Encouraging Your Faith & Offering Comfort Regarding The Death Of A Loved One

One year ago, I shared this post about the miraculous & wonderful events that surrounded my father’s death.  If you haven’t read it, please do.

I still am absolutely blown away by the events of that time.  Talking about the goodness of God doesn’t begin to explain just how loving, good, kind & merciful He truly is, & those events proved it to me.

It’s been quite the emotional roller coaster since my father’s passing last year, & my faith has grown tremendously too.

While I don’t believe the dead actually come to us in dreams, I do believe because God knows how much certain people mean to them & they mean to us, He allows us to have dreams to convey messages from them.  That being said, I’ve had a couple of dreams about my father since his passing, although he rarely actually makes an appearance in them.  At first, I knew the dreams were to tell me that he was sorry for everything & loves me a great deal.  I also knew he didn’t want to appear in my dreams often because of the things that happened in our relationship- he was afraid it’d upset me.  Recently though he showed up in a dream & it was lovely- we were talking & laughing, & he was telling jokes.  It was fun since we shared the same skewed since of humor.  I believe that dream was to let me know that he appreciates all the prayers that not only I said for him, but my friends said as well, & now he’s enjoying Heaven because God answered those prayers.

I wanted to share these events with you to (hopefully!) encourage your faith & comfort you are losing someone you love.  God truly can save everyone who wants to be saved.  Never give up hope or give up praying for them, Dear Reader, even when it looks hopeless.  It may happen at the very last minute like it did with my father, but it can still happen.  Keep praying!!

Also, if you’ve lost a loved one, draw close to God.  Allow Him to help you to get through & to comfort you.  He truly will!  I’ve even asked Him if it’s ok, please tell my deceased loved ones I miss them, are thinking of them or even happy birthday.  I know as Christians, we aren’t supposed to try to contact the dead, so obviously I won’t seek out a medium or grab a Ouija board.  But, I see nothing wrong with asking that sort of thing of God.  Besides, if He didn’t want it to happen, He wouldn’t do it ^ would tell me it’s wrong!  He also has told me little things that they wanted me to know, & of course there have been many dreams.  Sometimes during the hardest times, I’ve dreamed about my grandfather, & the dream helped comfort me.  On February 26, 2016, the night before the one year anniversary that I survived carbon monoxide poisoning, I had a dream of going four-wheeling with my grandfather.  It was so fun & helped me feel much less depressed about that anniversary.  God can bless you in the same way.  He is no respecter of persons, so what He does for one, He can do for another.

I guess my thoughts are a bit scattered on this post, but I do hope they help & encourage you anyway.  xoxo

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C-PTSD, PTSD & Nightmares

When you first learn that you have PTSD or C-PTSD, you will hear about having nightmares, but very little has been discussed about what kind of nightmares.

 

When I first realized I had C-PTSD in 2012, I read everything I could find on the disorder, & kept seeing nightmares on the list of symptoms.  I assumed it would be dreams repeating traumatic events.  Unpleasant, for sure, but I lived through the real thing so I figured I could handle the nightmares.

 

Not even close!

 

I have had nightmares ever since I can remember, but the frequency has increased greatly since 2012.  And, of the many nightmares, very few were actually reliving the trauma.  Instead, many were very strange, such as having my car stolen then totaled, finding a little child I needed to protect or other odd subject matter.  I honestly wondered what was wrong with me.  How could I have such awful & strange dreams yet nothing of the trauma I have been through?  It seemed completely bizarre to me.

 

Recently I realized something.. these dreams may not be specifically about trauma, but they share similar emotions to traumatic experiences I have had.  The nightmares often leave me feeling powerless, abused, unloved (even hated), helpless & more.

 

I’ve heard a few people say their nightmares are much like mine- not about traumatic events, but about events that trigger similar emotions.

 

I believe this means such nightmares must be a normal part of having C-PTSD or PTSD.

 

If you too are having odd, unsettling nightmares, then know you aren’t alone.  Nightmares are part of PTSD & C-PTSD, unfortunately.

 

As disturbing as they are, they may be able to help you.  Dreams & nightmares alike have meanings.  They’re never random, even though they feel that way.

 

Dreams can show you areas you need healing in or areas where you have healed well.  They can show you things you weren’t aware of or you need to be aware of.  They also can simply help you because your brain is  processing some information.  The brain processes information every single moment, even when you’re asleep.

 

If you want to understand your dreams & nightmares, prayer is the best place to start.  Ask God to help you to understand them & learn what you need to know from them.

 

A good dream dictionary is a helpful tool too.  I use a website (there are many to choose from).  They can help you to see what each item in your dream represents, which can make it easier to interpret them.

