My Hummingbird Dream

11/30/2009 

Walking in the back yard of Aunt Elizabeth’s. Lots of trees and hanging from the branches were different sized glass jars, filled with water and flowers. I passed by one on a low branch and saw there was a little humming bird in the jar, in the water, flapping its wings trying to get out. The hummingbird was colored and marked like a Chickadee, black and white.

I tried to get the glass jar unhooked and out of the tree but it was too heavy for me. I asked Dad (my Dad was walking with me) to lift it out of the tree. He started to but it was too heavy for him, too, and he dropped his arms, looked at me and smiled and kinda shook his shoulders, like he was shaking out the stiffness, then he got the jar down.

I couldn’t see the little hummingbird (and it was an extremely small hummingbird, I thought maybe it was a baby) but I started lifting out the rocks and sand and pouring out the water and found the bird laying among the smaller, finer rocks like it was dead. I thought it was dead. I lifted it up into my palm, pet it, and breathed on it and immediately it was awakened, was dry and alive.
There’s a lot of significance in this dream. Whenever Dad took us (Mom, Mary and me) to see Aunt Elizabeth and our family on Mom’s side, there was always a lot of stress and anger and resentment. First, Dad would drink beer on the drive down (and back) and that’s when there were no expressways leading there. So we were on all these horseshoe curved roads. I used to sit real close to the door in the backseat, behind Dad and either sing or sleep. I’d sleep because I didn’t want to see or hear anything, including my death in a car wreck, and I’d sing because it comforted me, I felt very close to God. I think that’s when I was really singing for and to Jesus, a type of child’s prayer…I’d make up songs and I felt so comforted – I was in a different world.

Dad hated going to “Kentucky” where Mom’s family was. They were farmers, had outhouses, didn’t drink and didn’t approve of drinking but they never said anything to my Dad. I know they didn’t because that’s how they were, kind, gentle people who loved Mom and Mary and I very much. He would continue to drink down there, out by the car.

I always felt like he hated to be with us.

And I loved being there. There was so much to do, and people laughed and loved me and my Aunt liked to make cakes for us. And there were chickens and mules and it smelled good. And I would cry so hard and look out the back window of the car as my Aunt Elizabeth disappeared into the horizon. And she would cry.

The bird is me. I forgive my earthly Father as he and God release me from this prison of helplessness and pain and great sadness and death. But I am the impetus for the release, it is my hand that has to be a part of the release, my breath, there are no magic wands here, but incredible and wonderful Holy Spirit intercession. Now I must receive it and give it...forgiveness…there is lots of resistance, in all honesty.