My Daughter, The Stuff of Nightmares

It is 3:30 in the morning and I am typing this blog because I am afraid to go to sleep. I was tossing and turning so I moved out to the couch around 11:45. That's when things got bad.

I had two horrible dreams in a row. In the first, several of my students found where I lived and showed up in the middle of the night. They didn't cause any damage, but they came and wanted to talk. They wouldn't leave and when I finally got two of them out, we couldn't find the third. This was upsetting but what was more disconcerting was that in the dream, I had been laying on the couch so it was difficult to tell that it was a dream. I woke up and had to walk through my house to make sure no one was there.

I went back to bed and fell asleep again only to be greeted by something far worse. The dream started out normal enough. There was a Greek king who kept an oversized bull in a dungeon below his palace. The bull had mythical powers embued upon him by the gods and the king had decided he had had enough and so he released the bull to be hunted and killed by the strongest and bravest of his warriors. Clearly, I was a spectator.

Somehow, this transitioned into a family dinner for Sara's family at some sort of lodge where I was notified that in order to make sure that Harper and Sara got to be together in Heaven for all eternity, Harper was going to be crucified before she was old enough to go down the wrong path.

Everyone was ok with this. I spent the dream trying to convince Sara through pleading, reason, emotional arguments, etc. that she shouldn't do this, but she had a glazed look in her eye and would not be convinced. She said that if I really wanted a child so badly, there was another on the way and I could just be patient. I stood behind cars so they couldn't go, I screamed at people, I wrestled Harper away from people, but nothing was working. More and more people kept showing up at the lodge so they could be present to watch Harper ascend. At some point, there was a discussion about the fact that I was just upset because I wouldn't be going to Heaven to see her and I was more than welcome to accept Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior. At another point, I got so angry with Sara that I tackled her to the ground so I could talk right into her face. It didn't seem odd at the time, but she had transformed into a different woman, one who looked very much like one of her aunts.

I woke up breathing heavily, decided I needed to be done with sleeping for the night. I got out of bed and stood sobbing in the kitchen. At what, I'm not really sure. It could have been the dream, it could have been the fact that I am becoming more and more concerned about my own mental state, it could be due to the fact that this may have been the worst week of my teaching career; it just won't seem to end and even at home, in the safety of my own bed, I can't escape the stress that it has been causing me.



I need to take a moment here to state that I know Sara would NEVER under any circumstances, attempt to sacrifice our daughter. She is the greatest mother that our little girl could ever have. She is an amazing wife and I don't deserve the love and devotion that she shows me. We do come from different backgrounds, but she has never asked me to convert and has made it clear that she never will. I have no fears of this happening. This week has taken its toll on me and my mental state. I have been distant, irritable (more than normal), and stand-offish. I am aware of these things and I have been making an effort to change them, taking a deep breath before I continue conversations, etc.

I have two weeks off from school and it seems that more than ever before, I will need them. I need to do some serious thinking about my teaching style as well as my attitude. I also need to exorcise from my head the image of Harper being bundled up and driven to a field containing a 3 foot cross surrounded by candles.


There are other pictures, but I'm a bit distracted at the moment.