The Dreams
Today is chapter three in sharing pieces of my story. In the first two chapters I narrated the story of committing my life to Jesus and how decade later, an act of God and an earthquake (not a literal one) got me to moving closer to a life in ministry, even though at that time I did not know that.
Upon graduation from college in 1980, I had two short stints at two different companies and then for the next twenty years I worked at some sort of ag-related business, mostly involving chickens. My career was advancing nicely and by the mid-1990s I was managing not only the accounting department but also various aspects of the companies as well. In late 1997, I was asked by one of the country’s largest egg producers to join their team as CFO. This company was located near Columbus, Ohio. II had previously worked for two companies who built all this egg farm’s poultry houses. One of those two companies had helped start the egg farm back in the 1980s, so, I know this company well.
This egg farm has run afoul with numerous governmental and environmental agencies and was not well liked in the area or among the egg industry. The president of the company wanted me to be his CFO and help “clean things up.”
My wife and daughters and I lived in southcentral Pennsylvania. I had moved four times growing up and in those moves I never really felt settled. About the time I was beginning to feel settled we packed up and moved again. One of those four moves had landed us in Columbus, Ohio. Eventually my parents ended up in southcentral Pennsylvania.
The egg farm job sounded very enticing and would be a tremendous opportunity for us. However, it was four hundred miles away and would require us to move. My childhood memories of moving from city to city were not the most pleasant and I promised myself that I would never move my family. I was not too interested in leaving an environment in which my family was comfortable, stable, and content, into one that would be full of uncertainty. If truth be known, I did not want re-open my painful memories, and it was convenient to use my family’s “best interests” as an excuse.
I really struggled with the decision in front of us. My wife and I prayed fervently. Honestly, I prayed in selfish ways while she prayed for God’s guidance. Those selfish self-centered thoughts changed over a period of two nights. The first night, God interrupted a good night’s sleep and spoke to me in a dream, in which he said, “Dave, you are not going to Columbus because of the job but the job is a way to get you to Columbus.” We were not completely sure what that meant, but it got my wife’s attention. My thoughts, very different – not so God-focused.
The second night’s dream got “worse.” In it, I saw a wooden park bench on a brick pathway overlooking a river. I saw the park bench clearly, down to the blue color of the frame and the wooden lattice making up the seats and back. What the heck does that mean?
In continuing to pray and talk about what this would mean for our family, my wife felt this was God telling us something. To a lesser degree, I sensed that as well. However, just as in the first two previous chapters, my self-centered self-serving soul wasn’t too interested in giving up that much control to God.
I did eventually accept the job and in May 1998 I moved to Columbus, Ohio. My wife and daughters stayed back in Pennsylvania so our daughters could finish the school year, and then they would come sometime after that. There was also the little thing of selling our house.
Not long after moving to Columbus, God’s words in that first dream suddenly made sense. The image from my second dream, it would take about another ten years for that to make sense to us. More on both of those in upcoming chapters.
I want you to see two things from today. First, God’s pursuit of each one of us is ongoing and endless. He made us. He knows us. He loves us. He pursues. He works in miraculous ways to soften our hearts. He knocks and knocks and knocks, waiting for us to open the door. I love these words from Psalm 139:5 – “You go before me and follow me. You place your hand of blessing on my head.”
Second, as you can easily garner from this and previous chapters, my wife and her very strong faith have been integral in every step of my faith journey.
In the next chapter I will share another piece of my story. In that one, God uses two worship songs to begin to solidify his call to me for ministry.
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