Is It Only Paper?
Connie Goulding
Nov. 2011
I would like to tell you of the journey that I traveled when I was young.
I was newly married and I had a great desire to have a family. I was the eldest child in a family of ten children (the crash test dummy). For me marriage was children and family. My husband and I prayed that we would be blessed with children, but it didn't happen right away. Still we hoped and planned. One day a lady showed me some of the baby booties that she had made for her grandchildren. I asked her if she would make two pair for me. I told her I needed two pair because I was going to have a set of twins. I don't recall that she doubted me at all, she just made two pair of yellow and white baby booties and brought them to me.
Time went by and still no babies. During that time I had a dream and in that dream I saw two little boys and then a little girl. Finally after doctors visits, old lady's advice and home remedies, my husband and I asked our bishop to give us a priesthood blessing. Nine months later our first son was born.
He was such a joy, and the light of our life and we enjoyed him so much that we decided to have another baby right away. Eighteen months after the first, our joy doubled and our second son was born. Life was busy with two little boys and on top of that we decided to build a house. Just before we moved into our new home we found that we were going to have yet another baby and I was sure that this baby would be our little girl. She was due to arrive just nineteen months after our second son. Our oldest would be barely three years old.
Everything went pretty well with my pregnancy, no complications or hints that anything might be wrong until two weeks before my baby was due. At my regular check-up the doctor told me that the baby was getting really big. He was worried that the baby would be too big for me to deliver and he wanted to start labor before the baby got any bigger. He couldn't locate the baby's head and didn't want to start labor until he knew how the baby was situated. Then almost as an afterthought he said, “Before we start labor I think I'll send you for an ex-ray just in case the baby is breach.” (That was before ultra sound was available).
My mother was with me that day and she went with me to get the ex-ray. We waited until the doctor came back from his lunch to look at the results. He was still munching on a doughnut when he finally came into the room where the ex-ray tech had hung the film on a light board. He flipped the switch and turned on the light.
I could identify my bones, but the rest looked like a jumble to me. I couldn't tell what was what. The doctor was smiling as he pointed out the spine and the cranium of my baby. Then he pointed to the second baby. Two little babies and they were both breach. Two babies face to face, they looked like they were having a boxing match. Seven days later I went from being a mother of two little boys to a mother of three little boys and a girl.
My life was busy. Babies take a lot of time, two twice as much as one, toddlers at least eight times as much as newborns.
I learned so much about motherhood and child care from my mother, but as talented and amazing as she was, she was beginning to have some challenges in her life. She was falling into the depths of depression and a full mental breakdown. Her mental collapse shook me to my very foundations. Through that busy and emotionally difficult time my sisters helped me a lot, I don't know what I would have done without them.
Reality was beginning to stare fantasy directly in the face. I went from dreaming of holding a sweet little bundle of joy in my arms to wondering if I would ever again get a full nights sleep. From decorating a sweet little nursery with beautiful rocking cradle filled with soft blankets and quilts, to four little busy bodies pulling out every drawer in their dresser, scattering clean clothes everywhere and painting their walls with pooh. From reading romance novels all night and sleeping in until noon, to getting up to find the twins had broken two dozen eggs on the kitchen floor to make a slippery slide. From saying things to my visiting teachers like, “my kids don't write on the walls,” to scrubbing off the pencil where the wall was black in between every slat of their crib the very next day.
I had dreams of rosy faced little cherubs, beautifully dressed, not one hair out of place. They were beautiful, I loved them, they were my life. But there were times like the time I found that number one son had painted number two son green with a magic marker. Not just a little bit, but all over his little blond head, around his eyes, all over his face, down his arms and on the palms of his hands. And they didn't stay dressed, even though they could get four wearings out of a shirt, front, back, inside-out front and back, they loved to strip off and run around in their Batman underwear. Most of the time they wore their undies back-wards so that they could see the cool pictures of Batman that were printed on the seat.
I went from sometimes having a clean house with things in their places to piles of laundry, toys in the bathtub and to finding snow boots full of milk in the middle of the living room floor. And I went from being a young girl with stars in her eyes who married her high school sweetheart and rode off into the sunset in his turquoise blue Ford Mustang, to being a wife and mother that others depended on for so many things. I went from being the one my sweetheart looked at with loving eyes to being replaced by meatloaf and a bowl of mashed potatoes when he came home and asked “What's for dinner?”
My husband worked hard as a mechanic. He put in many long hours and in my immaturity and being self centered I didn't see that was his way of showing his love and commitment to me and our growing family.
