I had this bizarre dream.  I dreamed that I was Angela of Angela’s Song by AnnMarie Creedon.  This is odd because, besides the Catholic part and the having three kids bit, Angela and I have very different lives.

Anyway, all through this dream, I kept trying to explain to the other characters that I wasn’t who they thought I was, and could they help me find my husband?  Everybody in the dream kept trying to explain to me, “Silly, you’re Angela!”  I remember climbing onto the roof of whatever building we were in (inside, in the dream, it looked like our current parish church, but outside it was just a roof of a building anywhere in any city).  I remember looking around for my husband… then I woke up.  I was so happy to be in my own bed.  Of course, I’d already slept through my husband leaving for work, so I had another half-asleep moment of, “He’s gone!  Wait, am I still in that dream?!” We laughed about it when he got home, of course.

I’m wondering if this dream illuminates my having some sort of crisis about having a new book coming out when my sub-published life is already pretty demanding.  Frankly, I am scared–scared that I’ll leave something undone that is in serious need of doing.  However, I just have to hold on to faith that, in both the bad and the good, God gives us nothing we can’t handle.  These books are His.  Heck, this family is His.  He won’t give me more to do than time to get it done.

On further analysis of the dream, I first found myself  bemused:  why wasn’t I  thrilled to be Angela of Angela’s Song?  I mean, after all, she’s an admirable character who illustrates our Catholic faith in a very real way.  Jack, the romantic interest, is very compelling as well.  Being Angela sounds awesome, right? Being the (possible–no spoilers!) object of Jack’s affections sounds fantastic, right?  But… I’m Erin, and I want my husband and my life.  This dream made me realize how grateful I am to be who God made me to be, to have bloomed where I’m planted.

So, I have joy here in reality.  If you’d like a bit of fiction that will lift you up, go read Angela’s Song!