I'm about to share an experience from the middle of Saturday night/Sunday morning that began as a wonderful dream and, after a brief transition, became one of the worst personal nightmares in recent memory. I spent most of Sunday processing it -- by myself, with wife Kristin, and with our daughters. If you consider dream states to be irrelevant to theological or spiritual matters, please feel free to bow out. My belief system asserts a Sovereign God, and the operative definition of 'sovereign' to me includes understanding that everything happens according to His Will and that everything is from, of, to and about God. Also included in that understanding is faith that, while God rarely speaks to us in English, He does speak to us in nearly everything that impinges upon our lives. I take that to the point of believing that nothing is accidental or random in dreams and that, instead, everything in our mental night life is directed by His Hand and intended to speak to me. I therefore analyze any dream I remember, holding surrendering to The Lord's Will as my paramount concern but also utilizing tools from Freud (wish fulfillment; etc.), Jung (archetypes), Adler (boundary concerns), Perls and others in those analysis processes, including an analysis framework that asserts that every single aspect of a dream represents an aspect of oneself. Keeping all that in mind, here goes:
The setting of the dream was a 3-story abandoned textile mill somewhere in the American Southeast, an edifice we purchased about 8 years ago back when Felix and Mercer still lived with us (in reality, we have lived in western Pennsylvania since 2003), for the purposes of living in it while coordinating a major renovation project with the intention of reselling it as condominiums for a huge profit by the time our youngest, Holly Hannah, graduates from high school (2022); the setting was also generally the present time frame, with Kristin and the girls living with us at the ages they are now. Renovations were close to wrapping up, early in fact. Contrary to the more typical timing of my dreams, this one traversed more than 3 months in time without seeming like anything was skipped over, so it must have occurred in something like fast forward, as I would estimate that approximately 100 days were experienced as occurring in normal time over no more than 5 or 6 hours time as I slept. The 100 days spanned from mid-August 2018 to late November 2018.
The dream began with a woman contacting me on the Biblical Families web site, stating that she had privately noted during the early August conference in Tennessee that our family was one she might want to join, that she had already engaged in a variety of conversations with other Biblical Families women -- both in person and through chat and email contact -- in an effort to get their impressions about Kristin and our family, and that she had already read enough of my posts here on biblicalfamilies.org to consider as worthwhile pursuing me as a possible husband. [Suffice it to say that I recognize this to be blatant wish fulfillment in dream form.] The woman was some form of single, and her parenthood status was never discussed between us, but in the dream I assumed she was a mother, for a reason that becomes obvious later. (Later, upon waking, I noted without any hesitation that she was also a very clear combination of three different individuals in our lives.)
Chat communications and phone calls ensued between her and me, between her and Kristin, and eventually included group phone calls that engaged the girls as well. Early on we addressed our concerns, given that it was where our association was initiated, that Biblical Families might consider any courting to be a violation of prohibitions against using the biblicalfamilies.org platform as a dating site (even having a conference call with several site administrators [did any of you dream of participating in such a phone conference?] that eventually resulted in a blessing [more proof of wish fulfillment]). Ultimately, all five of us agreed that she should come spend a full month at the textile mill to determine if we clicked in person. Most of the remaining dream section of the nightmare featured this face-to-face exploration, including conversations sometimes more dominated by the girls than by the other three of us in raising and discussing concerns. By the time the month was drawing to a close, Kristin told me privately that she was absolutely convinced that she was ready for the woman (whose name was never spoken) to become part of our family and that she would leave it up to me to decide when to declare that to our new friend. Both girls had also indicated to me privately that they were eager to have her in our family, as well as to meet their new siblings.
I spent the evening of Kristin's permission-giving alone with the woman. She was very receptive to being asked to join our family, suggested that we sexually consummate the marriage immediately, and we did so (which, unusually enough, I actually experienced fully in my dream). Afterward, we departed from the 3rd floor room where she'd been spending her nights to bring the news to Kristin on the 2nd floor, where our bedroom and most of our living quarters were located. The intention was to have a meeting of the three of us, eventually bringing in the girls into the process, for the purpose of sealing/finalizing commitments among the three of us. The woman and I were walking down the long middle corridor toward the opposite end, which was where Kristin began walking toward us from the kitchen. It was at this point that the dream hesitated and then turned into a nightmare [only upon reflection did I recognize that my own internal state during the dream created the shift, in response to a fleeting doubt]. Those of you who attended the men's session at this summer's conference may remember that I stated that I was personally 100% ready to come out to our small-town community about seeking Biblical polygyny, but it's clear to me that this dream state instead reflected something more along the lines of a 99% readiness on my part. Yes, even most of the 1% hesitation is based on sensitivity to my wife and daughters' fear of social stigma, but whatever the internal emotional mix for me, it's clear from the dream that I continue to possess some hesitation, because, as I walked down the hallway hand-in-hand with the woman, and as I saw Kristin walking toward us with a big smile on her face, I had the sudden thought that I should stop for a second and once again consider if this was the best thing for my family.
