Fear factor or T-shirts and dreams

Whereas some people spend their asleep hours in places from their pasts or in peaceful dreamy activity, I have recurring dreams about espionage. I am the center of some big, dangerous operation that certainly threatens my life and usually all of the people with me.

Last night, I helped retrieve dead bodies from a sketchy prison by climbing through a very Alcatraz/run-down Russian gulag kind of place. Sometimes we were saving a real person, sometimes retrieving the bodies of the honored fallen. Then swoosh! I am in my hometown in a whomping willow-like car chase with my brother's friends, trying to navigate crazy streets. Both times we managed to outrun our potential captors. Phew! No wonder I wake up tired!

Is this all the result of the many, many murder-mysteries I read? Like Robert Parker, Diane Mott Davidson, Katherine Hall Page, Anne Perry, Elizabeth Peters, etc.? (In case you needed some reading ideas.)

Maaaay-be.

But since I was given a dream interpretation book for Christmas and since these dreams are so recurrent, I decided to look them up. Nope, no listing for espionage. Or bodies. There was prison, but it was about being in a prison, bot orchestrating a body break-out. There was also escape and that is where I got in trouble.

The entry for escape is basically one big chastising. If you dream of escaping, you are trying to escape your fears, says Mr. Dream Expert. Who, me? As if I would ever do such a thing (she said in her most innocent, little red robin hood voice.)

Dammit. Even my dreams are calling me on the carpet.

So, what ARE these Fears which I cannot face?

Let's brainstorm, shall we? (If I'm really that unwilling to face them will they come out in a list?)

1. I may have to live the rest of my life without sugar (chocolate)
2. Rejection. Being accepted and loved by well, everyone, is very important to me (says She Who Will Not Ruffle Feathers)
3. Nope, I think #2 is about it.
4. I may never get married
5. I may never be a mother to a child (my horse and kitties don't really qualify)
6. I will never accept my gifts and pass them on
7. I won't ever be able to put on paper what I need to say
8. If I ever do get it on paper, no one will publish or read it
9. I will alienate my family and friends in the process of releasing all this
10. I am a hypocrite, preaching honesty and truth while hiding behind a pleasant smile and chewing on anger and doubt
11. If I ever unlock my voice and start talking I will look like a fool
12. That I will never get through all these fears and let go of it already.

[Note: There is a woman in front of me wearing a shirt that says "His Word is in my heart like a burning fire, shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in, indeed I cannot." Jeremiah 20:9]

For real. There it is, printed on a green tie-dyed T-shirt. That about sums it up. It is starting to hurt to hold whatever is in there in. I need to finish Iyanla Vanzant's book.