Sleep well, my friends

The saying is true: Bad dreams come from too much worrying, and too many words come from foolish people. (Ecclesiastes 5:3)

Are you a dreamer? I don't have many dreams I can recount when I awaken. Most of the time I simply have a slight memory for a short period of time and then as I fully awaken, those memories fade away as quickly as the day dawns. Yet, I have dreams - mine are just 'daytime dreams'. I think on things at night when I awaken, mulling them over and over in my mind until I find a solution to the thing I am contemplating. If I need to make something out of this or that, I think on the many 'solutions' to the 'making'. I don't create the thing while I am asleep, but rather when I am fully awake, firmly committed to the design I imagine will work, and committed to beginning to put the idea into motion. 

Bad dreams - do we have these on occasion? Some people suffer from traumatic circumstances that leave them with haunting 'nightmares' of the events. Imagine never being able to go to sleep without the 'fear' of reliving the worst event of your lifetime. Most of us would resist the tiredness of our bodies and minds in hopes we'd never drift off into that state that would allow those images and memories to haunt us. We'd fight sleep because we would know the 'fight' of our sleep. I am not referring to these type of 'terror' dreams today, though. I am referencing the 'bad dreams' that come through what Solomon aptly referred to as 'too much worrying'. The type of 'dreams' that surface because we mull over things best left 'un-mulled'. 

Do you know that the term 'mull' actually means more than to turn something over and over in our minds? It also carries the meaning of making a mess or failure out of something - probably because the more we ruminate on something that causes us anxious worry, the worse we imagine the outcome will be. We actually bring on the 'mess' by all the 'mulling'. Bad dreams come to those who are continual 'mullers'. I used to kid with my mom on occasion, telling her she'd worry about not having anything to worry about. Sometimes we 'mull' over the things that we have little control over - thinking our worrying would somehow change the circumstances. The truth is - if we don't 'own' the issue, we the ones to 'fix' the issue. 

When we begin to 'give over' ownership of the issues in our lives, the one who takes control of those things begins to settle our minds and hearts. Jesus doesn't look lightly upon us 'owning' what we cannot fix. He makes a way for the 'fix' even when we don't know we don't own the problem! Once he shows us we aren't the right 'owners' of the issue, and we let it go, he takes it into his hands. There is much to be learned in letting go, but perhaps the best lesson we can learn is how to get the best night's sleep of our lives! Just sayin!