The Dream That Wouldn’t Go Away

Remarkably, I knew I had been shown where those people were and that they were still alive

Back when I was a young farmer north of Roosevelt, Utah, the news, one cold November morning, reported that a California doctor and his wife were missing on a flight from Custer, South Dakota, to Salt Lake City, as a student pilot, I had just completed my first cross-country flight with an instructor, though I had only twenty solo hours.

Paying close attention to all radio reports in the search I was very disturbed two days later by a newscast saying that Dr Robert Dykes and his wife, Margery, both in their late twenties and parents of two young children, were not likely to be found until spring - and maybe not even then. They had been missing for four days, and the temperature had been below zero every night. There seemed little chance for their survival without food and proper clothing.

That night before I retired I said a simple prayer for these two people I didn’t know. ‘Dear God, if they’re alive, send someone to them so they will be able to get back to their family.’

After a while I drifted off to sleep. In a dream I saw a red plane on a snow-swept ridge and two people waving for help. I awoke with a start. Was it the Dykeses? What colour was their plane? I didn’t remember any of the news reports ever mentioning it.

I couldn’t get back to sleep for some time. I kept reasoning that because I had been thinking of the couple before falling asleep, it was natural for me to dream of them. When I finally did go to sleep, the dream came again! A red plane on a ridge - but now farther away. I could still see two people waving, and could see some snow-covered mountain peaks in the background.

I got out of bed and spread out the only air chart I owned. It covered a remote area in Utah - the High Uintas region, along the Wyoming-Utah border. The Dykeses’ flight plan presumably had to pass over this range. I was familiar with the rugged terrain, for I had fished and hunted it as a boy. My eyes scanned the names on the chart - Burro Peak, Painters Basin, Kings Peak, Gilbert Peak.

Again I went to bed. And again, incredibly, the dream returned!

Now the plane was barely insight. I could see a valley below. Then it came to me in a flash - Painters Basin and Gilbert Peak! I rose in a cold sweat. It was daylight.

Turning on the news, I found there had been no sign of the plane and the search had been called off. All that day, doing chores around the ranch, I could think of nothing but the Dykeses and my dream. I felt I had been shown where those people were and that they were alive. But who would believe me and what could I do about it? I knew I wasn’t really qualified to search for them myself. I knew too that even trying to explain my dream to my flight instructor, a stern taskmaster named Joe Mower, would have me laughed out of the hangar.

I decided to go to our small rural airport anyway. When I arrived, a teenage boy who was watching the place told me Joe had gone to town for the mail. The force that had been nudging me all morning seemed to say, ‘Go!’ I had the boy help me push an Aeronca plane out. When he asked where I was going, I said, ‘To look for the Dykeses.’ I gave the plane the throttle and was on my way.

Trimming out, I began a steady climb and headed for Uinta Canyon. I knew what I was doing was unwise, even dangerous, but the danger seemed a small thing compared to what I felt n my heart. As I turned east near Painters Basin, I was beginning to lose faith in my dream; there was no sign of the missing plane. The high winds, downdrafts and rough air were giving me trouble in the small 65-horsepower plane. Terribly disappointed as well as frightened, I was about to turn back when suddenly there it was!

A red plane on Gilbert Peak, just as I had seen in my dream.

Coming closer, I could see two people waving, I was so happy I began to cry. ‘Thank you, God,’ I said over and over again.

Opening the plane’s window, I waved at the Dykeses and wigwagged my wings to let them know I saw them. Then I said a prayer to help me get back to the airport safely.

Thirty minutes later I was on the ground. When I taxied up and cut the motor, I gulped, for Joe Mower was there to greet me.

‘You’re grounded,’ he hollered. ‘You had no permission to take that plane up.’

‘Joe,’ I said quickly, ‘I know I did wrong, but listen, I found the Dykeses and they need help.’

‘You’re crazy,’ Joe said and he continued to yell at me. My finding that plane in an hour and a half when hundreds of planes had searched in vain for nearly a week was more than Joe could believe.

