If you don’t try to remember, journal, and understand your dreams, you’ll never know what insights you’re missing.
What you miss out on is a nightly chance to understand the world and yourself better.
Most people don’t take any steps to make use of the time that they’re asleep to more fully experience and understand their lives.
Amazing dreams can happen to everyone
I’m amazed at the stories I hear about the power of dreaming.
One man told me how he had been married twice. Hardworking, he owned his own drywall-installation business. His second wife was a real gem, he said. She helps him by telling him when he’s working too hard and by managing his business finances.
“She’s a lot like my first wife,” he explained.
“My first wife died of COVID in 2021,” he continued. “She went fast. Dead in a matter of days.”
One minute she had trouble breathing. The next, she was admitted to the hospital, and getting worse.
“I visited her as much as I could, but I had to work. I had a big contract. We needed the money.”
They both believed everything was going to be okay.
There was reason to believe it, too. It was 2021. She was getting antibiotics and had the advantages of modern medicine. Most people didn’t die of COVID-19, though the media was full of dire stories.
She also had the advantage of her age too. She was in her mid-30s.
He’d see her after work, though he said that he didn’t spend as much time with her as she was dying as he would have liked to.
He had to keep working. The business had to keep going. He was the breadwinner.
The message
One night, after he left her bedside and went home, she felt herself getting sicker and sicker. She took her phone and recorded a message for him on it.
“I’m worried that I’m not going to live. I keep getting sicker and nothing that the doctors do seems to work. I’m finding it harder to keep breathing.
“What are you going to do? Who’s going to take care of you? You’ll work yourself into an early grave. And it’ll all be for nothing, too.”
She was intubated
When he returned to the hospital, he discovered that, that morning doctors had to put a breathing tube down her throat. A machine was breathing for her.
She never got off the ventilator. She died while on it.
Without her in his life, he plunged into depression. She died without saying goodbye. He couldn’t see the message she had recorded for him on her phone. He didn’t know the pattern she used to open it.
“I found someone for you.”
Eighteen months passed. One night he had a dream of his first wife.
In the dream they were there in the hospital, together, talking in that room, the last place they were together.
“I was worried about you,” she said. “But I’ve found someone for you.”
“Look on my phone. You can open it up by charging it and using this pattern.”
She showed him the pattern she used to lock it.
“This is who I’ve found for you.”
Then in the dream, she showed him a picture of the woman who became his second wife.
He met his second wife a few days later.
When he awoke
He had jolted awake. The first thing he did was get out his first wife’s old phone. With the pattern she showed him in the dream, he could open it. He watched the video and agreed with her. He had needed her to take care of him. If he was going to be honest with himself, he had to admit he hadn’t been doing too well since her death. He had started drinking too much and had gained more than 50 pounds.
When he met his second wife, he didn’t tell her that his first wife selected her for him. He kept that information to himself. They dated, however, and gradually saw why she had.
They got married in 2024. He says his second wife was everything his first wife promised in the dream. She takes care of him, does the bookkeeping and payroll for his business, and is a wonderful friend and lover.
“I don’t know where I’d be today without her.”
Also on the blog:
James Cobb RN, MSN is the founder of the Dream Recovery System, a top sleep and dream blog. Do you have a story about how a dream changed your life? If so, drop us a line.
We use some affiliate links once in a while. If you click on a link and make a purchase, we may receive a commission. This arrangement has no impact on our opinions.