“It’s gorgeous right here”… “This river is so perfect, I love how it’s rushing ” … David is to my right, fed and musing, looking around the scenery with a cherry brown ale from Miner Brewery. (A Keystone find.)
We are showered and on the balcony of our Missoula hotel room. We ordered Uber Eats from two different restaurants recommended on a Foodie website I found on our drive. The meal is had and done, our bellies are full, the air is relaxed and perfectly untinged.
I had a dream last night of a Monarch about the size of a volleyball, whose wings – when spread – formed an octagon … wait, let me Google that…
Octagon
To see an octagon in your dream indicates a spiritual reawakening, eternal life or resurrection.
Anyway, in the dream, the Monarch was metamorphosising *back into* a long silvery white cocoon. I took my camera out to take a time lapse video of it and, by the time I got the setting, I looked up and it was just about complete with the process.
I sketched down all of this in my notebook as soon as I woke up and – somewhere in eastern Montana – I began to look up meanings. Cocoons… safety and security, a place of transformation. Butterflies… romance, joy and creativity…
One of the more personal, harder to explain parts of my getting married and transformation to wife and stepmom is the surrender of women’s ministry and community leadership to the spirit and to the possibility of retreats again someday, group devotions again someday, prayer bead workshops again someday, invitations to offer perspective over coffee again someday; but not now.
In this season – My ministry is my family, my family is my ministry.
Part of what I love about spiritual leadership is the creativity of taking a common experience or a deeply personal experience and finding what’s true within it. Making rational but wildly faithful sense of it. Finding that faith perspective that lends validation to the experience and invites willingness to possibilities.
Writing and song, experience and prayer, color and craft – this is when I feel the most alive. This creative, joy, romance with the divine.
When I met David initially and when I meet him daily through touch and tone, I experience a feeling of being looked out for and guided. It’s a continuation of the adventurous spiritual expression of workshops and intuiting for others in the form of intimate human love and emotion; beyond motherhood and friendship and deep into my womanhood.
It’s, my marriage.
Our marriage. My experience of it.
(Note: we aren’t officially married yet)
I asked David on the drive, after reading the definitions from my dream dictionary website, what he thought it represented.
“The cocoon is the marriage”, he stated.
I offered up “so our marriage is a safe space for my creativity? My joy? My romance?”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking”…
That’s when the stunning revelation of the dream comes in. I considered dreaming I had this need for a time lapse video and the fact I had missed the process by the time I got it together and looked up symbolized “don’t worry about capturing, be present”.
But.. I *am* present.
Aha.. see… what I really think that meant is more about hinting at the speed of our blend, the realizing our covenant to each other.
Think of it: why do you take a time lapse video?
Because you want to re-watch the beauty of a miraculously intricate or awe inspiring satisfying long process unfold quickly. It’s like why I want a hidden camera set up when my irises are about to bloom.
But the process of the joy and romance and creativity nestling into the safety of the marriage in my dream? It was fast.
Faster than I expected.
My marriage is happening now. It’s alive.
We are committed.
It makes the vows and the rings a marker of what’s been in the making, more than a gateway; they will be a seal.
Ok – here are pics from today!
Lots of love… me
Frozen Spaghetti 
Erin, how I miss you! I’m so happy your finding peace, love, and contentment. You are so special and I’m glad you found someone who appreciates you. Patty
Hi!!! I was going through my contacts, purging old records, on our drive. I got to your name and kept you, to aide in when the stars align, we can connect and I can hear your laugh. You have the best laugh.