God Speaks To Us in Our Dreams. Pay Attention.

The idea for I Got Dumped podcast came to me a month after I got dumped by a guy I really liked.

It was a big deal for me to have even dated this guy.

I hadn’t been involved with anyone since my breakup with my ex in early 2019. But by summer 2020, I finally decided to give another guy a chance and it ended pretty badly. I'm fine. I’m over it. But I have learned a few things from this past doozy.

One big take away is how God speaks to me through my dreams.

There is a quote that goes, Some people come into our lives as blessings and some people come into our lives as lessons. And for me, that is never something I want to hear. I don’t want to hear about how something didn’t work out because it was just merely a lesson for me. I also think that may be something we say to ourselves to lessen our pain.

But, let’s get real...

For me personally, I believe I repeat the same relationships in my life with different people. I do it with love relationships. I do it with friendships. I even do it with jobs. I will over commit myself pretty easily. I will make myself too readily available. I will ignore that I am being ignored. I will ignore that I am being taken advantage of or that I am being lied to. I will ignore red flags.

I see and believe what I want to see and believe and if it seems to me things are not what I thought they were, I will tell myself I am just being insecure. I will convince myself that things are fine and one day they will be better, but really if better isn’t happening now, it’s time to leave. But I am always reluctant to put in my two weeks notice.

I have only been in two serious relationships in my life.

Both were very unhealthy and toxic and after each one, I told myself, “now, I’ve learned. I won’t let this happen again”, but I kind of did do it again. I let myself fall for the idea of someone instead of who they really were.

But I am not going to sit here and shame myself for another failed relationship. I am not going to blame some guy for breaking my heart.

With this recent relationship, I believe God was preparing me for it's demise through my dreams. That's actually the awesome thing about this breakup. This fling taught me so much about myself and my relationships. God gives me warnings about my life though my dreams.

Yes, my dreams. I had a handful of dreams that predicted how this man would come and go from my life.

On November 27 of 2019, I woke up from a very vivid and detailed dream that I was dating a guy I used to mess with from college. It was one of those dreams that when I woke up, I felt a little shook because it felt so real, but then I was like, “ok I haven’t seen or talked to that dude in 19 years...I’m still single...just a dream.”

Now, in the dream, he and I were on a date and I told him I was celibate...which is true. Since giving my life to the Lord, I have decided to wait until marriage to have sex again. So, as I tell him this in the dream, I look down and see he has a wedding band tattoo’d on his ring finger. I saw it and thought, “Oh, I forgot he was married” and I left the date. After leaving the date, I went to the airport to catch a plane to see my family in Scranton, PA. I was afraid I would miss my flight. That's it. That was the first dream.

I wrote this down in my dream journal and didn't think much about it at the time. Why would I? This was a man who I believed to be married in real life and I had no connection with whatsoever anymore PLUS I had never flown to Scranton to visit my family before. At this point, this dream did not reflect my real life.

In May of 2020, I had another dream of this man.

This time, I had been texting some friends and then he was texting me. After he texted me, he showed up to where I was. We talked a lot. We went into a movie theatre and continued to talk. My friend even moved away from us because we were talking so much. We were really hitting it off and getting along. I was excited. I really liked him. Then, I put my head on his shoulder. I got up to go to the bathroom a couple times and upon one of my returns from the bathroom, he left the theatre. I knew in the dream his leaving the movie was symbolic, that he wasn’t just leaving the film, he was leaving my life. In the dream, I felt confused because he seemed to have liked me so much but I knew I had to let him go. I wrote in my dream journal, “I let him go because I knew it was for the best”. I recorded both dreams in my journal.

These two dreams happened before he appeared in my real life.

This guy from my college years showed back up in MY REAL LIFE in August 2020. He accidentally called me from Facebook messenger. We talked for about thirty minutes and he asked me to dinner. I hadn’t had a man take me to dinner in years.

That night at dinner, he made a comment to me that you couldn’t have a relationship without Jesus and as soon as he looked away, I texted Hannah and our friend Jayme to tell them I had found the perfect guyfor me. Needless to say, I was excited. I really liked him.

We had a great first date. I liked him, but I wanted to be forthright. I did not want to lead him on into believing that dating me would end in sex. I am still celibate. I wanted to let him know sex wasn’t on the table. I told him and he made a comment to me that only a weak man couldn’t control his sexual urges.

Again, I thought I hit the jackpot. A good, Christian man! I was so excited I could hardly sleep. He said he wanted to see me again and I told him I was leaving soon, which was true, I was flying to Scranton to see my family.

