I am a dreamer. I may be “an idealist”; a “visionary” or even “a habitually impractical person” (thank you Webster) However, for the purposes of this post, I mean it in the post boring, literal way: I am a person who dreams. A lot.
I know a lot of people wake up in the morning unaware of their dreams- not me. I dream all night long and most of the time I can remember multiple dreams when I wake up. Oh, and typically my dreams are weird. Like, WEIRD. Bethdreams that way too- she once dreamed she’d given birth to a spaghetti noodle that grew into a lasagna noodle. I once dreamed the pool in her back yard extended up like Shamu’s tank above their house and had giant eel in it that Shane was keeping as a pet.
Yeeeeaaah. WEIRD runs in the fam.
Anyway I have basically had two recurring dreams since I was a kid and one recurring character since High School. The first recurring dream? Its the scared-someone-is-chasing-me run of the mill kind of thing. The second is a little more comical… I dream I am walking to Amy Grant’s house and realize on the way their that I have been there multiple times before and that she’s actually, like, my best friend.
Now for the recurring character- Let’s call him Adam, ok? (I am changing his name in case he would ever google himself and find that he’s been showing up in my dreams and get the wrong idea- can anyone say ‘awkward’?)
I really wasn’t aware of Adam until the seventh grade when he was in my Social Studies class. I mean, I knew he existed, but he was kind of that popular jock boy that was not on my radar. Being in a class with him, however, I started to see that there was more to him. I suppose there might’ve been a little crush back in those years, but that would have been the peak of it. I didn’t like him like that. We did begin an acquaintance type friendship and I hoped to be able to share my faith with him. Over the next few years, I did just that. Adam came to youth group and church sometimes and sometimes we’d talk about Jesus and Christianity and the pressure to be popular. Well, his pressure to be popular. I didn’t really have that. He was a star athlete in three sports; I was the last runner on the cross country team. He goofed off in school; I was a straight A student. He was the guy every girl wanted to date; I was the nice girl everyone came to when they had a problem. Popularity wasn’t really on my radar either. That divide widened with High School – he became The Jock and I became the Science Girl. We hung out less, but always sat near each other if we happened to be in the same class.
Junior year Geometry was the last class we had together. I remember it clearly because we did a lot of talking about Jesus. Adam’s parents wanted him to be popular and Christianity didn’t really fit. He would come with me to youth group and talk about the emptiness of partying… he was that guy we’ve all known whose one the ‘bad kids’ but not really? Do you know someone like that? Anyway, I suppose we did go on one “date” that year… we went golfing and we both knew it just wasn’t like that between us so we mostly talked about Jesus.
Adam on and off dated a girl who went to church but also partied and drank and had sex with him. She wasn’t a big fan of mine.
Senior year was really hard on me. Up until that point, I was well liked and had lots of acquaintance friends. Not popular, not cool, but I had a good rapport with even the druggie kids. They may not have invited me to parties, but we could talk in the hallway or in class and enjoy each other’s company.
All of that shifted Senior year. I suddenly was the only virgin I knew in my class. A lot of people who’d never partied, started to party. I felt more and more on the outs. Senior trip got planned and I was strategically not invited and everyone kept it quiet around me for fear that I would want to go… I never would’ve gone even if I’d been asked, but it was hurtful the way everyone sneaked around and thought I didn’t get it. The final nail in the coffin was when a girl who went to my church claimed that I had told the youth pastor and her mom that she was sleeping with her boyfriend. I didn’t, but that didn’t matter. The rumor spread like wildfire and I came to school one morning and the druggie girl who had the locker next to me, with whom I had had pleasant pre-school conversation for the last 3.5yrs, called me a F***ING B**** and slammed her locked and never spoke to me again.
Overnight I went from being the nice Christian girl to be labeled a Self Righteous Tattle Tale.
It was a sad time for me; less sad as graduation approached and I knew I was leaving and MOVING AWAY. Everyone cried in the hallways and hugged each other like their lives were ending; I found myself skipping and humming that last week of school.
I thought about Adam from time to time when the announcements in the morning told of the varsity baseball teams’ win the night before. He was deep into the partying scene now- rumors abounded about his sexual exploits and the wild weekends. We’d pass in the hustle and bustle between classes and he’d avoid me. There were no more random youth group visits or talks about Jesus. I knew he didn’t want me to see his eyes- I could see how lost he was an unhappy despite his rising popularity and coolness.