 

It’s also a good idea to keep track of your dreams.  Write them down & look them over from time to time.  That can help encourage you when you see how far you’ve come.  It also can help to remind you of things you need to deal with.

 

Personally I write down my dreams & nightmares, plus what I find the meaning of everything I can remember in them.  Colors, objects, people, feelings.  Once it’s all written down, I ask God to help me to understand what the dream or nightmare meant.  It’s proven to be quite helpful to me many times.  It could benefit you as well

Pay Attention To Your Dreams- They Are Important!

I had a very interesting experience the other night.   I had a dream about my husband’s parents.  Suddenly the dream changed a bit & it was just his mother & I.  She hugged me & said she was sorry for everything she did to me.

 

When I woke up, I was WIDE awake, so I figured I might as well utilize the time & ask God what the heck that was about.  When she was alive, she seemed to have no guilt for treating me badly, so I thought maybe this was some sort of weird wishful thinking on my part.  No.  Not even close.

 

God said she knows I pay attention to my dreams so she wanted me to dream what I did.  He also said that she felt very bad for being so awful to me.  She was so bad to me because of her own insecurities (typical narcissistic behavior).  She thinks I “made a man” out of my husband.

 

This blew me away.  Partly because my mother in-law never accepted any responsibility for anything she did to me, let alone apologized so I just assumed it’d be the same after her death.  Also partly because this sort of thing happened with my ex husband’s mother as well.  We got along  great until my ex & I moved in with his parents.  Then when I divorced him, naturally she was on his side & I became the scourge of the earth.  But after she passed in 2010, suddenly she started appearing in my dreams on a pretty regular basis.  She once said she understood why I wanted a divorce & another time, said she was proud of me for helping people with my writing.  In my dreams even if she doesn’t speak, she’s always smiling at me & seems proud of me.

 

My point in sharing all of this is to show you just how important dreams can be.  They truly are worth paying attention to!  You can learn a great deal about yourself through your dreams, since they are almost always about the dreamer.  They can reveal areas in which you need healing or need to change your thinking or behavior.  Or, they can be Heaven sent messages like my dreams about my mothers in-law.  In any case, dreams are very important!!

 

There also will be plenty of dreams you don’t remember or only remember snippets of.  That can be frustrating when you’re trying to understand your dreams, I know, but even those have a purpose.  I asked God about them at one point because I have so many like that.  He said the brain constantly processes information- good, bad or indifferent.  Those dreams you don’t remember are simply that, your brain processing things.  They aren’t important.

 

If you want to start learning from your dreams, then start by praying.  Ask God to help you to understand them better & to remember the important ones.  Keep a written record of them too, as seeing them all together with the dates of them can help reveal a lot about your life.   It’s also a good idea to use a dream dictionary.  I use one online, http://www.DreamMoods.com  I write down all the things about my dream I can remember, then look up what those things mean on the website.  I write down what the site says about each thing, then read over the entire thing.  If I don’t understand, I ask God to help me figure it out, which He does.  Sometimes I don’t even make it that far- as soon as I wake up, He tells me what the dream meant, but that doesn’t happen very often.  In any case though, dreams can be utterly fascinating & helpful, so please consider paying more attention to yours!

Dreams- The Surprising Wisdom They Contain

The Bible is full of stories of people who dreamed powerful dreams full of deep & personal meaning.  Abraham, Job, Ezekiel, & Daniel just to name a few.

Although many years have passed since those men dreamed their dreams, dreams are still a very important part of life today.  Acts 2:17 says, “‘In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.” (KJV)  I believe this is happening today, & is partly why so many people are having more dreams & more memorable dreams than they once had.

I’ve always had very vivid dreams, but especially since developing C-PTSD.  Now, if I dream of being at the beach, I wake up with tired legs that feel like I’ve walked through sand.  If I dream of running, I wake up out of breath. It’s very strange!  Plus, my dreams are often very odd.  Common dreams people have include the ability to fly or being naked in a public place.  I have no such dreams- they are always something much more unusual.  So unusual in fact, that I asked God what was going on with these weird dreams of mine.  He had some very interesting things to say..

For one thing, people who have experienced trauma have nightmares.  From what I read, I assumed that meant nightmares about the traumatic incident(s).  However, this is not necessarily the case.  Sometimes that happens, but usually the nightmares are about other  things that the dreamer would be upset about.  For example, cars symbolize your life in dreams.  I also happen to have three classics & adore classic cars, so cars are often a part of my dreams.  Fairly often, I dream that my ’69 Plymouth has been vandalized or totaled somehow. Usually, that dream happens when I feel someone is trying to control or change me.

