I Miss You - Val ...

Okay last night's dream was a very interesting and again a very vivid one. When I used to live in Dunstable I had an ever-so dear friend to me - sort of like an older sister! Her name was Val and she was the wife of one of the elders in our church - who also became an amazing friend and mentor to me although we disagreed quite vigorously at times about issues particularly the Holy Spirit! Val was a teacher at the Christian school I went to and saw me through the yucky teenage years of my life and yet treated me firmly and kindly. What I think I will never get over was that she was always willing to speak to me like an adult whereas many others in the church treated me (and still do!) like a child!

Regretfully, sadly and yet victoriously Val was taken to glory in 2001 prematurely through a disease I detest and loathe - cancer. I will never forget walking the streets of Birmingham crying out that God would take me instead. She was a kind, wonderful, caring, loving wife and mother. I at the time was a mess. She deserved to live! I deserved - well less I felt! Yet God still took her. Martin, her husband told me that people in the church did pray for her healing - but yet it was one of the most upsetting days of my life sitting in the church at her funeral. I will never ever forget her smile particularly.

So in my dream I was somewhat amazed and thrilled to be dreaming that I was walking with Val through Dunstable. She was alive and well. Yet deep down somehow I knew that she was ill and she spoke to me about needing prayer. I had a book of C H Spurgeon's sermons with me in the dream and I found myself flicking through it furiously trying to find something - anything about miraculous healing and signs and wonders. When I woke up I spent a long time trying to figure out why I dreamt that. I don't think I ever felt it was "her time to go". Cancer robbed her family, her friends, me! And I wonder if that dream was speaking to me and reminding me that there is indeed a search on - a desperate search because people are dying (Michael Jackson being a notable one yesterday) every day.

I'm not necessarily saying I felt the call to go and try and pray for Val's resurrection from the dead. I think her death was a memorable and traumatic one for me at the time and that dream reminded me that healing and signs and wonders are more than just theology to argue over. If someone is healed, if someone is raised from the dead - then family and friends and a watching world are saved from the heartache that I still remember so vividly when I heard Val had gone to glory.

People - even children are dying early. I heard the day before yesterday that a former collegue of mine from Bristol was killed in a car crash and he was only in his late 30's. And it's time we saw that;

STOP!!