Finally I turned away from Joe, went straight for a telephone and did what I should have done in the first place. I called the Civil Air Patrol, in Salt Lake City. When they answered, I asked if there had been any word on the Dykeses’ plane. They said there was no chance of their being alive now and that the search was ended.

‘Well, I’ve found them,’ I said. ‘And they’re both alive.’

Behind me, Joe stopped shouting at me, his eyes wide and his mouth open. ‘I’ll round up food and supplies, and the people here will get it to them as soon as possible.’ the CAP gave me the go-ahead.

Everyone at the airport went into action. Within one hour we were on our way. A local expert pilot, Hal, would fly in the supplies. I would lead the way in another plane. I wasn’t grounded for long.

Back in the air, we headed for the high peaks. Hal’s plane was bigger and faster than the Aeronca I was in. He was flying out ahead and above me. When I got to Painters Basin at 11,000 feet, I met the severe downdrafts again. I could see Hal circling above me and knew he was in sight of the downed plane and ready to drop supplies. Since I couldn’t go any higher, I turned around.

Back at the airport I joined a three-man ground rescue party, which would attempt to reach the couple by horseback.

Another rescue party had already left from the Wyoming side of the mountains. For the next twenty-four hours our party hiked through fierce winds and six-foot snowdrifts. At 12,000 feet, on a ridge near Gilbert Peak, we stopped. In the distance, someone was yelling. Urging our frozen feet forward, we pressed on, tremendously excited. Suddenly, about ten yards in front of us, the fuselage of a small red plane sat rammed into a snow bank. Nearby, two people flapped their arms wildly.

Charging ahead, we shouted with joy. At about the same time we reached the Dykeses, the other rescue party was coming over the opposite ridge.

After much hugging and thanking, I learned what a miracle Dykeses’ survival was. They had had nothing to eat but a chocolate bar, and their clothing was scant - Mrs Dykes had a fur coat, but her husband had only a Mac. The altitude made starting a fire impossible and at night they huddled together in their downed plane, too afraid to go asleep.

‘We had all but given up, had even writing notes as to who should look after our children,’ Mrs Dykes said. Then, turning to me, she said, ‘But when we saw your plane, it was the most wonderful thing…. Our prayers answered, a dream come true.’

‘Yes,’ I said, smiling. My dream had occurred for a reason. In order to help give life to two others. Even in the most mysterious of ways, God had shown me He is always there, always listening. He had heard my prayers and the Dykeses’ prayers and had answered all of us in his own infallible way.

By George Hunt

A Giant Beside Our House

I’m in our garden on Big Fir Court, gazing up at the mighty 250-foot tree the street is named after. Rising from the corner of our property to the height of a 20-storey building the great white fir dwarfs our home and everything in sight like some ancient giant. It gives the illusion of leaning ominously towards me, creaking and swaying ever so slightly in the rustling wind.

Look! It’s not leaning its falling! It’s toppling towards our house, gaining momentum, rushing to meet its shadow, until finally it crumples the roof and splinters through the living room and front bedroom with a sickeningly thunderous roar. I let out a cry. Alison’s room!

I awoke in a drenching sweat and sat bolt upright trying to blink away the terrifying vision.

Another nightmare. I slipped out of bed and stole a peek into Alison’s room. Our nine-year-old daughter was sleeping peacefully, as was eleven-year-old Heath across the hall. But I couldn’t shake the irrational fear until I’d checked. This was not the first time I’d dreamed of such an accident. In another dream I’d seen a giant tree limb tearing loose and slamming down on Heath, leaving him crippled.

As a computer engineer, I deal with quantifiable information. I don’t pay much attention to impractical things like dreams. But these nightmares were so vivid and frightening. I eased back into bed next to my wife, Nita, but not before looking out the window at the tree. There is stood, stately and still; its coarse bark ghostly pale in the faint moonlight.

A few nights later I had another dream, this one more puzzling than alarming: I am in our garden and in front of me stands a white angel. The angel has a broken wing. What did all these dreams mean?

