Sweet Dreams

Sweet Dreams

I will pour out my Spirit upon all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your young men will see visions, and your old men will dream dreams.

Acts 2:17

“Copy . . . sheets . . . copy.”

“What?” I asked Leslie, who was obviously dreaming as we lay in bed.

“The sheets must be copied, please,” she replied sternly with eyes still closed as she tossed and turned.

“You’re dreaming,” I said softly.

Her eyes flashed open, and she looked around the room for a moment. “What a weird dream.”

“You were probably dreaming about getting a copy of our manuscript made,” I suggested.

“No,” Leslie said, still rubbing the sleep from her eyes. “I dreamed you had painted a beautiful scene on our bedroom sheets, and I wanted copies made so we wouldn’t lose it.”

Strange, indeed. Especially since I don’t paint—on sheets or anything else.

Dreams, those mystical fantasies of slumber, are often bizarre, and we can’t always make much sense of them. Though we may not all remember our dreams in the morning, everybody dreams. A normal night’s sleep always includes not one but several periods of dreaming. This has been established by research studies beyond any doubt; the question has been, what is the purpose of these dreams? Today’s experts are finding answers. Like the hard drive on your computer getting cleaned up, during dream sleep the brain consolidates memory, clears our unresolved issues, and helps us forget things we don’t need to remember.

Here’s the key to a good night’s dream: you have to get enough dream sleep to achieve the benefits. If you sleep only six hours, you will be missing out on several major periods of dreaming and will not be getting enough dream sleep. So you should do what you can to get the sleep you need, not just for your body but for your mind, too.

But equally important to dreaming while you sleep is the dreaming you do—together—when you are awake. Why? Because a couple who holds on to dreams they both share is a couple who hopes, and hope is at the heart of a joyful marriage. Hope engenders an optimistic spirit you share as you look toward the horizon together, uplifted by imaginings that you both support and strive to achieve.

When did the two of you last talk about your dreams together—the ones you have as individuals as well as the dreams you have for your relationship and your family? If it has been a while, why not explore them right now? You can start with short-term dreams—maybe to experience something or go somewhere within a year’s time. Or you might talk about more long-term dreams, like what you’d like to do or achieve in your marriage over the next decade. Just make sure to dream your sweet dreams together.

Dreams are . . . illustrations from the book your soul is writing about you.

—Marsha Norman