"I Like You For Being My Daddy"

I had another dream last night.

This one was more vivid and detailed than any I've had in a long time. I woke up in tears of joy and came running out of the bedroom to tell Erica. She couldn't believe it either but knew how much it had meant to me as I sat in the chair telling her while the tears were falling from my eyes.

Here goes...

I dreamed we were at my house and in our living room was Erica, myself, dad, mom, George (my brother), Cayla (my sister) and Emily. This is kind of weird if you know my family because my parents are divorced, but dreams have no rules I'm told so back to the dream...

I was sitting in the rocking chair and dad, mom and Erica were on the couch. Emily was being held by Erica and was perfectly content.

We were just sitting around laughing and joking (typical us) when I asked, "What are we going to eat?" (Again, typical us)

We couldn't think of something right away and got lost in conversation and jokes once again when out of the blue I blurted out, "How about chicken nuggets?" Dad chimed in and said, "yeah, KFC does sound good, let's do chicken from KFC."

With that he took a box of, I think it was Spree candy, and poured a handful of purple and green candies (yeah, my dream was THAT detailed!) in his hand. If you know my dad you know that he likes to show off in a playful way sometimes. When he eats ice or candy he can crunch it so hard and loud sometimes that it can be annoying if you allow it to be, but we mostly just laugh when he does it. Well when he put the candy in his mouth in my dream he started crunching it very loudly trying to playfully show off.

Mom turned around and looked at him and said, "you're going to break another tooth and have to go back to the dentist if you don't quit that!'

Now here's where the dream takes an awesome turn...

Emily, like I said, was sitting content in Erica's lap. In my dream she was still the same age and size as she is now. But in my dream she had the ability to talk "baby talk". You know, gibberish or whatever it is that babies do at that age when trying to learn to talk.

Emily in my dream, after mom said that to dad, turned around and looked at my dad and unloaded a long line of "gibberish" at him for being so careless with his teeth! It was a long line too. It was something that really sounded as though she was scolding him and letting him have it!

We were all amazed that she'd done this! So I jumped up out of the rocking chair and came over in front of her and sat on the floor and reached out my hands to her hoping she would know that I wanted to hold her.

Pause

(This would be the moment for a Kleenex if you are like me and get emotional. Sorry, but at least you've been warned!) Now back to the dream...

I reached out my hands hoping Emily would take the hint and let me hold her and love on her for her amazing new accomplishment. When all of a sudden...

She looked at me and she clearly said to me...

"I LIKE YOU FOR BEING MY DADDY"!!!

What?!?!

My heart was overjoyed! I couldn't believe she said that! I looked around to see if the others had heard what she just said and they indicated that they too had heard it! I instantly started crying.

I woke up from my dream and real tears were streaming down my face. I was crying in my dream AND I was really crying in reality as well. I just laid there in bed for a minute or two thinking about it over and over again wanting so badly for it to have been real. Oh how I would have given anything for that moment to have been reality, but I THANK GOD that he allowed me to have this dream where my daughter looked at me and said those words that now mean so much to me, "I LIKE YOU FOR BEING MY DADDY."

I stumbled out of bed and walked out into the living room where Erica was holding Emily and I told her all about the dream. She couldn't believe it either. And I noticed she was holding back tears of joy as well. She also said she couldn't believe how detailed and vivid this dream was.

I still can't believe it. I still can't believe that for a small minute I got to hear my daughter tell me that she "LIKED" me.

I don't know what it is about this gift I have with dreams. I don't know what it is that makes them so vivid and detail oriented that it really seems like reality. Sometimes when I dream I think of it as a curse when it's a bad dream. It's dreams like this one though that I know it is a gift. And right now I'm thanking God for one of the best gifts I've been given in a long time. I'm thanking God that he allows my daughter to talk to me in my dreams!

Be Blessed!
Joe