The Luxury of a Nightmare...

Very early Tuesday morning, I awoke in sobs. My heart hurt like it never had before. I just yanked myself from the worst nightmare I had ever had in my entire life.

Source: ny-image3.etsy.com via Jill on Pinterest

The nightmare started off as a sweet dream, with warm air surrounding myself, my husband and our two girls. We were at what seemed to be a two story outdoor mall. (I know, pure bliss, right?!)

That is where the sweet dream ended and the nightmare began. All of a sudden my husband was shouting that I needed to get down and pointed to a man in all black pointing a rifle into the crowd. It seemed to be aimed at us. The mass of people at the crowd started to panic and I reached out for my girls as I tried to also get myself out of harm's way.

I couldn't reach them. They seemed to be getting further away from me without evening moving their feet. I could see the sadness in their eyes and I could feel the racing of my heart and panic setting in. I started to scream to my husband that I couldn't get to our girls. I was crying, pleading, pushing through the crowd and calling their names. They were soon just a blur of the colors I had dressed them in. Then, all at once, they were out of my vision.

I screamed the most painful cry. I could feel it in every part of my being. My girls were gone. I couldn't find them. I couldn't do anything but dart through the crowd like a metal ball in a pinball machine in search of these two girls who were made out of the love that Chris and I have for each other.

People, that were my friends in the dream, were helping me cover the property. We were scanning for ponytails with preppy bows. We were listening for cries of distress. That is when my husband came over to me and said to me in tears, "They are gone, Kristen. The man in all black just drove away with them."

I fell to the floor of this outdoor mall that once surrounded me in warm air and felt so cold. I could feel my heart breaking in a million pieces. I was dying from the inside out. 

That is when I forced myself to wake up, to feel the softness of my sheets and remind myself that it was just a nightmare.

That is also when my thoughts went immediately to the pain I was feeling and knowing that it would all go away quickly because I had the luxury of it only being a nightmare. That is also when I took time to tiptoe into my girls' bedrooms and kiss their sweet foreheads and smell their jojoba scented hair.