An Empty Rocking Chair

I had a terrible dream last night.  A dream that while I am not a dream interpreter it seemed to symbolize my life… There was this constant image in my dream of an empty rocking chair.  And at one point, just before I woke up (and I hadn’t slept long) the rocking chair was mysteriously snatched away; this pair of hands that seemed to come from nowhere just reached in and grabbed it away, abruptly. 

Recently in a book I am read by Greg Laurie, Winners and Losers, Saints and Sinners, How to Win in the Spiritual Race.  I read a story of Joseph (not Mary’s Joseph) but Joseph, Jacob’s son who was able to interpret dreams and became the right hand man (if you will) to Pharaoh because he was able to interpret Pharaoh’s dream… a part of me woke up wishing I had a Joseph in my life who could make sense of this one for me… but then if I recall what happened while Joseph was in prison and did some dream analysis for the baker and the cup bearer… when we consider what happened to the baker… mmmmm maybe I don’t want to know what this means.

Maybe it’s just a subconscious bubbling to the surface of the ‘stuff’ that is going on in my life right now.  I have often had this notion in my head of my own little version of ‘happily ever after’.  It is a long story but I’ve always said that one day... I want to be with the man I love, sitting together on our front porch in our rocking chairs, holding hands, still so in love after all these years, secretly smiling at each other, as we look out over the yard at our grandchildren playing…

I am beginning to wonder if I will EVER have that.  And it makes me really sad lately… really sad.  I know as a Christian I should just be able to say… I don’t need anyone in my life; my life should be content because I have Jesus.  Well pardon me I am a Christian but darn it if I want to go thru my life on this temporary home called earth, alone!  I guess if that is a sin for thinking or saying that, well then take away my Christian card, or smack me over the head with my Bible, renounce my Baptism, but it’s how I feel and I can’t help it.

I want to be married (again) someday, I want to be a mom, and call me selfish again but not just a step mom.  I want to know what it’s like to have a life growing inside you.  Even with all it entails, the changes, the pain of childbirth, the trials and tribulations of raising a baby, the late nights, the poopy diapers, the being thrown up on, being pee’d on… I want to experience all those things both the bad AND the good.  I had that chance at 18 but was young, dumb, stupid, not a follower of Jesus, and so not ready then… and I made an ignorant decision that I so regret to this very day, some 26 yrs later.

God made and meant for man and woman to be together… yet why is it so difficult?  Is this my penance for a decision made at 18?  Is this my lot in life for a marriage I didn’t handle properly?

Lord Jesus will my rocking chair forever be empty?