Immediately, I heard a voice behind me demand that I turn around. When I did I was face-to-face with the person I'd hired to supervise the renovation team, accompanied by two workers. From that point forward, any other workers present did not speak as such to me, limiting their vocalizations to grunts and supervisor-affirmations accompanied by head-nodding, but the supervisor asserted that we had a problem with the renovation project, because they had discovered that the floors were rotting out and that emergency overtime was required to prevent the whole project from being short-circuited due to structural collapse. As he spoke, I noted that beside him and leading back to the right of most of the distance the woman and I had already walked was a large, ragged oval hole in the wooden floorboards, about the size of two average living rooms. I glanced above (to what was the floor of the 3rd floor) and observed a number of varying-sized similar holes, all of which had quite obviously been recently created with the use of axes, hammers, chain saws, etc. I immediately assumed that the small-swimming-pool-sized hole in the 2nd floor had been created in a similar manner. The supervisor went on to demand that I immediately increase the hourly wage of every worker, hire additional workers at this elevated rate, begin paying them all overtime, in response to which I confronted him for extortion. During the argument that ensued, I kept looking back and forth between him and Kristin; I began waving her off to stop advancing, but it was as if she couldn't see or hear me; she just kept coming toward us with a big grin on her face, oblivious to danger. Each time I looked back at the supervisor, he had twice as many men standing around him, all staring at me menacingly, all wearing tool belts, and all wielding in their hands at least one implement of destruction. Early on in this incremental doubling, I whispered to the woman as I continued to hold her hand that I would create a diversion that would draw the supervisor's attention toward me and completely away from her, and that during that diversion she should slip away to a nearby exit and flee the entire properly. I let go of her hand, began to walk quickly toward Kristin, yelling for her to run away, the supervisor focused on this, directed some of his minions to encircle Kristin, and the woman successfully escaped. She was never again a tangible part of the nightmare.
The supervisor escalated his demands, quickly asserting that he and his men were prepared to expose our family's attempt at creating a plural family to our small-town community (which he called by the name of our actual town here in PA but which is a name that probably exists in every state in the Union). When Kristin, by this time very frightened but also very angry, told him to go ahead, that we would survive whatever stigma they placed on us, the girls appeared, both crying, but they were much more worried at that point for their safety than for their community popularity. The supervisor then asserted that we would never realize any financial gain from renovating the property, because they were committed to ramping up the destruction to the point that the property would be beyond worthless, eliminating not only a profit but the loss of our initial investment. By this point, while that might have bothered me, my only remaining concern was for the safety of my family members, and, as the number of menacing men increased over the course of ensuing weeks into the hundreds, the supervisor added that he was going to kill all of us if I didn't do as I was told. My mind subsequently became entirely occupied with creating a solution to this nightmare that would allow Kristin, Naomi and Holly Hannah to escape so that any wrath would be solely focused on me, even if that were to include my death. I entirely stopped caring about the profit, the property, any embarrassment or anything else. All I cared about was saving my three family members, because the other woman was already safely away from the scene, and the men wouldn't be able to even torture her location out of me, because I had never learned from her where her own home town was.
At this point, Kristin woke me up to let me know that we only had an hour and a half before the motel's check-out deadline, so I didn't have the opportunity to return to the dream/nightmare (as I had done earlier in the night when I'd needed to get up to relieve the too-much water I'd consumed prior to bedtime).
My question I'd like ya'll to ponder is this: no matter what the cost related to the blackmailing workers, if I had ended up being asleep long enough to play out the conclusion of the nightmare, and if I had successfully accomplished saving not only my family but myself as well, would I then be married to the other woman, even though she, Kristin and I had never gotten to the point where we had completed any written or spoken permanent covenant, I had never sought nor received a blessing from the woman's father, and I had thus never paid any dowry or other bride price?
I'm asking that as a very serious question.
