Relieved to Wake Up

In the last week, I've had two distinct dreams about my children. Let me begin by saying I do NOT have the gift of prophetic dreams, if that were the case the world would have been overrun by technologically-advanced aliens long ago, or I would have come in "fourth" on American Idol. ("Fourth" seems to be the common denominator on that sort of dream....hmmmm.....)

That being said, these dreams did kind of disturb me.

The first one was regarding Mikayla. For whatever reason, I let her go to the mall with some unknown "friend" and they did a makeover on her - chopping off her golden locks and covering them with jet black, piercing her, and giving her a look that epitomized rebellious "teen". When I saw her I was irate and crushed, and thought (if not said aloud in the dream), this is the moment when "I lost her" - she became someone different. If only I'd been more careful.

I told the dream to Mikayla and she scowled at me about the absurdity of ever changing her appearance, but did kind of get distracted with the idea of "going to the mall".... =)

The second dream was about Brayden. It was much more obscure, but for whatever reason, he had had a series of conversations through social media that led to a horrible conclusion of him getting caught up in the wrong crowd and, following the same theme, becoming "lost to us". In this dream I found myself thinking, "I blew it", I was too self-centered on my own activities to keep careful track of his and if only that hadn't been the case, this never would have happened.

In the light of day, these are not pressing concerns in my mind. I know the triggers for these two dreams, and while they are "little" obstacles for us to sort through (i.e. - interest from the opposite sex for both kids...(with no feelings reciprocated, fyi) and conversations with friends about social media) they are not issues I grapple with worry over. It IS a hard balance to determine if you are giving too much space and too little grace or vice versa at this age - but, we're still a pretty united front as a family as evidenced by this conversation with Brayden about the dream last night.

Me: Description of both dreams to the kids as we were sharing a special "cozy moment" last night.

Brayden: After gasping at the description of what he was like in my dream, Brayden said, "Oh Mom, that's like a parent's worst nightmare!"

Somehow, even in his realization and thoughtfulness over what that would be like for us, it proved that, at least for now, these nightmares are just that - and not even approaching reality.