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I have these dreams, recurring dreams for years now, that involve us living in some place we have lived for a very long time - often what seems to be either a two story house or a big suite in a hotel - and suddenly remembering some long forgotten HUGE CRAZY SPACE behind a closed door.

It's not at all like discovering the space or finding it for the first time, it's very much "Oh yeah, how in the hell have we just forgotten/not used AN ENTIRE GIANT COURTYARD FULL OF GARDENS AND SWIMMING POOLS, we should be out here every day with the kids, talk about wasteful!" or "Whoa...how have we continued living here as though THAT MASSIVE TERRIFYING HAUNTED WING WE CAN'T BEAR TO SET FOOT IN IS NOT JUST ON THE OTHER SIDE OF AN UNLOCKED DOOR!! We need to move, stat, before the horror within gets out and finds us here in the hallway, not just let it slide for another YEAR."

The many-roomed scary wing of the two story house dream (it's easily bigger and far more lavish and interesting than the entire rest of the house we're using as living space) way pre-dates the other one; I've been having it for several years and wtf'ing over it to myself on many a morning. Velvet tapestries and chandeliers and staircases, bedrooms with chests at the foots of beds. But air thick with BAD BAD BAD.

The sprawling, rolling courtyard full of plants, gardens, fountains and pools, which is 3 times the square footage of the hotel suite we're living in like it doesn't WRAP AROUND this entire courtyard which is actually the center of the suite - I just had that for the second time. It's sort of like a massive rectangle with a string of narrow rooms around the outside, but we've been living in the rooms without even seeing or thinking about the courtyard for time out of mind out of...laziness? habit?

Now that there is a second dream repeating and I see a theme, I'm trying to think of what in the world this could mean. Thinking of things like how PTSD almost universally causes a discomfort with long hallways full of doors and why that would be. Also denial, and "elephants in the room", and untapped potential. Feel free to weigh in.

THEN AGAIN, I also had a dream with a NARRATOR last night, that concluded at the end of plotline, at which point I woke up? So the answer could definitely be that I'm just nuts.

Yesterday was a really difficult, conflicting sort of faith day. I drove up to church, as is typical of me lately, torn between whether or not I'm even still sure I completely believe in literal biblical church Christianity vs how I know, concretely, that I have seen and experienced divine intervention and Real Presence and all that. I was there listening to my sinful music on my way to RCIA feeling all angsty, considering horrible things re: my kids and how I want to raise them.

FOR INSTANCE: say I really believe all this Catholic hoohaw is true, totally and completely the truth - does that mean I start teaching it to them in great detail right now? I'm not sure it should mean that, BECAUSE culpability - knowing something is sinful and understanding why but doing the sin anyway - makes sinning way, way worse. I don't want my kids to have a whole lot of culpability from a really young age. I don't want them growing up dealing with cycles of guilt or fear of hell or any of that. I mean, I'm not saying "I'm not sure I want my kids dealing with stuff that isn't even real" I'm saying "Assuming Hell IS real and evil IS a true threat, I'd still rather they weren't losing their shit trying not to masturbate as teenagers or whatever - they can get to a point of understanding that wraps them up in neurosis when they're grown and choose it for themselves." I've even considered how maybe it isn't fair to have told them about God/prayed with them from a young age because it puts too much spiritual responsibility on them whereas maybe they'd get more rope if things were different in our house. I'll just take it on my own soul and leave them to have it easier.

I realize this sort of train of thought is contrary to all kinds of things. This is me completely unable to not believe God, Jesus, the Bible and church Tradition are real, true things, even when I am not at all sure I can live by any of their precepts or do as I should. ACTUALLY, the older I get, I feel a sort of tug of war - in one direction, there is what I see as Real Truth getting stricter and more defined, pulling me THAT way. In the other direction, there is what I feel like I can deal with as a person, as far as rules and guidelines and accountability go, pulling me way far in the other direction. It's an ever broadening V without any sort of answer. Someone with my history and memories and emotions can't turn off the "being Christian" switch - they can only turn their back on it.

