The next session, I get another dream. This a big deal for me, as I don’t ever get dreams. The dream starts out with this homeless man. In the dream I know the storyline. I’m a kid amongst other kids, around 12 years old. There’s this story around the neighborhood, where there’s a homeless man who’s maybe 40 to 45 years old, at the corner. During Christmas time, the rumor is if you go around this homeless man during and yell, Merry Christmas and then turn around and don’t look at him, that he will find dirt or something to write Merry Christmas on the ground. When you turn around, he’ll be sitting there smiling after he writes out Merry Christmas on the street. So in the dream I do that.

With my friends, we all yell Merry Christmas and then turn around and cover our eyes, we don’t know what’s happening, but we’re like looking at each other, snickering, wondering if he’s really going to do it or not. When we feel like we’ve given him enough time to do whatever we think he’s going to do, we turn around, and he actually did it. He’s sitting there, cross-legged, in the middle of this cul de sac street by a hill, and he wrote out Merry Christmas on the street with what looked like soil or dirt, and he’s just super happy. I can tell that he’s getting joy out of this, and all of us are super happy because it’s just funny that somebody would even do that.

He never talks, he’s kind of disconnected, but it’s like the only thing he would do. We find the rumors are true. Me and my friends asked him, “Do you want to go eat? We’ll treat you.”

We know he’s homeless, and it’s Christmas, so we want to give him something because we had a blast with what he was doing. So we took him to a diner; it’s almost like a movie. But as we’re walking to the diner, he stops at a toy store and looks at the window, and he specifically is looking at this purple bear that looks like it would be a toy for a kid, who’s four years old, like a girl’s toy. We’re looking at it, and he’s just staring at it.

We asked him, “What is it that you want?”

He looks at the bear. He doesn’t say anything in the dream. He never talks. As friends, we know that he probably wants that purple bear for whatever reason. So we buy him the purple bear, and then he points to a box by the counter, kind of motioning to us that he wants it wrapped like a gift. We picked up on his cues, so we asked the cashier if we could wrap it in a box. And then he holds it very tight as if he doesn’t want anyone to steal it from him. It’s depressing because he’s homeless, but for some reason, he likes this toy, and we have no idea what it’s all about, but he’s holding it. He’s holding this worthless toy as if it were a treasure that he wouldn’t want anyone to ever steal, and so we’re perplexed by the whole thing.

Anyway, we treat him to a meal, but we can tell all he’s thinking about while he’s eating is this toy, and as he’s eating, he keeps it close to him. He doesn’t want anyone to take it, and he’s a little bit defensive with it. After we finished eating, we asked him, “What do you want to do with this box? Do you want us to take you somewhere?”

We’re kids, so I don’t know what we travel with, but he lets us know that he wants to go somewhere with it. In the dream, we transition to the next scene, and we’re in a neighborhood, and he’s guiding us to this house. We get to this house, and we’re standing there, and he goes up to the door like he’s preparing himself. He’s standing there in his homeless clothes, he’s tattered, dirty, and smelly; he just doesn’t look very presentable, but he’s trying, I could tell that right before he stepped up to the door.

I’m just watching this whole thing as he goes up to the door and courteously knocks. A dad opens up the door, who’s very professional-looking. He has his shirt tucked in, nice clothes, nice pants, nice house. He looks at the man, and you could tell that he’s like, oh, you’re here. He looks at someone in the house, like a wife or something . The wife is looking at him, saying I don’t know why he’s here. But it’s kind of odd like no one knows what he’s doing, but they have this hidden story with each other.

A young girl appears, she’s like 13 years old, and I don’t know who this girl is, but I can tell that when she looks at this homeless guy, she gets super happy and he gets happy, but he doesn’t know how to act. The girl comes up to the door, grabs the man by the hand and pulls him into the house. I could tell that the mom is telling the dad to just let her do it. The man walks into the house, and we’re just watching the whole deal.

The girl sits the homeless guy on the sofa. It’s a nice house; it has a chimney and pictures of their family and all these things, and she has a gift for this homeless man, too. At this point, I’m really curious about what is going on here. He gives her the gift, and she opens it up, and she’s really happy, but you can tell it’s like a doll. It’s like a purple bear, but it’s a little bit too young for her, so it’s an outdated gift. But I could tell that she’s super grateful for it. She gives her gift to the homeless man. He’s surprised that he has a gift as if he never expected it. I can tell by his facial expression. He’s like, wow, a gift for me! He doesn’t talk, he’s just motioning; Oh, wow.

