Signposts

signpost [ˈsaɪnˌpəʊst]

1. a post bearing a sign that shows the way, as at a
roadside

2. something that serves as a clue or indication; sign

 

 

 

 

 

When I was fifteen, I had a dream. A dream where I was
sitting in a van with a group of girls – some I knew, some I didn’t. We were
looking out at a grassy knoll, and just talking about things normal teenage
girls talked about (whatever was normal back in 1996).

 

I guess you should probably be thinking at this point that I’ve
either lost my train of thought here, or else I’m just horrible when it comes
to translating dreams from my head to a page. Truth is, that was all there was to the dream. Just me and
a group of girls talking. No nightmare. No strange twist at the end of the
dream. Nothing about it that I should ever have remembered.

 

Ten months later, at the tender age of sixteen, I took part
in Relay for Life for the Phoenix
metro area with some of the girls (and a couple of guys) from StuGo (student
government/student council/whatever you called it in high school). It was at a park
on the other side of the valley, where the parks in general were better cared
for and far greener than anything I was used to seeing. We went, we walked, and
we decided to leave early. While our faculty sponsor took care of the last odds
and ends of getting us out of there, we sat in the van we’d come over in – most
of us girls – and just sat there… talking. And the view out the windshield was
a grassy knoll.

 

Sitting there in the van, I thought it was just a
coincidence. Girls sitting in a van, looking out at a grassy knoll. Then I
listened to the conversation.

 

You guessed it – the conversation was the same as in the
dream.

 

At the time, I passed it off as déjà vu (this was sixteen
year old Cat in the flesh, and besides being silently angry and defiant, she
was also open to pretty much anything), and moved on.  Even though it was so clear. Teenagers can be so blind sometimes, true?

 

This wasn’t the first, and there have been many since (with
weeks, months, sometimes years between the dream and the reality), but this one
was the most vivid.

 

Why?

 

I don’t know – other than that it left me open to new
revelation from God at a time when I wasn’t sure what to think about anything.

 

What I do know is that as I traveled through my teens and
early twenties, I grew to embrace this futurecast I was being sent. The rockier
things got, the more they seemed to come, and the more comfort I took in these visions.
When I thought I was screwing things up beyond measure, they were the signposts
that let me know I was still on track.

 

In hindsight, I’m pretty sure I made them something close to
an idol in my life… I didn’t understand them, or why I got them, but I wasn’t
about to jinx myself by laughing them off. Also, in hindsight, I’m starting to
realize the part God used them to play in wooing me back to Him. Kind of like
Christ appearing in visions to people groups that have never heard of Him long
before missionaries ever show up on the scene. They don’t happen so much
for me anymore… just often enough, though.

 

Today, I was helping Oliver
hang Christmas lights on the outside of someone’s house as a fundraiser. While
we were working on the east side of the house, I saw one of those signposts. Just a second’s flash of one, but just enough.

 

I
guess God knew there were going to be directional doubts I may or may not be
acknowledging a while ago.

 

Thanks, God.