So, that last month of school I guess I figured everyone already hated me and I might as well go for it. I wrote Adam a long letter about Jesus and the cited the the Israelites return to God and places in the New Testament about God’s desire to extend grace and mercy. It was a pretty to the point letter.
It got the reaction I expected.
At a drunken party, the girl he dated on and off got a hold of it. Lots of people read it and scolded me and laughed at me. I didn’t care anymore. One time, that last week of school, I caught his eye and I knew although he had made a joke of it, he had gotten it.
Every couple of months for last ten years, he would pop up in a dream. He never said or did anything; he was never a central character in them. He would just be standing off to the side. Mom and I have laughed about it and come to the conclusion that he’s the representation of High School to me…. the bad feelings of being lied about, acquaintance level friendships, wanting to see people set free to Jesus…
I had never seen him once since graduation until last Sunday.
I came into church late with wet hair and a fussy Cohen. Mom saved me a seat in the back. We were half way through worship when Cohen tried to get away and I lunged down the aisle and when I looked up… there was Adam… a few rows forward sitting in the middle, next to whom I suppose is his wife. I pointed to him and mom laughed, “here come the dreams!” Apparently his brother has come to know Jesus along with his wife and kids. I think Adam was probably just visiting, but you never know…
If there is anything I love about my Church its the fact that nearly every Sunday someone pops up from High School- and not the “good kids”; the ones you’d expect to find in some church on a Sunday morning, but the ones you’d never expect to find within the confines of a building dedicated to worshipping God… the rough kids, the druggies, the wild ones, the popular ones…
I had to sneak out a little early because Co had had it with nursery and I didn’t get to say hello BUT I did say a little prayer of thanks and of hope that God will send lots of people to water the seeds that have been planted…
Our God never fails to amaze us, does He? Good post, Kate, as always. I pray that Adam comes to love Jesus with all of his heart and soul.
thanks for sharing…sweet encouragement.
That is encouraging.
I’ve been praying for a guy from HS since 1991. I prayed for him every single day for about 12 years and pretty frequently after that.
I DREAM of the day I run into him at church π
What a great story, Kate. God is so faithful!
I will continue to pray for “Adam”… that God would completely restore his heart!
Blessings…
i hear ya on the crazy dreaming. me & my family have CRAZY dreams as well that we love to laugh about together. i think my mom usually wins the award for the most bizarre… then as i was reading about your high school experience i totally saw a lot of my experience in yours. as the “non-partying christian girl,” sometimes people acted like i had the plague or something. as we got older the further my “friends” went. no fun when you’re high school age. thankfully some of those friends & i have reconnected in the last years & it’s nice to actually be able to be friends.
thanks for sharing!
Well, you may not have been the sporty girl, but you hit a home run with this one. You know, stuff like that doesn’t stop in HS – it often continues on in the work place. I too have been labeled “The Goody Two Shoe” and get excluded. Anywhere you have a bunch of people, you have a bunch of egos and people thinking they need to prove themselves. I bet even if he didn’t see you, he thinks about you and your talks. We should all shoot up a prayer for “Adam” and his family. π
That’s cool Kate. My ten year reuion will be coming up in 2009 and I’m not sure what to do. i don’t have a husband so it will be awkward going alone. So unless I’m dating someone or hopefully engaged π by then, I may not go. I’m still close to one girl from high school who was a professing christian but also had some rough times and did not stay pure as far as I know. She’s never admitted it to me, but has implied high school was a really bad time and she did thinks she regrest. Anyway, she has turned around now and is married and a follower of Jesus so if she goes, i may still go with or without having a date. Anyway….I have already come into contact with friends from high school on facebook and well, my facebook page pretty much tells the gospel in a nutshell! π So, I’m hoping some have been touched by it….anyway, thanks for sharing this story. I’m with you, in the same boat as you were back in the high school days. π
this made me smile.
kate you are SUCH a gifted storyteller.
Thank you for sharing this! It’s good to know that not everyone had the BEST high school experience (and that includes me)!
