Living Without Dreams

Chapter 37 - Getting Ready for What Comes Next

Greg and Susan gazed at one another over dinner at a small seafood restaurant in Santa Cruz near the pier. It had been a long and eventful day, filled with revelations for them both, on a day towards the end of the trip which they decided was, after all, their honeymoon.

"Has it been, do you think?" Susan asked her husband as she sipped her glass of wine towards the end of dinner.

"I think it has. You told Zackary before we left that a honeymoon was not only about sex, but also about having the opportunity to spend time with one another, in order to learn more about each other," Greg said. "I believe we have done that."

"Yes, most definitely we have," Susan agreed. "I guess what we've learned just aren't the sorts of things I expected to learn when we left home, that's all."

"Are you disappointed?" Greg wondered.

"No ... I'm surprised, but I'm not disappointed," Susan said. "Are you?"

Greg considered her question seriously for a moment or two.

"No," he said finally. "I've discovered the Lord has been much more active in our lives these past few weeks than I previously believed. I don't know what he has in store for us, now that I do know, but I believe it is bound to be at least as extraordinary as our past has been. So from that point of view, I can not say I am disappointed."

Susan cocked her head. "But those are things you learned about the Lord. What about the things you've learned about me? Do any of them disappoint you?"

"Not in the least," Greg assured her. "Except for perhaps how difficult it has proven to be to get you to dream," he teased.

Susan smiled. "Ah that. And what specifically is it you'd like me to dream about, my dearest husband? Our house? Because there are houses in our dreams, you know."

"There are houses in our dreams as settings where various events have occurred in the past. However what I'm interested in now is the kind of place where you would like to live in the future," Greg said calmly. "Think for a moment; then tell me what sort of place would provide you not only with shelter and a place to live, but would also nurture your soul. That is the sort of home I would like to have, however I am having difficulty in characterizing what sort of place that might be."

Susan arched her brow as she twirled the steam of her wine glass back and forth between her fingers, idling rolling to and fro as she thought about Greg's question. "I see. I suppose a place to nurture the soul would be somewhat different than a simple house ... but even the qualities of that sort of place could be derived in part from our dreams. When all the various places we've ever lived together in any of our lives are taken into consideration together, that does give a quite a large number of places to think about when considering something like that."

"So it does. Can you tell me from any of those examples which sorts of places nurture your soul best?" Greg inquired.

"Places that nurture my soul ..." Susan repeated thoughtfully. "Well I suppose a view of the ocean goes a long way towards doing that for me ... that's something we've found was true nearly everywhere we've lived that had one ... no matter how rich or poor we were at the time."

"Very true. So a view of the ocean ... what else? A garden perhaps?"

Slowly, Susan nodded. "On the island we had the jungle and the beach ... in our first life we had the forest ... in Baja's Village and the Catholic Mission, again the jungle was available as a natural sort of garden to walk in ... I suppose I do love the out-of-doors. There are wonderful living things in the natural world the Lord has made, and I do feel His presence more strongly at times when I'm in places like that amongst them."