Then I got to Mass and felt personally challenged, like I had to pay attention, like the sermon(homily) and the gospels were relevant and beautiful. RCIA was mostly a discussion of our various individual experiences of the Vatican Splendors exhibit last week and our calendar in the months to come. And I shared my own experiences, down to what seem like obvious "Defenses" for the art and money invested as well as my (for me) weird affection for the last Pope. It's like an echo, or as though I'm in stereo: I hear all these things coming out of my mouth and know them to be honest words from honest feelings, but I also get an irony that I'm NOT sharing with the group - that I'm good with words and with sounding convicted but not always so sure, inside.

THEN, I spent a significant part of Isaac's birthday party (post on that to come...) either listening to my agnostic, new age, vegan friend Michelle wax on about the beauty and necessity of selfishness, thinking how what she was saying made perfect secular sense but would be a scandal to some people I know... followed by listening to myself ramble to Laura about the fullness and poetry of Catholicism and the scriptural basis for confession, and communion, and so on, thinking how it's easy to talk the talk and maybe I can even convince myself in the bargain.

When I read over what I've written here I think:
-I'm really doing a poor job of representing The Faith, and it's because I'm not living my own faith, mostly. Mostly, I am just going through the motions of RCIA attendance and praying with the kids before dinner. When I take the time to pray a rosary alone or light a candle I FEEL better and do better in my life, and if I raise my kids within the church, I am giving them tools like that as well, and maybe their adult lives won't be so difficult.

-my first confession is really going to be a Thing. Either I'll realize that with accountability and spiritual counsel I can overcome some of my struggles and christian life in general will be easier, or I'll realize I can't keep going back to confession saying the same things without true repentance and no real desire to change, and my inability to prioritize holiness will drive me away. ...OR, I'll sugarcoat/the priest will sugarcoat and it will change exactly nothing.

I am just coming around to a point lots of people have always been at. But for me, it's new. I'm finding I don't like church people nearly as much as non-church people or church music nearly as much as non-church music or chastity nearly as much as harlotry, etc. When I became Christian ALL of my best friends were either ministers or in some kind of youth ministry, and all of my very favorite songs were campfire hymns or christian rock of some kind, and I had some sort of ideal that I could be happiest and most fulfilled by following God's plans and that party people were always miserable because they were partying.

THOSE DAYS ARE GONE. Now, increasingly, I find that I can speak honestly about my faith troubles with my atheist and agnostic friends but don't know how to tell my Christian friends even a portion of my real thoughts.

Blah blah blah.

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This is why having crazy Elvis lady as your RCIA teacher and main person for your faith formation is not so good.

What you gotta remember about teaching the Faith to the children is that you're not teaching them the way you teach them math; you're acting as a conduit for a body of knowledge that exists apart from you. You are opening up a door to the whole world, to the reality that goes beyond what we can see and hear in front of us, to earthly history and to how that history has been illuminated and transformed by God's action. It's much more like feeding them than like teaching them. You can't make them eat, and you can't digest it for them, and you can't make them play or learn or sleep with the energy generated by digestion. You cook and put it in front of them. It's delicious and you've set the table nicely so they eat it. The rest of it is not up to you.

houses in dreams represent the Self, or one's spirituality, which i think makes this dream make total sense.

This is exactly how I felt almost to a T before I became agnostic.

I have that dream all the time! And so does my friend. Weird!

Wow, I have that same dream ALL THE TIME, no joke. Both the positive ("wow, we have all this unused space that we've been wasting") and the negative ("Oh gosh, why are we still living here with this haunted section of the house here") versions.

Have you ever read the Love Dare book or watched the Fireproof movie? I don't believe in Christian hoohaw, but I can see how both the movie and book would appeal to and help a believer. Not that I think you NEED either of these - just thought I would mention it because you are one of the few people I "know" and like even though you have Christian beliefs. Cause you're cool like that. :-)

To comment on an earlier entry, how many packs of sauce do they give you when you order a 50 piece chioken nugget? Blows my mind.