I’m sure we all have “Adam’s.” The people who have impacted us along our journey, good and bad.
Again, thanks you for sharing, really!
I got chills reading this… the way you describe your highschool experience – similar to mine, but also because you didn’t deny Christ but actually talked to people about Him. I was too shy to do that back then.
I still dream every couple of months that I have to go back to highschool because in my dream they find out that I didn’t graduate… hate that dream!
Hi Kate, I hope this doesn’t seem too intrusive, but here is a possible reason for “Adam” in your dreams.
Adam “could” represent feelings of being treated unfairly. He may occur in your dreams during times when you fell you are being treated unfairly. He represents a time where you most felt misunderstood and since those feelings were never resolved, he appears as a motif for that “unfairness.”
Just a thought. Great story!
Kate,
“Adam” contacted my brother a couple of years ago and said he had come to know the Lord and was going into ministry.
On Monday, two days ago, Adam entered my mind and I thought…okay, why in the world is he popping into my head. It happened several times that day so finally I thought that maybe the Lord was telling me to pray for him. I said a quick prayer. He still kept coming into my mind so yesterday I said another little prayer for him. After my prayer yesterday I haven’t thought of him…until I read your post for today!
wow yea I’m right there with ya with the crazy dreams (I drive my family crazy describing them!!) but as for High school – I just was the outsider. It really warms my heart to hear someone was actually pure thru their high school yrs and actually tried to talk with others about God. My older brother (who at the time was molesting me) was trying to impress a girl and took me & my little brother to church with them & that’s where I finally “got” God (“understood” Him & accepted Him into my life), not from friends or family but from a church I’d never been to before…. so kudos to you for being there for friends even if at the time they couldn’t see it.
As “Adam” matured I am sure that he looks back at that time and realizes that you were a true friend & maybe the visit to the church is a way for you to see what has happened in his life (you know, a kind of little “gift” from God) – cas we all wonder about certain people, if the seeds we planted ever did take hold or if they are still searching.
I thank God that you are such a strong Proverbs 31 type of gal… And that you share these type of stories with us so others can see that it’s okay to be pure, to trust in God, and to be honest when it’s super hard to be. Wish there were more like you! And I thank God for your parents for raising such a sweet woman. Have a blessed day!!
I can’t believe for one minute that you weren’t very popular in school!!!
Sadly, I walked Adams path for a long time. Until I changed schools and everyone there was a bigger fish than me. But I still ran with the popular kids and that only landed me in a world of trouble.
Thankfully, I had grown up in the church and KNEW the truth, i just wasn’t living it. I am so glad that my life doesn’t resemble my past in any way! And my local bff sounds just like you. That’s the kind of thing she would do.
I am glad though that i walked the road that i did. it has really caused me to have a heart for young kids and not to be judgmental with them, cause hey, if you can think it, I probably did it or came very close. So i am able to really say that i have been there and here is where it will lead you!
glad that you stumbled on my blog a few weeks ago π you doing okay?? when is your man gettin back to the homefront?
I use to be an “Adam-ette”.
I have a character in my dream that will appear every so often, just observing what’s going on. It’s one of my pastors. Not sure what that’s about and not sure if I want to know.
Good to know I’m not the only one with the crazy vivid dreams every night. The one you had about Beth’s backyard and Shamu is right up the alley of randomness I expect night after night.
It is cool/weird to see people from your past show up in church, but that has happened to me from time to time. You never know where life will take you. How cool that you got to be part of the seed sowing in his life back in high school.
Great post, Kate!
Hey Kate!
I dream all the time. Sometimes I remember them very clearly and other times they are gone after I wake up.
Funny you should mention Amy Grant. This morning I was cleaning out our DVD shelves and lo and behold I found a Michael W. Smith DVD from his concert I went to in 2003 in Columbus, Ohio. It was celebrating his 20th anniversary. Amy Grant was his special guest. The concert was amazing, especially the entire second half of worship and so was Amy Grant. She was gracious and kind and I remember thinking she was someone who made you feel like you could hang out with her and be friends!
About the nursery for Cohen…I got paged to come to the nursery every week we went to church in Manhattan! Jack would cry the moment we started walking to the nursery. I would think to myself so many times, “Why do I even try!”
