You Don't Want to Dream About Squirrels

I dream. A lot. But do dreams really mean anything?

Okay, like the other night, I had this dream that I was at the top of Seattle’s Sky Nee­dle and my wife was being attacked by a giant lizard. I’ve never been to Seattle.

I’m very fas­ci­nated by dreams. They’re very bib­li­cal. Neb­uchad­nez­zar had dreams that Daniel inter­preted. Jacob had a dream about angels climb­ing a lad­der. Solomon spoke to God in a dream. Pharaoh had a dream that Joseph inter­preted. Peter had a dream/​vision about unclean ani­mals. And so on. Those were dreams given to those men by God.

It’s not out of the realm of pos­si­bil­ity to say that God gives dreams today, but they all need to be care­fully mea­sured by Scrip­ture. Those aren’t the types of dreams I’m blog­ging about today.

I’m talk­ing about the dreams we have when our teeth fall out (one of the things peo­ple dream about most), we fall off of tall build­ings, or watch our houses burn down. What’s that all about?

Are we sup­posed to just look at those dreams as some ran­dom for­tune cookie that we get at a Chi­nese restau­rant or do we assign them mean­ing? (more after the jump)…

Let me give an exam­ple. About a year and a half after my mom died in a car acci­dent, my life was pretty out of con­trol. I had been caught in adul­tery, my spir­i­tual sit­u­a­tion was going nuts and things were going non-​stop. I typ­i­cally like to be mas­ter of my domain and was in a lot of anxiety.

[cap­tion id=“attachment_1512” align=“alignright” width=“248”] Yeah, I was dri­ving a Fer­rari in my dream.[/caption]

For that period of time, I had a sim­i­lar type of dream. I would always be in a car or van. Some­times I’d be alone, with my kids, with my wife, or with a friend. I’d be dri­ving for a period of time and even­tu­ally, I’d lose con­trol of the vehi­cle. Some­times, I’d take my hands off the wheel, some­times it was a mechan­i­cal fail­ure, or some­times the car would run off the road. It would always end in an accident.

My the­ory is this — our sub­con­scious mind, or our con­science, gets a chance to talk to us while we’re sleep­ing. It tells us about what we’re think­ing dur­ing the day. It ties up all the loose ends and makes a word story about it for us. Some­times it’s a ter­ri­fy­ing word story. Some­times it’s a lit­tle para­ble. Some­times it’s just a mean­ing­less dream. Any way it goes, it’s a dream.

After I had time to think about those dreams, (and I’m no cer­ti­fied coun­selor), I kinda fig­ured they were about loss of con­trol. I fig­ured I felt like I had lost some con­trol in life and needed to find a way to get it back. Or maybe not.

Then there are peo­ple who have an answer for every­thing in the realm of dreams. I don’t buy much of it, but it’s funny to read if you get a chance.

The peo­ple over at Dream Moods (appar­ently the top dream inter­pre­ta­tion site) have a place where you can type in what your dream is about and it’ll have a pithy lit­tle answer. It’s kinda like read­ing a horo­scope most of the time. Know why? Because you’re prob­a­bly going to say, “That’s it! That’s what I’m going through!” Same way if your horo­scope said, “You’re a won­der­ful, vibrant per­son,” you’d say, “That’s me! I am amaz­ing!” So, a lot of it comes across tongue in cheek.

For gig­gles, I typed into their search bar, “squir­rels.” Most of their answers are very pos­i­tive. Not this one. To be hon­est, I’ve never had a dream about squir­rels. And appar­ently, you don’t want to either:

To see a squir­rel in your dream indi­cates that you are involved in a love­less, point­less rela­tion­ship or an unprof­itable busi­ness project. You are pur­su­ing empty and fruit­less endeav­ors. Alter­na­tively, see­ing a squir­rel in your dream sug­gests that you are hoard­ing some­thing. You are hold­ing on to too much and need to learn to let go. On the other hand, a squir­rel means that you need to reserve your time and energy.

To dream that you are try­ing to run over squir­rels with a lawn mower sug­gest that you are try­ing to change your beliefs and alter your ideas in order to con­form to oth­ers. You are look­ing for some form of acceptance.

Who has a dream about run­ning over squir­rels with a lawn mower????

Con­versely, here’s a great one about the world’s great­est food, bacon:

To see bacon in your dream sym­bol­izes essen­tials, sta­ples, and life’s sup­ply. It may also be a play on the com­mon phase “bring­ing home the bacon” to refer to earn­ing a living.

Ah, bacon. Even sweet in our dreams.

Finally, they also answer people’s ques­tions. Here’s one you have to read the answer to your self. It’s a ques­tion that relates to com­mon “chase dreams”: I have had a reoc­cur­ring chase dream for over 15 years. I am being chased by Godzilla through a K-​Mart store and every­where I try to hide the blue light goes on. On one occa­sion it was chas­ing me near my home on a lake.

Oh my.

Night­mares can be neg­a­tive if you have too many and the New York Times has a help­ful arti­cle about it. Dreams can be help­ful, pleas­ant, or non­sen­si­cal. We can make too much of them or accept them as they are.

In any case, always make sure you have the right, Christ-​centered approach to all of your thoughts, awake and asleep. And above all, sleep well.

But not about squirrels.