I dream in cake

I had a dream last week that I had a four foot tall penguin cake. It was shaped and frosted to look like a penguin. I woke up before I got to eat any of it. Cake and donuts are my favorite desserts. I would rather have cake than ice cream or cookies or pie. I like chocolate, vanilla, white, spice, pumpkin, yellow, red velvet, pineapple upside down, german chocolate…you get the idea.

from 2011 issue of Vogue magazine
I like dreams like this. I have always been a night time dreamer and I remember them.

I’ve had some nightmares. Memorable nightmares. When Whitney was little I dreamed that she was carrying two little baskets. The little green cardboard ones that you used to buy strawberries in that were open squares. They had cellophane over the tops to hold the berries in. She was carrying one basket in each hand, but instead of strawberries, they were full of snakes and the snakes were coming out of the baskets and curling up around her hands and arms. I also dreamed (several times) that I was in the Indiana Jones Raiders of the Lost Ark pit of snakes with him.

I also have a reoccurring nightmare that I go to work naked. And no one notices.

The one that really stresses me out, though, is a mix of current life and high school. I went to a Christian high school where you worked in workbooks at your own speed. You had a weekly card to put your daily assignments on and the teacher would check them off every day.

Then you had a big card that you were given at the beginning of the year and for every workbook you completed and then passed the test with 80% comprehension (79% or lower you failed and repeated the workbook) you got a star on this chart.

In my dream (nightmare)
I have this pile of work books. I’m a semester behind. I have no stars on my chart. I have 9 goal cards with nothing marked off. I’m looking through the math book telling the teacher “I know how to do this, I can get caught up, but this weekend Whitney has volleyball and I’m behind on the laundry and I can’t miss work and I do have to fix supper…”

I’d prefer to be naked at work then return to high school. Well, I’d really prefer to eat my way through a four foot tall penguin cake.

One benefit of Christian high school was Scripture memory. We had monthly passages of Scripture we had to learn. Full chapters. I may not remember geometry (in a discussion with Whitney about geometry last week I realized it’s not that I don’t remember it, I don’t think I ever learned it. Brent Talbert, classmate of mine, gets full credit for me passing with an 80% comprehension. Government too), but I can still quote in King James most of the passages I learned. This has been a huge comfort in rough times. I will pick up my NCV or Steve’s NLT and read these passages in today’s language. But if the Bibles are not available, I quote them over and over to myself. All through the Scriptures God speaks love and encouragement and peace into our difficult times. This one has been on my heart for a couple days.
"Can anything ever separate us from Christ's love? Does it mean He no longer loves us if we have calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger or threatened with death? No! Despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ who loved us." Romans 8:35-37 (NLT)

There are so many things we are dealing with, tsunamis and tornadoes and the death and destruction from those natural disasters. Cancer and suicide. Dreams that die. Careers that are going nowhere. Family problems. Despite all these things OVERWHELMING victory is ours. I have seen some overwhelming victory in my life, but I can always use some more.