Take care,
Julie
That is so cool! I love finding out that people from high school who were far from Christ-followers are now Christians and maybe even in ministry. I don’t think I know too many of them, but I’m hoping over time I’ll find out more! Whenever I go to my home church I seem to run into someone from my high school days too.
And this is funny…reading your whole story of you and “Adam” reminds me exactly of the storyline of Haley James and Nathan Scott on One Tree Hill. Haha. Can you tell I’ve been watching too much lately? Your story is so similar to theirs…without Jesus involved of course.
And I recently had a dream where I was holding a caterpillar like a baby…very WEIRD. So I have weird dreams as well…
Awesome post Kate. I had a similar situation in High school and the guys name was actually Adam…funny huh? I’ll be interested to see how things are with him at my 10 year reunion coming up. π
Wow – great post!
I really got into the characters and your high school – I felt like I was reading a short story!
I too dream quite a bit. And unfortunately sleepwalk with it. And injure myself (lots of that on my blog). But my dreams are always intricate and unbelievably creatively weird. It makes me wish I could somehow channel dream-creativity into real life!
Wow, that is really powerful! I am still processing this post big time!
I do remember dreams sometimes, but once in awhile I will have a dream that is really clear. I have documented many of my dreams in the journal that I keep and document prayers and events in. This week I had a dream about some dear friends who have struggled for years to have a baby, and my dream showed me them having a little boy. When I sent her an email about it, she was able to tell me that several people have had dreams like that about them recently, and its a boy each time. Anyhow, on occasion I will dream about someone I haven’t seen in a long time, and many times I have actually seen those people within a couple of days of that dream. It’s amazing! My husband has had some pretty amazing dreams too.
Ah, so I’m not the only one who has weird dreams! I only remember mine every so often, though. π Man, if I had a dream that I was a good friend of Amy Grant, I may not want to wake up! π She’s an awesome singer. One of the singers I grew up on.
I hope that “Adam” is getting his life straightened out. π High school is one of this periods in life that you seem to learn from for the rest of your life. Hopefully, your school-mates are learning from their experience.
That is great! And Amy Grant’s Christmas album is one of my faves. About to buy her new one.
Thanks for checking on me, by the way. I do have a new post up! Nothing exciting, but I had to do something while this debate is going on. 20 days and my tv programming will return to it’s regularly scheduled programming.
Thanks Kate for sharing very encouraging story.
And it’s very nice to know that I am not the only one that has weird and wild dreams too;) And I went to your church for my very first time a while back again and I’m sure by how wonderful the church and the people are there will help Adam to come back home to the Lord:) His love is always contagious:)
My whole (Christian) school experience (from 1st or 2nd grade on–my mom was the principal the whole time) was the reverse of that…I was always the tattle-tale self-righteous one UNTIL my last year. But, by the end of senior year, tired of feeling like I had compromised and tired of seeing absolutely no change in my friends, I was also ready for it to be over… Hearing this story REALLY makes me want to meet you and have coffee. π
I really, really, really hope I see my friends in church someday…to see them there are and happy about it.
Oh, and those dreams you described at first REALLY made me laugh. Both times I read it. π I pray sometimes before I go to sleep that I’ll remember my dreams because I think dreaming (when it’s good dreams…or interesting ones like the time the boy asked me to marry him, I said yes, then watched him walk over to my friend and propose to HER) is so interesting!
Incredible story – I felt like I was reliving it with you. Praying things go right for Adam…
[…] UPDATE: for those of you who read Sunday Morning Surprises, I hope you saw a comment from Ashley where she said her brother had heard from “Adam”- […]
…wow… reading that story brought me back to some of my days in high school. …wow.
~Luke
I am sending this post to my daughter who is a freshman in college. She is doing well and making new friends, but her 2 best friends “dumped” her at the end of the summer- even though she tried repeatedly to patch things up with them (even apologizing when she had done nothing wrong), they have let her know that they no longer want to be friends with her. I think this will encourage her that there is indeed life after high school, and sometimes we can even bless those who were so cruel to us.
That’s awesome. Who knows why he was there? But he was there. And that’s one of those little encouraging nudges from God that can keep you going just a bit longer.
By the way, you are BRAVE. I know very few people who were secure enough in high school to even think about a letter like that. Good for you!