Night Terrors

Some nights the dreams come.  There is no rhyme or reason to when they come, but they do.  They are like a violent, physical assault against mind, body and soul.  More often than not the dreams are, in some way, pertaining to water.  Bath water, pool water or rushing river water but the result is always the same.  Every dream comes with a valiant, if futile, attempt to save my baby.  Every dream comes with the sickening realization that I've lost her.  Every dream comes with the clawing hands of desperation and agony. 

Typically, I awake to seemingly inhuman sounds that rise up from my soul.  It takes a few moments, with the fuzziness of sleep, to make the connection that the sounds are coming from me.  It also takes some time for the dream and it's hideous details to come together in my dream. Then real life slams into me with brutal force.  It's real,  not just a nightmare.  It is the cold, inconcievable truth.  Emotion and it's accompanying physiology hit me like a tidal wave as reality seeps in.   My soul feels as though it is being ripped from my chest.  My lungs ache and beg for air.   My stomach desires to purge itself of it's contents.  Unleashed screams build up in the back of my throat.  Every fiber of my being yells at me to do something but I am capable only of thrashing upon my bed.  The emotion, which is so difficult to express in light of day, comes mercilessly in the darkness.  The human soul demands, in one way or another, to have it's voice. 

The dreams leave me feeling exhausted and spent.  My head reminds me that it was a horrible dream, my soul knows that it is my reality.  Every mother's nightmare has, for me, become real life.

I will praise the Lord who counsels me,

even at night my heart instructs me.

Psalm 16:7