Like A Shiny New Penny

I wandered away from Christ for many years, but in my late twenties, I returned to Him with all that I was. Around the time when I joined a biblically-sound church and made a public profession of faith, I experienced a profound dream.

That night, I opened my dream eyes to see that I was in Heaven. The Rapture of the Church had occurred, and I was no longer on earth. I was in a large room; everyone wore something like white robes. No one wore name tags, and I don’t remember any sounds of conversation, but you just knew who everyone else was. We all had renewed minds, a little of the mind of Christ in Heaven.

Though I didn’t see them all, I was relieved to know that my entire family was there. My youngest sister and my maternal grandmother were there; we had a conversation. The dream shifted, everyone was walking towards an enormous auditorium. I’m not sure what was to transpire, but there was joy.

When I awoke, I was stunned. My mother’s mother was not someone I thought about, much less discussed, ever. My maternal grandparents had both died when my mother was pregnant with me. My mother had never really recovered from the death of her parents; she couldn’t talk about them without becoming very upset, so goodness knows I never mentioned them.

What was captivating to me was the color of my grandmother’s hair. Shiny coppery-brown, highlights like a new penny; that was her hair in my dream. All the pictures I’d ever seen of this grandmother in color were when she was an old gray-haired heavy farm wife. Younger photos were entirely in black and white; I couldn’t remember ever seeing any from her youth.

The dream wouldn’t leave my head. I risked upsetting my mother by calling her to tell her about it. She too was stunned. And she acknowledged that yes, when her mother was younger, her hair had been shiny light brown with red highlights.

I pondered this dream for many years. Friends I shared it with offered ideas like ‘your grandmother came to visit you.’ Wise Christians suggested that my dreams of the time were because of my renewed focus on God.

But this dream meant much more to me. By way of this dream, God was telling me I had passed from death to eternal life.

You see, when my mother was six months pregnant with me, her father––my grandfather––passed away from cancer. He was almost 80 years old, he had been ill nearly two years when he passed. It was a sad time, but not unexpected.

Three weeks later, my mother and her mother were in their attorney’s office, discussing my grandfather’s estate. An otherwise beautiful early spring day was shattered when my grandmother made a strange sound, and slumped over onto my mother’s lap, dead.

Yes, you read that right. God allowed my grandmother to die on top of me, still in utero, in my mother.

Who can explain having such a powerful dream of a person you have never met, but has intimately influenced your life?

Only God. 

In the Bible, Old Testament and New, dreams were offered as guidance. Though I don’t trust any of my dreams as much as the Word of God, I knew God was telling me something with this dream. 

Satan seeks to destroy families, to steal the worship of God from all people. Satan stole joy from my mother; Satan set his sights on me before I was even born.

In this one simple yet endlessly complex dream, God said I had been restored. My eternal life was now eternally His. Not because of anything I had done, other than to seek Him in my desperation and despair, and then fully, with my whole heart. He let me find Him, like He always does. 

I think of the nuances of this dream even still.