Then one day I noticed a twenty-foot dead limb dangling from the fir. We call a dangerous branch like that a widow marker. I remembered the dream about Heath. ‘Don’t go near that tree,’ I warned him.

That Saturday I enlisted a neighbour to help me rope it down. All week I’d worried about the precarious branch and had some other dead limbs removed too.

Why am I so concerned about this tree? I wondered. It’s stood here for generations. It even survived the fierce storm of ‘62.

My nightmares about the tree eventually subsided. Christmas season arrived and Nita and I rushed madly to get our shopping down. More than anything my daughter wanted a Cabbage Patch doll. We soured the stores with no luck. Everywhere we went it was the same story. ‘Sorry,’ said the shopkeepers inevitably. ‘We sold out our Cabbage Patch dolls weeks ago.’

Finally Nita settled on a handmade rag doll. It was thicker and heavier than the Cabbage Patch version, but there was something about it that caught our fancy. ‘Well,’ sighed Nita as we paid for it, ‘this will have to do.’

‘Alison will love it,’ I reassured her.

We arrived home to a surprise. Alison had impetuously decided to rearrange her room. She had been talking about it for days, but Nita had implored her to wait until the holiday excitement died down. ‘Then I’ll help you,’ she promised.

Instead, Alison had recruited her brother for the task, getting Heath to help drag her heavy bed across the room. ‘I just wanted to get it done now, Mummy,’ she explained as Nita surveyed the scene with obvious displeasure. ‘It’s important.’ Alison toys and furniture spilled out into the hall. By bedtime, however, Alison had her room in order again and we could scarcely hide our admiration.

‘See?’ said Alison knowingly. ‘It’s not such a big deal.’

Outside I heard the wind whistle through the big fir. A howling blizzard marked Christmas Eve. I drove home from work through swirling snow and pounding winds. I pulled into the driveway, turned up my collar, and hurried inside to get ready for church.

Church was not one of my priorities even under the best circumstances, and on a night like this I didn’t want to be anywhere but inside my house, Christmas Eve or not. But I’d promised.

At the service with Nita and the kids, I felt strangely detached as I hunched in the pew with my arms folded tightly, thinking about whether I even believed that God was a part of my life. I know I had been raised in church but that was a long time ago. Now I certainly didn’t feel any ‘tidings of comfort and joy’. God may have created the world and all its wonders, but I didn’t see where that had much to do with my life. If God was real, He was much too remote for me to have faith in. We arrived home late, and the wind and snow stung our faces as we walked up the driveway. Heath and Alison rushed inside to turn on the Christmas tree lights. From our bay window the blue lights cast a peaceful glow across the snowy garden. I draped my arm around Nita and led her in.

Wrapping paper flew as the children tore into a few early presents, and Nita and I settled back on the couch to view the happy chaos. Nita had turned the tree into a work of art. The crowning touch was a glorious blonde angel perched high at the top. ‘It looks like Alison,’ I said.

Alison was so delighted with her big new doll that she granted it the honour of accompanying her to bed. ‘Told you she’d love it.’ I reminded Nita as we climbed under the covers. The morning wind lulled us to sleep.

ROAR! The explosive sound jolted the house. I hadn’t been asleep long, and my startled, half-awake mind tried to separate fantasy from reality. The dream again, I thought. But then I sat bolt upright, and saddening I knew. This was no dream. This time my nightmare was real. The tree really had fallen on our house!

I leapt out of bed and raced across the hall to Alison’s room.

‘Daddy, help!’ she was calling frantically. ‘I’m stuck!’

I couldn’t budge the door. It was jammed shut. ‘Oh, my God,’ I whispered. ‘Don’t move, honey!’ I shouted through the door. ‘We’ll get you out.’ I grabbed a torch and told Nita to call for help. ‘I’ll see if I can get to her from outside.’ I was horrified to find the tree filling the front hall, branches whipping in the gale. I stumbled through the family room to a side door. Outside I nearly collided with the trunk, propped up on its giant ball of roots, which had been torn from the earth. It looked prehistoric. I crawled underneath as the rough bark tore at my robe and ripped my flesh. The wind sliced through me. Above the din I heard the distant wail of sirens.