A couple of days later, while I'm packing to go to Scranton, it dawns on me. I suddenly remembered I had dreamt of this man. I looked through my dream journal to confirm it and my jaw could have hit the floor. ..a dream I had exactly nine months to the date had just come into fruition. Not only did I go out on a date with this man in real life, but details of the conversation had been dreamt too. PLUS, I was about to fly to PA for the first time to visit my family.

I'm liking this guy. I'm realizing I had been dreaming about him for months prior. At this point, I am convinced these dreams are good signs for our future together.

Once I get to Scranton, I am telling my family. My cousin is like, “Ash, don’t tell this guy this stuff. You’re gonna scare him”.

Then the dream really takes a turn, a sad turn.

While in Scranton, my cousin takes me to a party for Labor Day. He introduces me to his friend and his friend’s wife. Very nice people. I really hit it off with the wife. They seemed to me to really care for each other and had one of those marriages that you could just tell they were best friends. Ironically, the husband’s name is the same name as my crush I'm dreaming about which I just thought was kinda funny. Then, I looked down and saw he had a wedding band tattoo.

So at this point, I am like, “What is going on with this DREAM?!”

I overhear my cousin mention to this man how they met at “Holy Rosary” in Scranton, PA where they played basketball together. Well, what do ya know I met my crush for the first time at Holy Rosary in Donelson, TN which is a Catholic school and a church in Nashville. So this is too much for me. Too many synchronicities with my dream and my real life.

I decide I want to tell my crush about my dreams.

I fly back to Nashville on a Thursday, ready to tell my crush the dreams I've been having of him. But on Friday morning, I get a text from my cousin that his friend with the wedding band tattoo passed away Thursday evening. It was really sad and my heart breaks for his wife. She really loved him. You could see it. It also made my dream really, really confusing now. It was a battle for me not to overthink this.

Ignoring my cousins advice, I tell my crush the dream.

I didn’t tell him about the sudden, recent death, though. My crush seemed interested, (but then again he also seemed interested in me the whole time we were dating and I was wrong about that too. Hindsight is 2020, especially when the year was 2020.)

But for a while, things seemed to be still going well with him. We continue to date for another two months.

We went to a wedding together. We danced at the wedding. We danced in my living room. I cooked for him. It was terrible because I am a terrible cook, but he was super nice to me about it. He asked me to be his baby. I thought I had finally found love and I had been dreaming about this guy and one dream ended tragically so HOW COULD THIS NOT BE A GOOD THING?

So the whole time we are seeing each other, I am now really fighting thoughts of the second dream, about him leaving me in the theater. I try to convince myself it meant nothing. My friend tells me it was just a fear dream- me releasing a fear of abandonment in the dream.

But I knew it was prophetic.

After about two months of dating, we broke up. Suddenly.

I don’t want to get too into the details. Unlike my dream, it didn't happen in a movie theater. We were at a comedy club. I dream about this comedy club sometimes too. When I do, it looks like a movie theatre. In real life, we were watching the comedy show together. Like in the dream, he was being really distant from me and my gut told me he had already moved on from me and wasn’t planning on telling me. At one point during the show, I put my head on his shoulder. Then I remembered the dream. I knew it was coming to a head. I got up to go to the bathroom a couple times just like in the dream and sure enough, just like in the dream, he left.

For awhile I questioned those dreams and why THIS guy?

Why did I dream about THIS short lived relationship?

It completely baffled me, but the LORD has recently given me insight.

Planes in dreams symbolize our life purpose. I am always dreaming that I am going to miss my flight just as I did in the first dream with him. God was showing me in the dream that a relationship with this guy would have been like my last failed relationship. It would have consumed me too much. I would have ignored all the red flags. I would have spent time waiting for him to treat me better. Even though I liked him, this relationship would have delayed me fulfilling my life purpose. God showed me that I wasn’t dreaming of him because he was “the one”. I was dreaming about him because God knew how much I would like him and how much I would have sacrificed to be with him. He was letting me know he would take him away and it was for the best.

God has a plan for me. God has a plan for you too. Don’t let yourself waste your time and potentially your life making your own plans when it comes to other people. That’s control and no one healthy wants to be controlled.

This relationship didn’t work for me. Yes, it hurt me. Yes, I cried. I am ok. I am better than ok. I am grateful it didn’t derail me. I am grateful I didn’t lose years of my life again with someone who didn’t know how to honor me. I am grateful that I had the realization there is still some healing I need to do within myself when it comes to my relationships.

I have the time to work on that, thank God.

Grace and Peace Be With You,

Ashley