I awoke shouting, “NO! NO!” and sat straight up in bed. My wife sat up saying, “What! What’s wrong? Are you okay?” I lay back in the bed and said, “Yeah, I’m okay, I must have had a bad dream.” She reached over to caress my chest and recoiling said, “Bob, you’re burning up and soaking wet.” “I know,” I said. “It must have been a very bad dream. I’ll be fine. I don’t even remember what the dream was about.” “Okay,” she said, “Try to get some sleep.” “Okay, beautiful.” I wiped the sweat from my brow, and as I settled down, I drifted back to sleep.
I awoke that morning, still wondering what in the world I must have been dreaming about last night. I still couldn’t remember. Then, a few moments later, a memory popped into my head from out of the blue. I began recollecting a book I wrote several years ago. Funny, I hadn’t thought about it for a long time, because the thoughts and ideas in the book no longer matched up with my current worldview.
I originally wrote the story, because I had a reoccurring dream about the story and its characters, and other dreams like it, so one day I decided to try to type it out. It took months, but it turned out pretty good, but due to situations beyond my control, and just never getting around to it, I just left the story sitting stagnant in my computer. I don’t know why it popped into my memory that morning, but that old story, all of the sudden seemed important. Oh well, just a random thought, on just another day, so I’ll just get ready for work.
My usual routine started with a shower and a shave and then getting dressed. I fired up my computer and then went into the kitchen to get a bowl of cereal. As I sat down at the computer, I logged into my e-mail account, and blessed my meal in a short prayer, and then started eating my cereal as I looked over the various e-mails in my in-box. I also read my daily devotion that was sent to my e-mail address on a daily basis.
The devotion passage was 1 Peter 3:15, “But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear.” I love that verse because it commands us to be able to defend our faith to anyone, anywhere, with kindness and respect, in order to share with them the hope and joy that we have in Christ Jesus. It takes a lot of studying, but it is well worth it.
I finished up on the computer and shut it down, and then carried my bowl to the kitchen, sat it in the sink and ran some water in it. Then I also went into the bathroom to brush my teeth and then walked into the bedroom. I gathered all the stuff I carried in my pockets, kissed my wife goodbye and headed for the door. I got into my car and as I was pulling out of the driveway, I felt like I was forgetting something, but couldn’t think of anything I was missing. Did I forget to do something? Something just didn’t feel right. Oh well, it’ll come to me I guess, so I pulled out into the road and headed toward my office. I’m a mid-level executive in a local bank and the bank is only 15 minutes from my home.
The commute was uneventful as usual, well, at least for a while. As I was coming up on a side road, I heard screeching tires to my right and glanced over to see if I was going to get hit, but the car had already stopped. As I looked back toward the road, there was a pick-up truck careening toward me! We both slammed on our breaks and swerved, but it was too late, the pick-up slid sideways and its bed slammed into my car’s left front quarter panel. Because it was a glancing blow, my head slammed into the left door frame rendering me instantly unconscious (according to the reports).
As I lay unconscious, my unconscious mind fixated on the science fiction story I wrote all those years ago. The story I was just thinking about just a few minutes ago. So I began unconsciously drifting through the lives and experiences of the characters in my story….