I have other questions that stem from the processing done in the wake of the dream/nightmare, including:
The setting of the dream was a 3-story abandoned textile mill somewhere in the American Southeast, an edifice we purchased about 8 years ago back when Felix and Mercer still lived with us (in reality, we have lived in western Pennsylvania since 2003), for the purposes of living in it while coordinating a major renovation project with the intention of reselling it as condominiums for a huge profit by the time our youngest, Holly Hannah, graduates from high school (2022); the setting was also generally the present time frame, with Kristin and the girls living with us at the ages they are now. Renovations were close to wrapping up, early in fact. Contrary to the more typical timing of my dreams, this one traversed more than 3 months in time without seeming like anything was skipped over, so it must have occurred in something like fast forward, as I would estimate that approximately 100 days were experienced as occurring in normal time over no more than 5 or 6 hours time as I slept. The 100 days spanned from mid-August 2018 to late November 2018.
The dream began with a woman contacting me on the Biblical Families web site, stating that she had privately noted during the early August conference in Tennessee that our family was one she might want to join, that she had already engaged in a variety of conversations with other Biblical Families women -- both in person and through chat and email contact -- in an effort to get their impressions about Kristin and our family, and that she had already read enough of my posts here on biblicalfamilies.org to consider as worthwhile pursuing me as a possible husband. [Suffice it to say that I recognize this to be blatant wish fulfillment in dream form.] The woman was some form of single, and her parenthood status was never discussed between us, but in the dream I assumed she was a mother, for a reason that becomes obvious later. (Later, upon waking, I noted without any hesitation that she was also a very clear combination of three different individuals in our lives.)
Chat communications and phone calls ensued between her and me, between her and Kristin, and eventually included group phone calls that engaged the girls as well. Early on we addressed our concerns, given that it was where our association was initiated, that Biblical Families might consider any courting to be a violation of prohibitions against using the biblicalfamilies.org platform as a dating site (even having a conference call with several site administrators [did any of you dream of participating in such a phone conference?] that eventually resulted in a blessing [more proof of wish fulfillment]). Ultimately, all five of us agreed that she should come spend a full month at the textile mill to determine if we clicked in person. Most of the remaining dream section of the nightmare featured this face-to-face exploration, including conversations sometimes more dominated by the girls than by the other three of us in raising and discussing concerns. By the time the month was drawing to a close, Kristin told me privately that she was absolutely convinced that she was ready for the woman (whose name was never spoken) to become part of our family and that she would leave it up to me to decide when to declare that to our new friend. Both girls had also indicated to me privately that they were eager to have her in our family, as well as to meet their new siblings.
I spent the evening of Kristin's permission-giving alone with the woman. She was very receptive to being asked to join our family, suggested that we sexually consummate the marriage immediately, and we did so (which, unusually enough, I actually experienced fully in my dream). Afterward, we departed from the 3rd floor room where she'd been spending her nights to bring the news to Kristin on the 2nd floor, where our bedroom and most of our living quarters were located. The intention was to have a meeting of the three of us, eventually bringing in the girls into the process, for the purpose of sealing/finalizing commitments among the three of us. The woman and I were walking down the long middle corridor toward the opposite end, which was where Kristin began walking toward us from the kitchen. It was at this point that the dream hesitated and then turned into a nightmare [only upon reflection did I recognize that my own internal state during the dream created the shift, in response to a fleeting doubt]. Those of you who attended the men's session at this summer's conference may remember that I stated that I was personally 100% ready to come out to our small-town community about seeking Biblical polygyny, but it's clear to me that this dream state instead reflected something more along the lines of a 99% readiness on my part. Yes, even most of the 1% hesitation is based on sensitivity to my wife and daughters' fear of social stigma, but whatever the internal emotional mix for me, it's clear from the dream that I continue to possess some hesitation, because, as I walked down the hallway hand-in-hand with the woman, and as I saw Kristin walking toward us with a big smile on her face, I had the sudden thought that I should stop for a second and once again consider if this was the best thing for my family.