Groping my way to Alison’s window I aimed the flashlight beam inside and wiped the icy snow from my eyes. All I could see were branches, tattered insulation and hunks of ceiling strewn about the trunk. Somewhere buried beneath the tree was my daughter, crying faintly, ‘Daddy! Daddy!’

Someone was standing beside me. ‘Alison! This is Captain McCullough of the fire brigade,’ he called. ‘Your daddy’s with me. Can you move at all?’

‘I think I can move my arm,’ came a brave little voce.

‘Good. Push your hand up as high as you can.’

Tiny fingers wriggled up through the debris. I breathed a tentative sigh of relief. Firemen rushed to set up lights and heat lamps. They fastened a plastic tarpaulin over the rescue area. Captain McCullough turned to me and quietly said, ‘This isn’t going to be easy, Mr Gullion.’

As I huddled with Nita and neighbours looked after Heath, a terrifying game of pick-up-sticks slowly unfolded. The night air was filled with the roar of chainsaws and the reek of fir pitch as rescuers cut away the tree and cautiously removed brunches as they went.

A slight shift of any debris could spell disaster.

Bit by bit they chipped away at the wreckage until, after an hour, Alison’s head and shoulders emerged. Her right leg appeared to be crushed under the tree. A fallen two-by-six rafter clamped down on her torso. We could see Alison’s new doll squeezed between her chest and the rafter. Apparently she’d fallen asleep clutching it. McCullough shook his head grimly and called a halt to the work.

‘We can’t risk it,’ he said. ‘Show me the crawl space.’ moments later he shone his torch on the area under Alison’s room. Huge braches a half foot in diameter pieced the floor and stabbed the ground beneath. Again McCullough shook his head. ‘We can’t cut away the floor without disturbing the tree. And that tree must not shift.’

The subzero wind had intensified. Hours had passed and now there was the threat of Alison succumbing to hypothermia.

Neighbours rushed in warm blankets and hot-water bottles. A paramedic put his wool cap on Alison’s head. But I could see she was drifting, her big eyes fluttering. Once or twice her head rolled back, if we didn’t get her leg out soon, the surgeons might have to amputate it to free her.

Only one option was left: Lift the tree.

A crane was out of the question; in this wind it would be too unstable. But McCullough had called a towing company that used giant air bags to gently right overturned trucks. ‘It’s a gamble,’ he warned me. ‘But we’ve run out of options.’

Huge rubber bags were packed under the tree. A compressor roared to life. Slowly the bags filled with air and swelled against the great fir. Despite the blizzard, I could see sweat bead up on McCullough’s tensed brow. My hands trembled as Nita buried her head in my chest, afraid to look.

Suddenly, I heard myself praying to God whose very existence I’d doubted just hours earlier. You would have thought I’d be ashamed to ask for His help now, but something told me I must. ‘Please, Lord,’ I begged. ‘Spare her life. I believed You are here.’

The shriek of the compressor was deafening. The bags bulged like great billows, but at first nothing gave.

Then there was movement! Inch by agonizing inch, the tree was lifted. A cry rose from the crowd as paramedics rushed to free Alison and whisk her to a waiting ambulance. Nita and I jumped in with her, and we roared off. Alison smiled weakly. ‘I’ll be okay now, Daddy,’ she whispered, still grasping her new doll.

That overstuffed doll, it turned out, was possibly just enough of a cushion between the fallen two-by-six rafter and Alison’s chest to have saved her life. The doctors confirmed that she would recover. And Alison’s leg was only broken, not crushed.

Christmas Day, Heath and I kicked through the rubble of our house. I’d been thinking about that desperate prayer I’d said, thinking about it a lot. In Alison’s room I saw that the bulk of the fir had landed near the southeast wall - right where her bed had been before she’d impulsively moved it. On the trunk directly over where Alison lay when the tree came crashing through, I noticed a wide scar from a recently cut branch that might have killed her.