I've had a recurring dream off and on for years that a place I'm familiar with has a hidden staircase that I've just discovered that goes into a hidden attic space that's filled with all kinds of neat things. Sometimes it is big open spaces, and sometimes it's little, interconnected dusty rooms. Often it is my parents' old house where I grew up, but sometimes it's a house I've never been in, and once or twice it has been my grandma's house. It usually doesn't have a scary component though. But I suppose it's just the brain's weird way of telling you you have too much stuff stored in your "attic" ;)

Forgive me some analysis here.

Those dreams make a lot of sense to me based on the spiritual and emotional issues you have been talking about for the past few months. You are coming to terms with the altered state you have been in for the past few years due to PTSD and the multiple traumas that caused it. I think that you were so "other" focused for so long that you are now swinging the other way and being more "self" focused, as a way of achieving balance. Even though this is a natural and healthy emotional reaction, and will swing back to the middle soon, you are such a generally good and loving person that you have guilt over feeling selfish. Does that make sense? I think the dreams are representative of the two extremes, extreme selflessness and extreme selfishness, and are your mind's way of coping with those feelings. I think it will work itself out with some time, and with a reasonable amount of indulgence of the selfish phase.

I also think the religion and spiritual quest issues that you are dealing with are all tied up in this trauma and healing on some levels. It's like a combination of your intellectual search for spiritual relevance, coupled with a deep sense of the existence of the divine, along with a sense that they way you used to worship isn't enough on some level. I wonder what your spiritual life was like before the multiple traumas--I didn't know you then.

Do you know that spiritual questioning can be a big part of PTSD? Having PTSD greatly influenced my decision to leave the religion I was raised in (Jehovah's Witness) and become atheist by causing me to have major doubts all of the time. I felt very conflicted, to the point of experiencing the most extreme anxiety I've ever experienced. In my situation, it was actually an additional trauma to leave that religion. But, the reason I'm commenting, is that one of the first doubts I had was when I was pregnant before the birth trauma even occurred. And this doubt was a nagging constant presence in my life until I actually left the religion. I didn't want my child to be raised in the religion. I felt it was fine for me, I could deal with it. There was good and bad and I could deal with the bad, but I did not want that for my child. I could not even imagine my son as a teenager without getting very anxious because I did not want him to live like that, but I also did not want him to die because I wasn't requiring him to live like that. I wanted to raise him in the religion so that he would have everlasting life, but I also wanted him to have things that would enrich his life that the religion forbid.

Anyway, I know my situation is much more extreme and it doesn't totally apply to you. But I've been reading all your questionings and thinking that is pretty typical of PTSD. Then reading this post about how you don't really want to raise your children Catholic struck a nerve with me. I'm not suggesting that you become atheist or anything, but perhaps just stay away from organized religion for a time, or stick with one that you would want to raise your children as.

I knew I was in trouble when I started having exclusively ASCII dreams. I mean, scrolling screen & all.

"THEN AGAIN, I also had a dream with a NARRATOR last night, that concluded at the end of plotline, at which point I woke up? So the answer could definitely be that I'm just nuts."

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I'm not a Catholic, but I am a Christian, so take this as you will. There is another side to teaching your kids Christianity besides "burdening" them with responsibility. You are also teaching them how to access God's grace to help them through their struggles (spiritual and worldly) in this life. They (we) aren't meant to live up to Christ's standards through sheer personal willpower. They (we) are meant to try our best, but to depend on and ask for Christ's grace to make up the difference between what is possible and what is necessary.

I think it is sad to deprive your kids of the blessings of living a full Godly life just because you fear it will be too hard for them. OTOH, I don't really know the Catholic teachings about the link between accountability and blessings. In my church, I've always been taught that greater accountability = greater opportunity for blessings/divine intervention/presence of the Holy Spirit.

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