Warning: this post deals with adult content and is not suitable for all audiences. Lizzy, I wouldn't read this one.

Dreams are fascinating things.

Multiple dreams just won't let me go; they invade my sleep over and over again.  Some are just strange- the smoking dreams in which I'm chain-smoking cartons of cigarettes and LOVING every. single. inhale. feeling smoke burn and fill my lungs then thickly slide out the side of my mouth.  I've never smoked a single cigarette in my life, and because of these dreams, I'm terrified just one puff would make me addicted forever.  But I digress.

There are more, the tiny spaces dreams, the waking-up-in-an-ugly-wedding-dress-and-marrying-a-man-I-didn't-love dreams, the rabbit hole/Jabba the Hut dreams, the pulling-people-out-of-a-crocodile's-jaws dreams....

While unpleasant, those dreams are rather petty.

There are the nightmares, however. 

I've had them rather consistently for as long as I can remember.  For many years, I didn't tell anyone and tried to push the nightmares into the furthest corners of my memory.  I'd wake up, shudder, and force myself to forget.  But they persisted, and last year I finally started talking about them with people I love and trust.

One of the reasons I'm passionate about fighting sex trafficking is that I've been dream raped and exploited several times in my sleep.  NO, I cannot relate to people who have been raped and abused.  I am NOT saying I can fully emphasize with people whose vulnerability is exploited.  But I've glimpsed their fear and pain, and that simple exposure alone overwhelms me.  I know the nightmares are not real, but in the heat of them, I don't know what's real or not.

Sometimes I'm in a brothel with many women I don't know.

Sometimes I'm hanging out with friends and we're jumped in a parking lot.

Sometimes I'm home alone.

Sometimes I discover a room full of little girls locked up by a teacher.

Once, I had a 4yr old girl taken from me during a Sunday School class.

One of these nightmares came upon me in Ukraine last summer.  I dreamed I was in a room with a bunch of young girls and some men I knew.  Suddenly, I realized all the men but one had a dark intent in bringing us girls together.  I tried not to panic or let the men know I realized their plan while also trying to get the one honest man's attention.  But he fell asleep.  Then the other men attacked.  One had a knife and lunged to slit the sleeping man's throat, but I jumped in the way, grabbing for the knife while trying to wake the sleeping man.  He wouldn't wake up, but I was able to wiggle out of the knife man's grasp and bolt out the door and through a field.  I felt safe but sick with the knowledge of what was happening to the other girls.

I woke up.

I got out of bed and went to the sink to wash my face and hopefully my mind.  With water dripping down my face, I asked God something I'd never asked Him before,

"Why?  Why the nightmares, Lord?"

I don't usually heard God respond in a clear voice, but a thought shot through my mind,

"I don't want you to leave them behind anymore."

I realized a central theme in many of my nightmares.  I often got away, but the others didn't.

Was there a purpose in all this?  Maybe.  I'll never forget a friend telling me, 

"you've seen the need.  Now do something about it."

So I started doing what I could.  It isn't much, and there's so much more I'd like to do, but God hasn't released me to do it yet.  So I'll do what I can in the waiting/preparing period.

 

Why do I write all this?  Well, there's another theme in most of my nightmares.  Two nights ago, I dreamed a pimp and his boss were following me through an abandoned farm they had turned into a breaking ground for trafficked girls.  This time, I realized I was dreaming, so I cried out to God to wake me up.  Please Lord, just wake me up and all this will end.  Save me!

He didn't.  I felt hopeless and utterly abandoned.  Now I assume God wanted me to experience the whole dream for a reason.  I know He didn't simply ignore my pleas.

But it's been worse.

In one nightmare, I was chased and cornered in a two story building by an old, feeble man and a middle-aged, Hulk-sized man.  In my dream, I screamed,

"Jesus!  Save me!  Oh God, please rescue me!"

As the huge man approached me, unbuckling his belt, he laughed,

"Oh, God will save you, but only after we're done with you."

Could that be Satan lying to me and trying to scare me?  Sure.  Maybe.  But you know what?  In a way, he's right.  If I get heavily involved in fighting sexual exploitation, I'm not guaranteed safety.  Hell, I'm not guaranteed safety while typing this on my couch here at home!  Nefarious things happen to Christians every day and God does not always rescue them.

Tonight, Dad and I were the only ones at home, and that means war movie night!  This time we watched Act of Valor.  A good movie, but I don't want to go off topic.  At the beginning of the film, a female CIA agent is captured by Jihad members and she's gruesomely tortured for not talking. 

Would I do that?  Would I suffer like that if asked to deny Christ or in attempt to save exploited people? 

Ah, honestly?  I don't think so.

I know God will never leave me or forsake me.  I know He holds my right hand, hems me in, hides me in the shadow of His wing, but that doesn't mean He won't let me suffer.

Am I truly willing to take that risk?  To go out into the darkness even in the face of suffering and death?

I don't know.  I'm really wrestling.  It bothers me so much.

I don't know exactly what these dreams mean, whether they're attacks from Satan or messages from God, or simply terrors in my psyche.  But they've caused me to wrestle with some hard things.  I know God will bring good from it, and I know He's worth everything, and I know I can't live in fear of what may never come to pass, but this is all weighing heavy on my soul and I just needed to get it out somehow.