Immediately, I heard a voice behind me demand that I turn around. When I did I was face-to-face with the person I'd hired to supervise the renovation team, accompanied by two workers. From that point forward, any other workers present did not speak as such to me, limiting their vocalizations to grunts and supervisor-affirmations accompanied by head-nodding, but the supervisor asserted that we had a problem with the renovation project, because they had discovered that the floors were rotting out and that emergency overtime was required to prevent the whole project from being short-circuited due to structural collapse. As he spoke, I noted that beside him and leading back to the right of most of the distance the woman and I had already walked was a large, ragged oval hole in the wooden floorboards, about the size of two average living rooms. I glanced above (to what was the floor of the 3rd floor) and observed a number of varying-sized similar holes, all of which had quite obviously been recently created with the use of axes, hammers, chain saws, etc. I immediately assumed that the small-swimming-pool-sized hole in the 2nd floor had been created in a similar manner. The supervisor went on to demand that I immediately increase the hourly wage of every worker, hire additional workers at this elevated rate, begin paying them all overtime, in response to which I confronted him for extortion. During the argument that ensued, I kept looking back and forth between him and Kristin; I began waving her off to stop advancing, but it was as if she couldn't see or hear me; she just kept coming toward us with a big grin on her face, oblivious to danger. Each time I looked back at the supervisor, he had twice as many men standing around him, all staring at me menacingly, all wearing tool belts, and all wielding in their hands at least one implement of destruction. Early on in this incremental doubling, I whispered to the woman as I continued to hold her hand that I would create a diversion that would draw the supervisor's attention toward me and completely away from her, and that during that diversion she should slip away to a nearby exit and flee the entire properly. I let go of her hand, began to walk quickly toward Kristin, yelling for her to run away, the supervisor focused on this, directed some of his minions to encircle Kristin, and the woman successfully escaped. She was never again a tangible part of the nightmare.
The supervisor escalated his demands, quickly asserting that he and his men were prepared to expose our family's attempt at creating a plural family to our small-town community (which he called by the name of our actual town here in PA but which is a name that probably exists in every state in the Union). When Kristin, by this time very frightened but also very angry, told him to go ahead, that we would survive whatever stigma they placed on us, the girls appeared, both crying, but they were much more worried at that point for their safety than for their community popularity. The supervisor then asserted that we would never realize any financial gain from renovating the property, because they were committed to ramping up the destruction to the point that the property would be beyond worthless, eliminating not only a profit but the loss of our initial investment. By this point, while that might have bothered me, my only remaining concern was for the safety of my family members, and, as the number of menacing men increased over the course of ensuing weeks into the hundreds, the supervisor added that he was going to kill all of us if I didn't do as I was told. My mind subsequently became entirely occupied with creating a solution to this nightmare that would allow Kristin, Naomi and Holly Hannah to escape so that any wrath would be solely focused on me, even if that were to include my death. I entirely stopped caring about the profit, the property, any embarrassment or anything else. All I cared about was saving my three family members, because the other woman was already safely away from the scene, and the men wouldn't be able to even torture her location out of me, because I had never learned from her where her own home town was.
At this point, Kristin woke me up to let me know that we only had an hour and a half before the motel's check-out deadline, so I didn't have the opportunity to return to the dream/nightmare (as I had done earlier in the night when I'd needed to get up to relieve the too-much water I'd consumed prior to bedtime).
My question I'd like ya'll to ponder is this: no matter what the cost related to the blackmailing workers, if I had ended up being asleep long enough to play out the conclusion of the nightmare, and if I had successfully accomplished saving not only my family but myself as well, would I then be married to the other woman, even though she, Kristin and I had never gotten to the point where we had completed any written or spoken permanent covenant, I had never sought nor received a blessing from the woman's father, and I had thus never paid any dowry or other bride price?
I'm asking that as a very serious question.
I have other questions that stem from the processing done in the wake of the dream/nightmare, including:
- What is the overarching meaning of the dream/nightmare?
- What could God be trying to tell me through this dream/nightmare? (Kristin's opinion is that, a la Pacific Heights, our Father is warning us against making future renovation-oriented real estate investments.)
- Should I abandon my pursuit of plural marriage? If you believe so, please articulate how you reached this conclusion related to the dream/nightmare.
- Who do the menacing workers represent? Why could only one of them speak?
- Would the menacing men have made their threats if I had experienced absolutely no mental doubt about what I was doing?
- Would the menacing men have made their appearance if we had created a written covenant prior to having sex? Would it have made a difference if the covenant weren't signed?
- What is the significance of the holes in the floorboards?
- What does it mean that the woman disappeared and never reappeared?
- Does the fact that I experienced with the woman in my dream the full sensations of lovemaking mean either that I have committed adultery in real life or that I have caused the woman to be an adulteress in dream life? Do any of these potential consequences bleed over in real life to any of the three real-life women who formed the dream-life composite woman?
- What if any message is this dream/nightmare conveying about my leaderships abilities as a husband?
- What reflection on my priorities is represented by the fact that I saved the other woman but not my wife or daughters?
- What relationship is there between this dream/nightmare and the fact that I recently developed a formal intention to seek two additional wives rather than just one?
- What -- other than reflecting our desire to move to a warmer climate -- might it mean that our home was inaccurately located several states away from our current home?
- And, of course, if one of the men had dealt me a death blow with his sledgehammer, would I have died in real life?
lie to each other