Symbolic dreams can be tough to figure out, even though they are trying to tell us something.

One Saturday morning during summer break from college, I woke from a bone-chilling symbolic dream. The account of this symbolic dream is only for those who have brave hearts, and for those who want to have one.

At the time this symbolic dream occurred, I was working a full time, Monday-through-Friday summer job in my hometown and was staying at home with my widowed mother (Mom).

As I got up that morning, trembling from the possible ominous "message" in this symbolic dream, I heard Mom in the kitchen; so I joined her and told her about this dreadful symbolic dream.

I found myself surrounded in blue light and wearing blue while I was gently gliding down into a dark room.

I thought, "What the heck is this?!"

My bare feet touched a wooden floor and I landed perfectly. Again I thought, "What the heck is this?!"

Before me were window drapes that appeared to be familiar. In the light that came with me, I could see a familiar fireplace and bookcase to my left.

I realized I was in the living room of my friend Linda's bachelor brother Gary, a Type I diabetic and 20 years our senior. During high school, Linda and I had spent several summer weekends each year at Gary's place.

Light coming from the front door

I looked to my right and saw light coming from Gary's open front door.This was odd because there was no light coming through the drapes.

Then I noticed the door was open from right to left, which was opposite from the way it opened. Gary's front door did not open to the wall; it opened to the living room.

This anomaly caused my curiosity to kick in and I found myself moving towards the door.

On the other side of the door

Gary was standing directly outside his door in a long-sleeved red shirt. He had a terrified look in his eyes; it was bone-chilling.

For some reason, I knew Gary had to get inside his house or something terrible would happen to him but, he wasn't able to move.

I felt strongly compelled to pull Gary inside the living room. So I grabbed his forearm and the moment I felt Gary's hand around my extended forearm, he let out a long, dreadful screech I had never heard before.

When I went to pull him into the living room, the dream ended with a snap!

It was strange and scary; very strange and very scary. I hadn't had this type of dream in my entire life. I told Mom that a had a creepy feeling that this dreadful symbolic dream was trying to tell me there is a matter of life and death at hand.

Neither of us had seen Gary or heard from him or about him for a number of months, and I told Mom that I was particularly upset by the screech he had let out in the dream. (And I wondered to myself if the screech symbolized the proverbial "screech of death".)

The long-sleeved red shirt didn't bode well with me either; and I told Mom that I remember Gary saying at one point that he wouldn't be caught dead in a red shirt.

I also told Mom that when I was at Gary's front door in the dream, I felt sunlight on my face coming in at a particular angle. So the sun was positioned in the sky at about mid-morning. I knew this because of the summer weekends Linda and I had spent hanging out there.

I wondered to myself if this dreadful dream had anything to do with Gary's diabetes.

I really didn't want to think about that, though, although I knew all there was to know about it since I listened whenever Gary volunteered anything about it to me.

He had told me how he manages with it and about the morning shot of insulin. He showed me the glucose packets in his car and in designated spots around his house, like beside his living room easy chair in case he felt a need to cover the insulin.

He also kept the names and phone numbers of his doctor and of the hospital on a board in his kitchen, along with the phone number of the rescue squad.

He had been dealing with Type I diabetes for around 20 years and apparently, he had been doing a very good job.

Nonetheless, I decided (and I shared this with Mom) that since Linda was attending an out-of-state college and was not at home during this summer, I would check with her parents to see if everyone was OK, which I did--before noon that morning.

Our parents had known each other for years before Linda and I were born, and their family residence was across the street from ours.

So, without mentioning the dream, I dropped over to see Linda and Gary's parents; but they said everyone was fine.

I was very glad to know this yet nonetheless, I couldn't shake off the dream.

I asked God every night and day--all day--to take it away from me if it didn't mean anything; but if it meant something awful, then I asked God to help me out with whatever it was.

And God knows, literally, that I tried to put it out of my mind, but it kept bugging me.

It was difficult to concentrate fully on my job or anything else.

The morning of the first Saturday after I had the dream, I called Trish Darcy, who lived with her parents across the street and one house up from Gary. A short, spunky redhead, Trish was a couple of years younger, but she had occasionally hung out with Linda and me when we were at Gary's.

After catching up on what had been happening with each of us during the past year, I asked Trish if Gary was OK. She seemed to think so. She had seen him going back and forth to work and tending his property.

I told her about the dream. Trish knew about the Supernatural events I had experienced since age 7. I told her how this dream really bothered me and she said she'd check in with Gary and keep an eye open for me. If something were amiss, she said she'd call me back.

I also asked Trish not to say anything about the dream to anyone, and she assured me she wouldn't.  I could trust her because, over the course of three years hanging out with spunky Trish, she had shown herself to be one who kept her word. 

On the second Saturday morning after the dream, I told Mom I was sick and tired of being bugged by it, so I told her I was going to Gary's place, 45 miles away. This was at around 8 AM. I also called Trish, who still didn't have anything new to tell me; but I told her I was on my way to Gary's place, in case she wanted to join me there.

I got to Gary's place around 9:30. Trish walked over to me as I got out of my car. We rang Gary's door bell. He answered with a familiar coffee mug in his hand and invited us in. We sat in his living room and chatted over a couple of cups of coffee for about 30 minutes.

