Should I ?
                                                                         Written by: Edith Shenah Ferguson
                                                                                                     Dedicated to Caleb Sands
                                                                                                     January 05, 2015     

 


I told my daughter not to come for me. It was December 13, two Saturdays before Christmas 2014. My daughter’s car was still down. She had borrowed mine to run errands. Her shift at our family electronics store would start at 2:00pm, three hours before mine.  No, don’t bother to come all the way back home for me, I told her. I would walk the three quarters of a mile to the bus stop. That’ll count as my exercise for the day.

Three minutes into my trek to the bus stop, a car slowed down beside me. I peered inside. It was a man. By my age, a lady knows not to take rides from strangers, especially if it is a male. The car looked, well, as if appearances weren’t a high priority for the driver. The driver had a heavy set torso. He looked to be in his late forties or early fifties. I didn’t have to debate more than a few seconds whether to get in or not. His kindly countenance put me at ease.  I reached for the handle of the door to the back seat. “I’m sitting in the back. Your wife might be a jealous woman.” The driver assured me that he had no wife at all. “That’s Ok, I’ll stay in the back.”

As we pulled off, I could see the driver examining my face in the rearview mirror.

“Miss, you don’t remember me?

I gave the driver the standard response I give strangers to spare them the awkward feeling of being told that I had never seen their face in my life:

 “Your face does look kind of familiar.”

“You live in the house on the corner, right?”

“Yeah, the two storey, white house,” I gestured back at my house on the corner.

“I live in the pink house on the other end of the corner.”

I knew the pink house down the street from me very well, the split level house with the beautifully designed wall at the front. Who lived there, I had absolutely no idea. But, this stranger was actually my neighbor.

We drove in silence for the next few minutes.

“Do you mind if I ask you a question?” I sensed hesitance in his voice.

“ Sure, go ahead. Feel free to ask me whatever you like?”

“Do you remember several years ago you came to my house, and told me that you had a message for me, from God?”

“ Yes, I do I recall. Just vaguely”

I did recall.

Several years ago, I had a dream about the pink split level house with the beautiful wall, down the street. I saw the house as clear as day. The details of the dream were now blurry, but what I did recall from the dream was a strong sense that there was confusion, conflict and unhappiness in that home. I awoke from the dream with an impression of urgency to warn whoever lived in that house. In the 21st century, knocking on the door of a complete stranger to give him a warning from a dream would automatically get you labeled as a weirdo. But I took that chance. I wasn’t about to repeat the mistake I had made 25 years before. Back then I had had a similar dream about the boy friend of my now deceased sister. I flat out refused to give him the warning from my dream. The following week he was arrested for murder, a charge for which he paid with a hefty prison sentence. Would the fate of this young man’s life had been any different if I had given him the warning from my dream?  That’s a question I could never answer with certainty. But now, there was one thing I was certain of. Anyone I have a dream with a distinct warning about will be told. If I’m considered to be a weirdo. So be it?  

“Miss, I clearly remember the day you came and knocked on my door.”

“Sir, I couldn’t tell you how long ago that was. I know that it was several years ago well.

That was quite a long ago. This man had a very good memory. He continued:

 “ I can’t tell you exactly how many years ago it was either . It could have been seven, eight, nine years ago. But, for sure, I remember it was in October. You know how I know it was in October?  My wife and I had just broken up. And that evening, my girl friend and I had just come home from the International Food Fair. You know the event they have every year, out there at the Botanical Gardens.”

“Man, when you knocked on my door, I was upset and angry. I asked myself who was this  person disturbing me when I was just about to….” his voice trailed off in embarrassment.

“Umh, you see, when you knocked on the door my girl friend and I were bald naked. We were just about to get down.”

“What did I say to you when you opened the door?” I asked him.

“You told me about the dream and how the Lord told you to tell me that I must change my ways and give my heart to Him. When I finished talking to you, I went straight back upstairs. I told my girl friend to put on her clothes, and I took her home right away.”

Obviously, my neighbor had taken the warning I gave him very seriously.

He explained that at the time he had just separated from his wife, and had taken up with a new girl friend. He was very ill at ease with the relationship with his new lover and he was betwixt and between whether he should continue with the relationship. He saw my knock at his door and the delivery of the message at the time they occurred as a direct sign from God that he should end the relationship. His girl friend, he later found out, was very deceitful. She had been married three times and had not divorced from any of her spouses.

I shared with my neighbor, having heard his account , what I felt was the underlying meaning of the dream. The dream clearly showed that he was on God’s mind; it meant that God loved him.  God saw the confusion that he was going through at the time, and God cared about what was happening in his life. The Lord wanted to bring peace into his heart and to his home. That is why God sent him a message, to give him confirmation on the step he should take.  

Interpreting a dream as a message from God to deliver to someone always carries a high level of self doubt. What if I’m dead wrong about what I felt the dream meant?  What if it was just a dream? Just random images thrown together in the subconscious level of the brain? And after all, with all my flaws and failings, who am I that God should give me a message to deliver to someone? These are all the heavy doubts that plague the mind when faced with a mission of delivering the message of a dream’s warning.  Hearing my neighbor tell his side of the story was, for me, a clear confirmation as well.  I felt humbled to receive confirmation two weeks before the close of 2014 that the Lord had chosen me, several years ago, as the agent to deliver a message to my neighbor at a time when he was experiencing such tumult in his personal life.  

I wanted to find out from my neighbor if he had heeded the main message of the dream.

“Did you give your heart to the Lord?”

“I had committed my life to the Lord a long time ago before that, but at the time, I was living contrary to God’s will.”

We were approaching the bus stop. My neighbor pulled into a clearing to let me off.

“I’m still looking for a wife.”

“Are you serious?”

“Maybe I can line you up,” I laughed.

Just then I remembered an article I read some time ago. It said that research shows that universally, men prefer women in their twenties.

“How old do you like your ladies?   I think you prefer young ladies in their 20’s or 30’s, right?”

“No, actually, I don’t like my ladies that young. Late forties, early fifties. That’s fine with me.”

My neighbor gave me  a slip of paper with his e-mail address. I promised him that he would hear from me very soon.

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