The brain is constantly trying to process trauma.  Even when you’re asleep, the brain is still trying to process what happened.  Even if you aren’t dreaming about a traumatic episode, or even if you dream isn’t upsetting only odd, it still may be your brain trying to process trauma.

There will be many dreams you don’t remember.  If you don’t remember some dreams, you’re normal!  The brain works every moment of every day, which means it is still trying to understand or process some things (not necessarily even traumatic things) while you’re asleep.  If you don’t remember some dreams, it means you don’t need to remember them.  I think of those dreams much like those programs that run quietly in the background of your computer.  They’re necessary to function, but not necessary to know all the details about.

The brain knows what you need, even if you aren’t aware of it, & can try to tell you that via your dreams.  If you’re working too hard, you may dream about being on a vacation, then wake up with a strong desire to take a trip.  That was your brain’s way of saying it’s time for a break.

Sometimes, God speaks to us through our dreams.  Daniel 2:19 says, “Then the secret was revealed to Daniel in a vision of the night, and Daniel blessed the God of heaven.” (AMP)  God spoke directly to Daniel & others via their dreams sometimes.  I believe God spoke to me via one of my recent dreams.  I had a dream about being in a hospital emergency room where I was treated (rather uncaringly) by a doctor.  While there, I realized I had a big sewing needle stuck in my heel!  There was a lot of blood & no one even noticed.  After looking up the symbols I remembered, I realized the dream showed me that I need to be more spontaneous, & have more fun without relying on others to have fun with.  I believe God gave me this message in that odd dream.

If you haven’t paid much (or any) attention to your dreams, I really would like to encourage you to start doing so!  Dreams can be a very valuable tool in life.

Interpreting dreams doesn’t have to be terribly hard either.  I have no natural gift in that area, so I look up symbols online.  www.DreamMoods.com is my favorite website.  I usually write down the dream, then under that every symbol I can think of from the dream.  I look up each symbol’s meaning on that website.  Once I’m done, I look it over & ask God to help me understand what it all meant.  Works every time..

“To Thine Own Self, Be True” (from Shakespear’s “Hamlet”)

I had the most incredible dream last night, & I wanted to share the valuable lesson learned from it.  🙂

I dreamed that I saw my car parked in front of my parents’ home.  I was a few feet away.  My car is a lovely dark green with a matching vinyl top, but in the dream, she was painted (very poorly I might add!) white on the sides & yellow on the top, hood & trunk.  Somehow I knew my mother had done this.  I was horrified upon seeing this, wondering how was I going to afford the high price of having her repainted green.  I simply said, “God, what am I going to do?”  It suddenly started to rain a bit.  A nice steady rain.  The paint started washing off my car!!  Most of it came off easily but there were a few spots that I had to scrape at with my thumbnail.  Before I knew it, there was my ’69 Plymouth, all beautiful & green again!  In fact, she looked better than ever, now that I think of it…

I woke from this dream a bit shaken, since my car means the world to me.  She once was my Granddad’s car, then my dad’s.  Dad sold her in 1979 to a junkyard, & in 2005, I found her!  Wasn’t looking, but apparently God decided I needed a big blessing, & being a car lover, blessed me with my favorite car of my Granddad’s.  So anyway, dreams where this car is messed with in any way shake me up pretty badly.

Later, I decided to figure out what this dream meant, so I asked God & immediately, He gave me my answer.

Cars represent your life in dreams.  White & yellow are colors representing purity,  innocence, joy, positivity.  Rain represents cleansing.  In the context of this dream, this all translates to this:  growing up with a narcissistic mother, she did her level best to change me into what she wanted me to be.  In fact, still tries to do this even though I am now 43 years old.  My mother likes to present herself as a wholesome, wonderful person.  She wants me to act more like her, like what she likes, dislike what she dislikes, etc.  That is why in the dream she painted my car those particular colors, to make me more like her.  The rain was a result of me allowing God to wash away what others have done to make me into what they think I should be (my mother isn’t the only one who has tried to change me, but she is where the problem started).  Me scraping off the little bits of paint that remained represented me doing my part, cooperating with God, to get the person He made me to be back.

Isn’t that fascinating?

Since many of you who read my blog, website & books are also children of narcissistic mothers, I pray this encourages you as it has me.

Narcissists try to change their children, friends, relatives & basically anyone into what they think that person should be.  I believe it is especially painful for children, because as children, we are so starved for our parents’ love & approval, we’ll do anything they want us to do.  This also sets the stage early in life for you to believe you must please other people, even at the expense of losing yourself- changing your likes, dislikes, beliefs, how you dress, how you act & more.  It’s not right!  No one should have to change so much of themselves just to be in a relationship with another person!  If you do feel you have to change to be in a relationship with someone, maybe  it is time to reconsider being in that relationship.  At the very least, it’s time to consider getting you back & being the person God made you to be!