Had God been trying to warn me all along about the tree? To protect us? Had I been blind to God’s ways?

In the snow outside what used to be our living room I found the angel from our Christmas tree, the one that looked like Alison. Its wing was broken, just as the angel’s wing in my dream had been. As I brushed it off and held it up, Heath came running. ‘Dad Dad!’ he grabbed the angel. ‘I’ve seen this before! In a dream! Angels with broken wings just like this one!’

Dreams. Does God speak to us through them? This much I myself can say: Alison is safe ad well. And God is, and always has been, watching over my family.

By Ron Gullion

The Pin

I suppose none of us know the meaning of dreams. But I know what prayers can do. I was working the three-to-eleven shift at my local hospital, when a patient I was feeding asked, ‘Why don’t you have a little pin like the other nurses?’

‘I did,’ I said, reaching to show him the golden, wreath-shaped R.N. pin on my collar, one of my proudest possessions. It had been given to me when I graduated from nursing school, and it stood for years of hard work and study.

But now when I looked down, the pin was gone. I knew I had pinned it to myself before I left the house. I looked everywhere for it. A colleague and I searched through all the linens and bedside equipment but found nothing. I even took a mop and dusted under the beds.

At home I turned the place upside down. No pin. Of course I could replace it, but a substitute would never mean as much.

That night, as lay in bed, I prayed that the Lord would help me find it.

Soon I was asleep. In the deep of night I had a dream. I dreamed that I got out of bed put on my slippers and ran downstairs and out the door to a puddle of water in front of the house. And in this puddle was my pin.

The next morning I awoke disappointed. ‘It was only a dream,’ I muttered to myself. ‘A worthless dream.’ but as my head cleared, I seemed to hear a voice saying. No, it was more than a dream. Go and see.

I put on my slippers and walked out to the road in front of our house, and found there a puddle of water. I placed my hand into the brown water. In a moment I held in my hand an answered prayer.

By Mary Rosco

Recurring Dream

My mother had been haunted by the same dream for five nights in a row. She described it to me as I took her to the hospital for an operation to relieve a slipped disc.

‘It’s snowing,’ she said. ‘In the distance I can see the headlights approaching. When they come close, I recognize a hearse. It stops in front of me. A door opens and the driver motions me inside…’

Against her wishes, I told mum’s doctors and nurses about the dream so they would be sensitive to her fears about the operation.

Before dawn on the day of her surgery the snow began to fall. At 7:15 I went to her hospital room to be with her while she was prepared. An orderly came in and I helped him get Mum on the trolley. We were waiting at the lift when a nurse hurried up. ‘The surgery has been cancelled,’ she said.

Finally, I was able to reach our doctor to find out what was going on. ‘Well, I woke up during the night and couldn’t go back to sleep,’ he said. ‘Something was bothering me. I looked outside and saw the snow. I thought about your mother’s dream. I called the hospital and ordered a second electrocardiogram. It caught a heart condition that didn’t show up on the first one. The lab called the anaesthetist and he cancelled the procedure.’

The doctor hesitated and took a deep breath.

‘If your mother had had the anaesthetic, well…’

Later I found out what he did not say then. Under anaesthesia Mum would have been in grave danger of dying of heart failure.

By June Davis

Heaven Is For Dancing

Sara Brown, age five, has dark, naturally curly hair, eyes like shiny brown buttons, a rosebud mouth and a low-pitched voice. A blue of bursting vitality and motion, Sara could never sit still for long in anyone’s lap - unless, of course, that lap belonged to her grandmother, Louise Brown, who she called ‘Nana’.

Nana, sturdy in build, belying her eighty-three-years, with iron-grey hair and lively eyes in a vivacious face, could always be counted on for a story - from a book or from memory. After all, Sara’s Nana had been a first-rate teacher for many years.

The two of them would sit cuddled close together in a certain wing chair in the Browns’ two-century-old farmhouse. The story Sara asked for over and over was the tale of the ‘turkey-gobbler’ who had swallowed a child’s ring. For Sara, the suspense hung on one question: Would the turkey choke to death?

