play hide and seek the next. As I am refined by age,™ my faith is being refined in me, the child lingers longer and my faith grows stronger.

^“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— ⁹ not by works, so that no one can boast.” Ephesians 2:8-9 (NIV)

“So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” Luke 11:9 (NIV)

YouTube Video: Amazing Grace (My Chains are Gone) by Chris Tomlin

YouTube Video: The Stand by Hillsong