How do you get “you” back??

1. To start with, stop listening right now to what others say you should do, like, how you should feel or think.  Their opinions really aren’t important!  Of course you want those you love to have good opinions of you, but if they disagree with some things about you, that is perfectly ok!  No one can be pleased 100% of the time.  If they try to make you feel bad for not pleasing them, that is a big red flag saying this person isn’t safe.
2. Ask God to help you.  Ask Him to show you who He made you to be, to have the courage to become that person & to help you shed the person you became only to please others.
3. Step out of your comfort zone.  Try things that pique your interest that you never had the nerve or opportunity to try before.  You may discover a new passion, or at the least, will start to learn what you like & don’t like for yourself rather than what others have told you that you should like or not like.
4. Try different clothing.  I know this sounds silly, but your clothing affects your mood.  Buy clothes that make you feel good when you’re wearing them.  Better to have 2 outfits you like than 10 you hate because someone else wants you to wear them!

At first, these things can feel kind of weird & hard to do, but I can tell you, they get easier with practice.  I’m trying them myself, & have off & on for a few years now.  From my experience, the hardest thing to do is stay focused on doing things for yourself like this.  It’s so easy to slip back into the old, dysfunctional habits!  That is what happened to me- this dream made me realize that.  To avoid conflict with my husband, I’ve even gone as far as hiding the symptoms of my C-PTSD from him no matter how hard it is on me.  This dream made me really see how bad it’s been, & how it has to stop right now.

Be good & true to yourself, Dear Readers!  You are so worth it!  I pray that God will help you if you are struggling in this area.  ❤

Dreams

Good afternoon! I hope you’re enjoying your Sunday!

It’s been an interesting week since my last entry. I have been learning so much! God has been showing me all kinds of things! Mostly, through my dreams.

Dreams are fascinating! Did you know they protect your sanity? Dreaming all night long keeps your mind active & healthy, even when you don’t remember all of the dreams.

I believe the dreams you do remember, you remember for a reason. They are messages from God. This past week, God has been encouraging me that although things may be difficult, He is with me & I am healing. Also, when I married my husband, I lost who I am. I quickly became “Eric’s wife” & lost “Cynthia” in other words. God also showed me that I need to get “Cynthia” back. I’ve known this for years, but never did anything about it until now. And, back in February, I heard about an ex of mine who had murdered his boyfriend & himself. Through a dream earlier in the week, God showed me that I didn’t talk about it at the time because it upset my husband, then stopped even thinking about it. I need to take some time to come to terms with that dreadful situation.

All of this came from dreams I had this past week!

Dreams are often symbolic, & can be difficult to interpret. I’ve never been overly good at interpretation, but God is helping me improve. I have found a great website about dreams- http://www.DreamMoods.com . I check it when I am confused about what my dreams mean- looking up certain things I see in the dream, then asking God if this is what the dream means. Or, if there are various meanings to the symbol, I ask God which one, if any, fit my situation. The clarity God is giving me by doing this is amazing! This past week, my mood has improved drastically, & I feel inspired.

Do you pay attention to your dreams? If not, I strongly suggest paying attention to them, & learning to interpret them! You will be amazed at the insight you gain. Give it a try.

January 30, 2013

Good morning, Dear Readers!  I hope this post finds you well.

I’m sorry for not posting lately- I’m still recovering from the last breakdown I mentioned in my last post.  I’m much better, but still recovering.  Just taking it as easy as possible & being good to myself.

I have been having very interesting dreams lately, & I believe God is showing me things through those dreams.  Since I don’t think I’ve ever discussed dreams before, I thought I’d mention that they really are important!  Please pay attention to yours!  Remember Joseph in the Bible?  (His story is in the book of Genesis, around chapters 37-42, I think) .  Dreams were a very important part of his life. There is also Acts 2:17 that says, “And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams:”

Unfortunately, I’m not gifted with the ability to interpret dreams.  But, I have found a really good website on the topic- http://www.DreamMoods.com  I use it often to help me figure out my dreams.  I read what the site says about my dreams, & ask God for help understanding what the dreams mean.  It really works!  I highly recommend that you do the same.  Dreams can give us great insight, & I believe are a gift from God.

Also, before signing off, I wanted to say thank you to the fans who have recently emailed me to let me know my writing has helped them in some way.  Thank you- your kind words mean the world to me!  That is why I write, too- to help people.  Knowing what I’ve written has helped someone is the most fulfilling feeling in the world to me.  🙂

Have a great day, & may God richly bless you!