A very sensitive child, Sara could not bear to see any animal or person hurt. Death was a calamity beyond her comprehension. But the turkey story had such a happy ending! The ring was recovered when the gobbler was held brashly upside down and the ring shaken and stroked out of his long neck. ‘He spitted it up,’ in Sara’s words, and she would laugh and laugh with glee at the funny sight this presented to her mind.

Last winter Louise dislocated a knee, aggravating very painful arthritis. A systemic infection followed, and it invaded the bloodstream. After weeks of hospitalization, Louise came home, confined to a wheelchair, able to take only a few small steps. The doctor’s verdict to the family: the end was not far distant.

Louise had lived a long, useful and full life. She was not afraid of death and had always made a point of telling Sara, her only grandchild, how much she looked forward to the joyful reunion with her husband, her mother and father, her four brothers and two sisters who had preceded her into the next life.

But even with this preparation, Jean and Bill Brown, Sara’s parents were troubled. Louise’s death would be devastating to their small daughter. So in prayer, they asked for help. The petition was, ‘Lord Jesus, please don’t let our little girl be hurt. Let this experience be one that will teach her what you want her to know about death and immortality.’

On a Tuesday night, Sara came bursting into her parents’ room in the middle of the night. ‘A dream woke me up,’ she whispered.

Her mother took Sara back to her own bed and crawled in with her. ‘Do you want to tell me about the dream?’

‘Well, maybe a little bit. I dreamed that Nana was taken up out of her bed…’ since Sara seemed reluctant to share more, her mother reassured her that Nana was still in her bed, and both of them drifted off to sleep.

The next morning began normally. The nurse, whom the Browns had employed to care for Louise during the day, arrived. Bill left for work in Washington, and Jean took Sara to playschool on her way to the office.

At 9.30, while the nurse was changing her bed, Louise was sitting in a chair. All at once she sighed and quietly bowed her head. Her life on earth was ended.

The nurse called Jean Brown, and she returned home immediately. Bill drove home from Washington.

One moves mechanically at such a time. Contact the local mortuary….. Decisions about the funeral… and Sara would soon be back from playschool. Bill and Jean wondered how to tell her about her Nana’s death. The five-year-old would be heartbroken.

That afternoon when Sara got home her parents took her into the garden. Though it was early February, the day was glorious, warm and sunshiny. Then Sara’s father had a sudden inspiration - a divine inspiration. The dream! Sara’s dream held the key!

‘Honey, tell us again about your dream last night.’

There was a moment of pensiveness. Then Sara brightened, ‘Oh, yes! Nana was standing in the air above her bed, dancing, like this.’ She stepped back to demonstrate with exuberant twists, turns and pirouettes. ‘And Nana’s back and legs didn’t hurt anymore - not a single bit!’

Her father fought back the tears. ‘You know what, Sara? Last night in your dream, God whispered a secret to you before anybody else in the whole world knew. The secret was that today he was going to take Nana up to be with Him. She’s dancing with the angels in heaven right now.’

A series of expressions crossed the little girl’s face. Then to her parents’ surprise, Sara began to laugh and clap and dance some more. She rushed into the house to telephone several of her friends, eagerly sharing the glad tidings that her Nana cold walk and even dance now in her new life.

Remembering their prayer request weeks earlier, the Browns stood there marvelling. ‘To think,’ there was wonder in Jean’s voice, ‘that God would care that much about one little girl!’

Later that evening some neighbours dropped over; bringing along their seven-year-old daughter. Both sets of parents noticed that the two children were huddled together in the next room, laboriously writing something.

When the guests had gone, Sara handed her mother a piece of paper. With assistance, she had scrawled these exact words to her Nana: ‘I love you and hope you feel good in Heaven.’

Nana is free from pain and doing fine, while some of us earthbound creatures are once again amazed at the way of a loving Heavenly Father. He singled out a little child through whom to pour a special revelation. We know that Heaven is for dancing!

By Catherine Marshall