I Had A Dream

Prov. 16:24 “Pleasant words are as an honeycomb, sweet to the soul, and health to the bones.”

I Had A Dream

My dreams of late have become increasingly strange and last night's dream was no different. My subconscious is working overtime here lately with the diagnosis of the Big C. 

Do you remember in childhood cartoons the big refuse trucks? They looked like big vacuums, big hoses placed over the sewage and when turned on the sewage was sucked through the tube? 

I have to say first since I grew up on the Eastern portion of the US that the ocean was a yearly visit and sometimes twice a year since it was only a two or three-hour drive from my house. I grew up in Baltimore Maryland where the Inner Harbor goes right out to the Chesapeake Bay. Ocean City, Maryland was our yearly vacation spot. The great memories, the sand between my toes and the family together. Yes, the family.

Well, my dreams of late for some reason have me near the ocean, in a house right on the beach with crashing waves, salt taste in my mouth and the grit when I wash my hair. Last night I was in that beach house when a big smelly refuse truck pulled up to the house. 

A big burly man got out of the truck. I didn’t recognize him but he had sandy blonde wavy close-cropped hair and the infamous farmer Bob jeans. He knocked on the door and informed me he was here to clean the house out. I know I looked at him puzzled when he told me to go in and relax it won’t hurt a bit. 

I went and relaxed on the sofa as the big old vacuum churned into action. With the door open, he held the hose to the front door, not very far from me. Suddenly things started flying by me. Not furniture but tiny cells, fungus, strands of molecular disease, spores of mold and anything foreign that was disease ridden. They were being sucked out of the entire house including my body. 

It was so strange seeing spider web like strands being sucked from my mouth but I just sat in amazement that there was a successful way to be rid of all this disease. The sound lasted for what seemed like hours but more than likely minutes as germ after toxic germ was contained in this big sewage truck. 

The noise stopped, he waved to me and yelled out, “All clean!” and I watched as he revved the truck engine. With eyes on the long pier, I stood aghast at the thought of what this man was about to do.  

He sped down the pier I know hitting top speeds for a refuse truck and just at the end of the pier the truck leaped off of the end of the pier and descended into the ocean sinking to the bottom. I felt I was out of my body watching this in slow-motion. 

I was frantic, what did he just do? I ran to the end of the pier tossing out life preservers but I knew he didn’t get out of the truck in time but I didn’t give up hope as I saw helicopters fly into the position of retrieving the body alive or dead. 

“He died for you,” kept playing like a choir of angels in my ears. He died for you, He died for you. I woke but it was too early to get up so I tried to go back to sleep and bring the dream back, all I could get from the continued dream was veiled curtains blowing in the sea breeze, sun shining through the window and me, resting on the bed exhausted. All disease sucked out of me and the tiring months I spent fighting flashing in my mind. I rested; I cradled my covers and rested.

My husband entered the room as well as our sister-in-law. I don’t know why they showed up but they did and I could hear them talking about the miracle they had just witnessed. I rested, listened and rested. 

I finally woke after a wonderful eight hours of sleep and knew I had to write this down before I forgot but the images feel so fresh as if I’m reliving the dream over and over again in my waking hours.

I’ll take my walk today and relive that miracle of all disease being sucked from my body and being tossed out to sea by the one and only Man I know who died for me in my lifetime. 

I’m feeling good. My spirits are high and this is what I want to feel all the way up to my last day. I feel disheartened by the medical community but who isn’t? They were trained to care for patients when the majority of the time, they are just there to write a prescription and send you on your way. 

Yesterday I got a phone call from my General Practitioner, who was the original doctor who set all of this in motion for me. She called to see how I was doing and asked if there was anything she could do for me. I cried. I feel like the medical community is in cahoots and all have just fallen short of offering me anything of value after I uttered those words NO CHEMO and Alternative Medicine. Then she called, left a message, and offered her heart. I’m amazed. 

I am truly blessed in this journey, no matter what the turnout, I am truly blessed and I say that upon waking every single morning. May you all feel the blessings of each and every day. Cancer is NOT a death sentence; it is a new lease on life! THAT is how I see it! Thank you, Jesus!

Prov. 4:22 “For they are life unto those that find them, and health to all their flesh.”

Sail On, Joni

Lam. 3:24-25 The LORD is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him.

The LORD is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him.

Time heals all wounds

That is one of the biggest lies I’ve ever heard. Time might heal the part of you that was wounded but as proof the hurt existed, you’re left with a scar. I have a scar on my left wrist with a whole lot of stitches and the scar nor the memory of the three-year-old that incurred the scar has ever healed and went away. 

I always joke and say that my sister had it in for me from birth when I took her place as being the ‘baby’ of the family but more and more as time and years pass, it’s no longer the funny that I thought it was back then. As my past comes back to haunt me and the wounds resurface as the scars metaphorically reopen to leak blood onto the written page, the anguish along the lines come with the broken path.

The choppy waves are hurtling me so to speak, in a way I had not anticipated. You see, when you’re finding healing, you move forward and help others like you to move on in life. Sharing the same hurts and pains with another is just a way of being in tune and picking up the spiritual channels that drew you, as friends, together on the same wavelength in the first place. 

I have a circle of friends that I met, maybe at first it was writing that drew us together but as the years go on I tend to learn more about the people and the common thread that ties us all together. More times than not it was God and His mighty power that drew us all together in one way or another because He knew we’d need and rely on one another for support to get us through those choppy waves where we felt all alone out on the sea.