There’s no words in the dream. The girl is also saying, yeah, it’s for you, open it. She’s motioning to it with her body. He opens it and then realizes that it’s a picture frame of him with the girl and the wife. But he’s the dad, and in this picture, he looks like a regular person. He’s all clean cut, looks very professional, very simple, very happy with his family.

I could tell that in the picture frame, the girl has a teddy bear, almost the exact same teddy bear, and the teddy bear is purple. I could tell that the picture is older, like the teddy bear. She’s like four-years-old. I can tell that she’s super happy with the teddy bear.

He looks at his dirty nails while he’s looking at the frame, and he’s looking at himself and his clothes, and it’s almost like this huge revelation of what did I become?

In this dream, I just realized that this is the dad of this girl, and this is his family, and this is the new husband. I don’t know what happened to him, but now he’s homeless. This is his daughter.  I’m looking at the picture, and I realize that this is the same teddy bear she had when she was four. I’m kind of doing the math in my head. She’s about 12 so he’s been absent from his daughter’s life for 10 years. The last thing he remembered from his daughter before he left and became homeless was that his daughter really loved this teddy bear, and maybe he’s thinking in his head, it’s time for a new one or something. At this point in the dream I started crying, like me as I’m dreaming not the character I’m watching.

At this point in the dream I started crying, like me as I’m dreaming not the character I’m watching.

I’m still watching and observing this whole thing in the dream as this kid. He steps out, and he’s not a homeless guy anymore. He looks like he just woke up and snapped out of something. He walks out of the house, almost like he has an urgency in his life now, and he walks past us, but we’re friends at this point. We’re like, okay, whatever, and it goes into the next scene, and now he’s in a suit. He has luggage, it looks like a business suitcase or something, and he’s walking into a place called “Job Center”.

Here we are with him again. He doesn’t even look back, him in his suit, with his suitcase, just walking forward with this new ambition in life that he’s going to get a job, and he’s going to become a dad to his daughter. The dream ends.

It’s 3am at this point, and I’m wide awake, right when the dream ends. I’m so shocked that I got another dream, and it’s like a movie in my head because I never get dreams. I’m just sitting there asking the Holy Spirit, what is this? What is this all about? What is this dream about now? I’m praying, and I’m asking the Lord to reveal scriptures to me.

What I Learned

Some of the takeaways I get from the dream is, again, the Lord is telling me, it’s like a second chance. I felt like my daughter grew 10 years older, and I was like 45, and I missed out. I felt like I was the homeless man who missed out on my daughter from four years old to 10. I woke up with this huge feeling of like, Oh my gosh, I hope I didn’t miss 10 years of my family’s life and my daughter’s life. I knew in the dream that it was my daughter, but I also knew the message was just for my family in general. Like, don’t miss out on making moments with your family. It was clear to me, that from the moment I wake up and I’m with my family again that what they should see is that I’m loving them, I’m connecting with them, I’m giving them eye contact, I’m slowing myself down, I’m affirming them. I’m kissing them, I’m hugging them and just making sure they know that their dad is in their life.

Those are the two dreams that I had, along with all these other revelations, where God was prioritizing me to what is really important right now. I felt that the Lord was telling me not to miss out on what’s important. This is what’s important, your family, and everything slowed down in the Coronavirus lockdown. Even though I may wish that God was speaking to me the way he did before the national lockdown, where we were doing campaigns and seeing tens of thousands of people hear the gospel, doing so many different things with the youth of the country and compassion and all these different things, I felt like the Lord was saying, right now, I’m talking to you about your family and you as a dad, so don’t miss out on this. That was the major lesson.

Now, I’m just learning that, and I’m unpacking that as a young dad on this is what’s important to God, and I have to make sure I don’t miss it. This is just an encouragement, a little thing that God has been teaching me as a young dad. I’m just sharing it from my heart and also praying for all the other people out there that may be reading this that God cares about our family, and he wants us to be involved in our family and not miss the moments.

In both dreams, God was showing me that whether it’s 10 years into my family or maybe something happens, and I lose my family; however, the story is played out, what’s really important is not to miss what millions, if not billions of people have missed their whole life, which is the person in front of them, and, in this case, it’s their family members.

Thank you for reading this, and I’ll keep you in prayer and please keep our family and prayers as we’re a family on mission.