During this visit, I asked Gary a couple of times if he had been feeling OK. He said he had. So, at the end of the 30 minutes it appear to me that the dream didn't mean anything so, I thought I should go.

Then, as I was about to mention leaving, Gary let out that same screech I had heard in the dream. My heart was in my throat!

An equally shocked Trish asked me if that had been the screech I heard in the dream.

As I stood up, trembling from spine-tingling volts, I answered Trish affirmatively and took the three steps over to Gary. He was unconscious; but I remembered what he told me he would need in such a case:

I grabbed a packet of glucose from his chair-side lamp table and, despite trembling hands, I managed to tear the packet open and got most of it down Gary's throat safely; but he remained unconscious. I tried to wake him up but to no avail.

In the meantime, Trish was jumping up and down in a total panic! When she realized Gary wasn't waking up, she hollered, "Now what?!" As I thought for a moment, I became sufficiently calm. I asked Trish to stand by Gary and make sure he didn't fall forward so I could call the rescue squad.

Then I went into the kitchen, looked at the phone numbers on the board and dialed the rescue squad. After telling the operator the usual information, she asked, "Which hospital should the ambulance take him?"

I looked at the board again, saw the name of the hospital and told the operator. She told me to call Gary's doctor, which I did immediately after I hung up the phone.

The rescue squad, located on the two-lane interstate road directly behind Gary's house, arrived within a couple of minutes. As they worked on Gary, I told them what happened to Gary and what I did.

Within a few minutes, they had him in the ambulance, flying down the road with lights flashing and siren screeching.

As I stood at the front door watching the ambulance disappear over the mountain road going towards the hospital, I felt the sunlight on my face, just like in the symbolic dream.

I looked at my watch. It said 10:10, or mid-morning, just like I thought it might be, based on the sun's mid-morning position in the symbolic dream.

I turned to Trish and told her I was going to the hospital as soon as I locked up Gary's house. Trish decided to go with me.

About 20 minutes after arriving at the hospital, Gary's doctor came out to the waiting room. He said Gary was out of the coma, was doing fine and we could see him in about 10 minutes.

Then he said that it was a good thing we were at Gary's that morning and knew what to do because otherwise, Gary would have died from insulin shock.

The spunky little redhead told the doctor what had transpired. He flat out refused to believe it but she told him every word of it was true.

He looked at me and, to his unbelief, I only nodded affirmatively. Frankly, I couldn't do much else because I was still reeling from it. The doctor backed away, towards the door and the corridor, shaking his head and muttering. Then, he was gone.

After 10 minutes, we went in and found a fully conscious Gary, bright-eyed and big-grinned. He said he remembered answering his door and sitting down in his living room with us but then, nothing after that. He neither remembered me asking him, twice, if he had been feeling OK nor telling me, twice, that he had been feeling OK.

He said it was a good thing we had dropped by that morning. I told him about the dream. As I related it to him, his eyes got wider and wider as he kept saying, "No!" in hushed astonishment, to which Trish kept saying, "Yep!"

Gary made a quick recovery.

Over time, diabetes caused Gary blindness and loss of his legs. Soon after losing his legs he passed on in the mid-1990s. He is greatly missed.

Gary is remembered as a loving son and brother; a cherished friend; a kind and thoughtful neighbor; and he had served our Nation in the US Navy. Very early in his service to our Nation, he had developed Type I diabetes.

Gary lived for about 25 more years because of the symbolic dream and God's answer to prayer.

About 15 years after the symbolic dream, Gary retired from his first career and became a college professor, a career he had always wanted and had been able to enjoy for 10 years because of what I and others thought had been a "dreadful, bone-chilling" symbolic dream.

Perspective, especially God's Perspective, is everything!

Besides the obvious, that being, answer to prayer, I learned that (with me, and maybe with everyone else) information within symbolic dreams has a "life span" of up to or around two weeks.

After around two weeks, due to individual and collective free will, the (possible) future changes, one way or the other.

This is why I don't hold solidly to "predestination"; there are just TOO many variables that make it impossible for humans to "say" what God can and cannot do and what God Will and Will not do.

Yet sadly, I read in some hub articles that "predestination", in total, is a "set deal".

Nevertheless, it's a good thing that this form of judgmental misconception flies in the Face of God because, due to His Grace, He answers prayer in the most astounding Ways and therefore, human free will (the choice to pray), destroys the judgmental misconception of "total predestination", or "predestinarianism".

For more reading on "Predestinarianism", a heresy against Christianity:

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12376b.htm

It's plain to see that predestination is WAY too complex for mere humans to assume to be "the judge of everyone else", thus also assuming God's Role, in Christ, as the Judge of all humans.

This symbolic dream experience and event also reinforces the three key elements consistently found in Supernatural events.

There are three key elements in this symbolic dream that indicate it is Supernatural:

1) It was spontaneous (see other hub articles in the Supernatural Series--below--for what "spontaneous" means),

2) It revealed new information, and

3) The timing is astounding, because it's God's Timing.

The Thanksgiving Miracle Story, from the Heartland of America, The Supernatural Being, The Golden Light Guardian Angel, The Supernatural Voice, September 11, 2001 (9/11) and Private Prophecy, Answer to Prayer, Life After Death