A man came to my rescue thirteen years ago and as the sea began moving to and fro the waves crashed all around leaving me with somewhat of a disillusionment until we both reached a shore where we could be at peace with one another and grow. Any lesser of a man would have dumped me a long time ago with all of my insecurities, paranoia and anxiety-filled world but my now husband is still here, holding my hand through all of this. While I accept his quirks and unsavory characteristics, I find we are a scale that has balanced one another nicely. 

God placed new people, a new life, a new beginning in front of me that I embraced and soared with so as not to look back, only occasionally look down at the scars and remember from whence they came. All too often the scars are from the family I left behind. And when I hear people say things like, ‘it is the only family you’ll ever have.’ I’ll have to disagree because it may be the only blood family I have but my new loving family that God placed me with doesn’t leave scars of abuse in their trails to be reckoned with. 

Sure, my friends can be blunt and unknowingly hurt my feelings but that is okay because I learn from them and find healing in their spoken words whereas my blood family cuts to the bone of my existence and holds no shame or offers anything that remotely looks like an apology. I can’t help the family I was put into but I can embrace the family I have now as a blessing and THIS is why I will remain an optimist because I have HOPE in every tomorrow. A wobbled walk or not, I’m alive and I breathe in each new sunrise and thank the Lord for the friends I call my spiritual family that I have surrounding me here in my later years. (later to me) This is the childhood I yearned for, the one that will walk with me to my death and mourn the me that they’ve grown with and have come to love and respect.

My long lost friend who called me did say something that I found to be true. He said, “You were never allowed to be a child. You were made to grow up too soon.” 

While the wound seeped open I remembered with loving care the family of friends I have now who will comfort me during this seepage. While God is my Rock, they are the sand that this mighty wave crashes onto to find relief.  

Lam. 3:26-29 It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the LORD. It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.

He sitteth alone and keepeth silence, because he hath borne it upon him.

He putteth his mouth in the dust; if so be there may be hope.

When the wind blows...

Exodus 15: 10 Thou didst blow with thy wind, the sea covered them: they sank as lead in the mighty waters.

***

When I was young I used to sit on the sandy beaches of Ocean City Maryland, either late at night, or at sunrise, just staring out into nothing. The Atlantic seems endless, with its frothy yellow foam, rolling tides gripping the shoreline, ripples of sea continuously slipping and sliding.

The aroma of sea-salt gathered in the wind, carried to my nose as I inhaled all the beauty of life, living and God. The sand would squish between my toes and I could just fall back, gazing up at the infinity of stars in the sky, or watch the clouds make a shape-dance while the winds swept them away.

What I’m getting at is this, we never know when the tides will shift or when the wind blows. We are not supposed to know, that is what makes life such a wondrous mystery is that every day we wake up and have to realize, any way the wind blows, we must  learn to accept the ebb and flow.

Can you control the ocean? Can man? Of course not. Can you put the wind in a bag and carry it with you, only to release it on a hot summers day, right when you need it most? Well can you? You know the answer to that question without even blinking an eye.  But as any two year-old child wonders all the time is, why? We adults can surmise, but even sometimes we have to wonder, why can’t I control the wind, or cease the ocean from rolling? Why? Why? Why?

Okay, you want me to spell it out for you don’t you? You’re probably wondering where the writing lesson is in all of this mumbo-jumbo aren’t you? I’m here to say, that no matter where we think our novel is heading and no matter what we have in mind for the novel, the winds of change can always blow through and make us see something new or different.

Maybe you had a romance in mind and now it looks like it is shaping up to be a para-normal novel, perhaps a thriller turned into a love story, it may just so happen, that your non-fiction tale took a fictional turn. The winds of diversity swept in, cleared the cobwebs from your brain, and you swiftly accepted this change, moved on and it became a best seller. (Hey a girl can dream can’t she?)

Life can be like that too, you know. A complete about-face shakes your world and you wonder what happened? Where did routine and fixation go? Friends, allow me to let you in on a secret, the wonder of it all is placed right in God’s hands. Do you think He wondered what he was doing at creation? He never wonders! He created you and he was well pleased. Although we may not be happy with the winds of change, or the fluctuating shift in the tides in our lives, but HE and he alone sits and doesn’t wonder what is going to happen to you next. He already knows.

Just as the character you created. You know the end result.

As a family, we would eventually return back home to South Baltimore where the concrete and asphalt hugged you until you were about to explode. But every day of every year I always kept the wind in my heart and the flow glued to my life, and I never wondered, what next? :)

Job 27: 21 The east wind carrieth him away, and he departeth: and as a storm hurleth him out of his place.

Poetry Sunday

The Revenge of the Sea

I set ‘asail a calming sea

it called to me one day.

I went to find a peace within

I knew would come my way.



I mellowed on the deck below

my tiny boat was swaying.

My mind was playing tricks on me

with thoughts that I was weighing.



The blackened sky whispered sounds,

a rumbling from afar

It sounded as if God Himself

had left the door ajar.



I rushed up top just in time

to see the clouds were rippling.

The thrashing of the eager waves

made guidance very crippling.



The squall was just above me now;

clouds seemed to descend

upon this tiny boat of mine,

On which I now depend.



Droplets of rain grazed my face

I began to sense a peace.

For in this shroud of turmoil.

The sea's revenge will cease.



A glimpse of golden streams I see.

A beacon to hold my stare.

All at once I realized,

The storm was never there.



Copyright © joni zipp