"notes, prayers and conferences"

Last night was like dream central.

But, I only remember the last one.

I was at my best friend from childhood's house in a room with her mom and siblings. We were all talking, then Vanessa (my BF) pulled me into her room to look through some old notes. Her little sister Anne came in with some drawings she had done for me. (Anne is now totally grown up, but in my dream she was very little like I remember her.) I wanted to look at our notes, but Anne kept putting crayon pictures under my nose. There was a brass bed and white vanity in the room, all very girly.

Then I walked outside and on to a crowded Italian street. (We lived in Italy when I was a teenager. Vanessa lived there with me. We were both Air Force brats.) Vanessa was no longer part of the dream but other people from high school were popping up all over. I was headed up a set of stairs (ala Venice) and there were a few old friends heading down. I turned to follow them.

My ex-boyfriend Shane was walking with the group, along with his friends Kevin and Jay. Shane started to pray. I listened very intently (they didn't know I could hear). I was overjoyed at the sincerity of his prayer. Then Kevin prayed, his was a little less, but satisfied me none-the-less.  Then Jay prayed and made a big joke of it; saying, "God, did you see the bunch of $#&*$% nerds up there..." then faded into a laugh. Shane prayed again, and I continued following them into a sanctuary. Shane's sister was there, along with many many other familiar faces, and some non familiar faces.

I tried to find a seat, but no one would let me sit near them. I turned, and my husband was with me, so I took his hand and headed for the front. Towards the end I slid down the aisle on my butt and said, "weee". He was embarrassed.

We sat down and realized that the event was a John Bevere marriage conference.

The big screen came on and played a promo for what we were about to see. The advertisement started with a very boring lecture snapshot and a snapshot of an audience member yawning. Then it cut to John Bevere speaking in his overly zealous way, bouncing around stage. The voice-over said something to the effect of "you won't be bored here". 

Then to my right I saw one of John's traveling companions talking to the lady seated by her. The two women were slightly up in the tiered seating. She said, "well usually you won't be bored. I don't know what went wrong at our last conference; there wasn't much response."

 ...I woke up questioning the validity of the conference.

Perhaps the John Bevere part was suppose to remind me to take some DVDs to my pastor's wife today. I forgot anyway.

I'm hoping that Shane praying sincerely was a window into reality. I've been waiting for decades for him to take God seriously. Not to say that he doesn't in a small way, but not in a "change your life" kind of way.