Sunday, February 25, 2007

Sometimes one of the greatest mysteries about the mind is the subject of dreams.

I remember years ago getting my first computer. It was a Tandy Color Computer 3 (TRS-80). You really couldn't call it a computer based on today's standards of what a computer is and does.... but this machine gave me a baseline and got my interest going even more than it already had.

One thing about this machine was it had a few easter eggs. One of these was holding down a key combination while turning it on or resetting it and you would be shown an image of the 3 major developers of the platform. There was also a program that turned the contents of the RAM into a display of garbled text and characters.

This is not meant to be technical but only an analogy. I remember running this program and watching what came on to the screen. I questioned why text contents of a program ran hours ago were displayed and, yet, programs that ran only seconds ago seemed to not have their place. I guess this is the same question I have of the human mind.

God embeds in each one of us a number of things that make us who we are. Unique to everyone else. It is the contents of our memory that makes us the most unique, however, there are variations in our embedded programming that truly make us unique from the time of birth. All of these lead to things that provide some type of force.... whether that force be changing the lives of others or just reminding us of who we are. At times our minds run this program that dumps the memory and all of a sudden we are questioning why.... why was one aspect of our lives seemingly important and yet another one that we thought should be in reality was not.

Dreams are sometimes that memory dump. I believe that God does use dreams and I also believe that many people read too much into dreams. No matter what, dreams are something that our mind uses to give our hearts feedback and in some occasions, just the opposite. I believe that the latter is the most likely time that God is directly involved.

Just last night that very thing was true of me. For so long I have been so incredibly proud of the fact that I have remained a virgin. I still remain proud of that fact but recently I had found myself questioning why I am bothering. In the recent year I have lost a lot of really special relationships and in at least two of those cases I believe that my desire to wait for marriage was to blame. I questioned why it was worth it to abstain from something I wanted so bad when all it was doing was preventing something else that I also wanted so badly -- a relationship. I found myself starting to believe that some people would maybe desire me more if I wasn't standing in the way of something they desired so badly -- apparently something that was so important that the matter of a friendship was misplaced.

Last night I had a dream.... I stood at a counter talking to 3 girls. The girl on the end was one of the most attractive and cutest girls that I had seen. She looked up and smiled at me so intently that it moved my heart in a tremendous way. I found myself explaining lots of things about my life.... the I mentioned my desire to wait for marriage and immediately the other 2 girls said something to the effect of me really capturing the heart of this third girl. I looked over at her and she had the biggest smile that was possible and it also appeared that she had tears in her eyes.

This morning when I woke up I remembered that dream vividly and I was reminded of why I have the desire to abstain: because my future wife deserves it. I have been struggling with the thoughts that I will never find her but I have so strongly been reminded that she is out there and that when God introduces us (if he hasnt already), it is going to be nothing short of miraculous.

It's extremely hard to understand why we are who we are. We know that our experiences and our emotions make us that person but we never really understand how that process works. One thing is for sure -- God has designed us in His image and has made us perfect in His sight. Why our mind holds one thing and not another is a mystery that only God understands. We may begin to understand the organics of our mind and be able to see reactions to stimuli but in the same wat that those 3 developers knew the workings of my first computer in a way that I would never be able to understand no matter how much I tried, it is God -- and only God -- that fully understands the mysteries of our minds.

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