Comfort In A Nightmare

"For whatever we lose(like a you or a me) it's always ourselves we find in the sea." maggy and milly and molly and may,  e.e. cummings

I have this recurring nightmare that involves the sea (which probably explains why I am deathly afraid of swimming in the sea). It usually starts pretty benign. I'd be walking along the shore, looking at it from afar, or in a car driving along cliffs that border the sea. And then I see these huge waves starting to form. I'm talking Moses-ian waves, waves that could topple civilizations. They'd come from afar but slowly, they take on the strength of a million waves. I always wake up just before I actually drown. The dreams usually make me wake up in a panic, but in recent years, I've learned to take them in stride. I'd wait for my frantic heart to go back to normal and then go back to sleep.

Last night, I had another one of those dreams, but I distinctly remember not feeling any panic. Maybe because, in my dream, I was aware that I was dreaming. Also, the waves weren't coming for me. They were parting, revealing a path. Moses-ian talaga. And then I woke up.

I used to listen to music to drift off to sleep. Since coming here though, I'd listen to the waves instead. The last things I'd hear are the waves and my daughter silently breathing. I look to the sea now and see it as a source of sustenance (we have fish everyday that comes from just a few meters where we live), beauty, calm, and some feeling akin to joy (dare I say actual joy?). In times when I don't have words to pray with anymore, God answers through the constant coming and going of the waves.

Perhaps I've made peace with the sea? I'll probably have a nightmare-like sea dream again, but last night's dream was so vivid. And comforting.

Yesterday, I was talking to a good friend who also happens to be the priest who married us (there are many ironies and non-ironies in this world) and he said, "He has you where you are...Your happiness and fulfillment is His deepest desire and ALL things work and meander their way unto good from the lines we crook and break." This is where God wants me to be, and though it looks like I had to take some painful steps to get here, he did fulfill my heart's greatest desire: to have a child.

I go back to another e.e. cummings favorite, knowing that I am safely housed in God's heart, just as those whom I love the most are in mine.

Happy Sunday, everybody. :)

i carry your heart with me

by e.e. cummings

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
                                              i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)