I had one of those "brain dump" dreams last night. It isn't all that often when I awake from a dream with almost perfect recall of what I dreamt. This morning I had perfect recall and I had a perfect knowledge of why I had such a dream.
Before I get to the dream, I will tell you about an exciting experience I had while in the temple yesterday. I was in the process of sealing families together when there was a strange, loud noise - which does not happen in the temple. The temple is void of noise. Well, after a minute to adjust to the unexpected disturbance we realized that it was the fire alarm - especially when the woman's voice came over the intercom telling us to stay where we were. It was rather exciting and I'm not sure it ever happened before. At least not to anyone that was there. We opened the door and waited for further instruction. It was also a good time to go over the evacuation procedures and practice remaining calm.
Because we weren't performing any work at this point, we were left to chat and speculate. Here's what I bring to the party in a situation like that. "Well, we're dressed and ready to go." One of the other guys that I'm there frequently with said, "I would want my wife here with me too though." I then said "forget that, every man for himself, I'm going!" My husband teased me when I got home and told him about it and he said, "see, I knew you wouldn't wait for me." Ah, good times.
Everything was fine, the poor kitchen lady had set off the smoke detector. It was quite the ordeal for about an hour. She felt horrible. We had a good laugh about it in the cafeteria after everything settled down. She said, "well, I finally have something exciting to write to my missionary."
Not only was it exciting, but I learned some things about procedures and it also left time for us to chat about stuff with the sealer. It was actually one of my most favorite days spent in the temple.
So, what did that have to do with my dream you say? I had a dream that my house or a house was burning down. It wasn't a house that I was familiar with and it had a bunch of people either living in it or that it belonged to or that I thought should care about it.
This fire started and it was really small at first. I thought, no big deal, I will just put it out. So, I did and then walked away. When I looked back an even bigger fire had started. I was confused as to how that was possible and a bit frightened. I set about putting out the next fire, which was much bigger than the last. Again, thought I had it put out and all of a sudden there was a fire blazing. I realized at that point that I had been putting the flames out, but there were embers still burning that I was unaware of when I thought it was extinguished. I saw a little opening in a wall and saw the embers hiding there. I realized that I needed to get to the hidden places to get this fire out. I needed to open up the wall. By this point things were getting out of control. I was beginning to get upset that there were so many other people around and I was the only one trying to figure this out. Finding all the embers by myself and fighting this fire by myself was too hard. I remember thinking that I wish I knew what a fireman knew because he would know how to put this out and wouldn't be tricked by thinking the fire was out when it wasn't.
I started feeling hopeless because the task was too overwhelming and the fire was quicker than me. A couple of people (my family among them) did join in and I put them to work, but there were others still not helping. I was still focusing on the damage instead of how to defeat the fire. I was beginning to wonder if the house was worth saving. There was so much damage.
After my moment of fear and defeat passed, I decided to just get back to work and give it everything I've got. I would hunt down all those embers and extinguish them so that the fire could be stopped.
That's were the dream ends. I have no idea what the outcome was. All I know is that I had a fire alarm go off in the temple yesterday. I have been thinking and talking about my level of commitment. I talked about noticing some standing around letting others do the work while at girls camp. I've talked about the world being in a death spiral of morality right now. I've talked about Elder Holland talking about our houses being desolate. Put all that stuff together and voila, it makes this dream.
It is pretty amazing what the brain can do while we are sleeping. Through a dream your resolve to do what's right, no matter the cost or who is with you, can be strengthened.
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