I began to have an irritated attitude. Didn't he see the things I had to put up with everyday? Didn't he know I was up all night with a baby who had an earache? Didn't he know that the twins were teething? Didn't he see that I was overwhelmed with laundry and toys and crying babies? I began to entertain thoughts like, “He doesn't have a clue how hard my life is. I could do this better by myself.”
Then one night I had a dream. In this dream I was driving my husband's 67 Ford Mustang, the first car he had ever owned, the one that he bought his senior year in high school. I was leaving him and the life we had together. One of my sisters was with me and my children were in the back seat.
As we were traveling down a long straight road we saw a large flock of beautiful white birds along the side of the road. Having never seen birds like these I stopped the car to look at them. Wanting to get a better look at the birds we got out of the car and walked nearer to them. The birds didn't fly away and we were able to get very close to them. After looking at the birds we turned around and started to return to the car. The car was no longer where we left it. While we were looking at the birds, a man had taken the car to a shop about a block away.
By the time that I was able to get to the shop with my little children, some were men sanding the paint off of the car. I was very upset and I tried to stop them from ruining the paint on the car. I pleaded with the man who had taken the car and who was in charge, to put the car back the way that it was. I begged him, saying, “This is my husband's car. You can't do this. This car means a lot to him. You have to put it back the way it was.”
The man finally agreed to stop sanding the paint off of the car and to return it to it's original condition, but he told me that it would take time to do this and suggested that I take my children to a nearby large building and wait while his men worked on the car.
Inside the building there was a gymnasium where there were many people watching a basketball game. I sat for awhile watching, but I wasn't interested in the game that everyone was so intently involved in watching.
I left and went into a smaller room that was off to the side of the larger one. The room was much like a foyer. There were couches on opposite sides of the room and there were several doors that opened into the room. My children were seated on the floor playing.
The man who had taken the car and several of his helpers came into the room to tell me how the work on the car was going. He was a handsome man and he paid a lot of attention to me. He said very flattering things to me and sat very close to me on the couch. I began to feel an attraction to him because he made me feel beautiful and desirable.
After a few minutes he got up and went to the far side of the room and got a beautiful leather bound book. It had a red leather cover with gold letters imprinted on the front. It was a very large book, measuring about twenty-four by twenty-four inches square and was about eight inches thick. He again sat down next to me on the couch and laid the book on my lap.
I opened up the book and inside were the most amazing and wonderful things. I had never seen such a book before or after this dream in the real world. It's hard to explain the things in the book and the closest I can come to describing them is the beautiful fold out decorations that some stores hang from the ceilings at Holiday time, or a pop-up book. But it was even more than that. The things in the book seemed magical, they were wonderful and amazing. As I turned the pages each page was more wonderful and beautiful than the last.
The man sat close to me on the couch pointing out different things in the book and whispering things in my ear. As I reached to turn another page I happened to look up and I noticed the man's helpers. They were standing across the room and their attention was on my little children who were sitting on the floor. They stood there whispering to each other. Suddenly I knew that they had designs on my children and that the man on the couch and the book were a distraction.
I awoke with a terrible feeling. It was a dark and malevolent feeling that left me afraid for my children.
I believe that everyone has within themselves the interpretation of their own dreams. Some of the dreams I have had are just dreams and I don't see anything special about them, but others leave me unsettled and feeling that there is something that I might learn. I see kind of a visual symbolism of things in my dreams.
In this dream my thinking put me on the road to taking my children and leaving my husband. Letting things run through my mind like, “I could do this better by myself” and “ He just doesn't understand me,” put me on the road to leaving him and destroying my marriage.
The car, a vehicle to get from one place to another, represented my marriage. I had taken it down a road without my husband and he cared about it and what happened to it.
The long straight road was a route of where I could travel in this life.
The man and his helpers who had taken the car when I was distracted and not paying attention were the Tempter and his helpers.
It took me a long time to decide what the white birds represented. The birds were heavenly creatures who were along the route I was taking that distracted me from the path that I was on. They allowed me to stop and gave me time to change my direction or correct the errors of my thinking. I've come to believe that there are Heavenly influences that are put in our paths to guide us and enlighten us and give us a second chance.
The large building represented the world and was a place where many people were focused on entertainment.
The beautiful red book was filled with wonderful and beautiful things. They were the things of the world and they can become bedazzling and addictive, but they were only paper and not of a eternal nature.
As the Tempter sat by my side and whispered in my ear, flattering me, and showing me the beautiful book, I almost forgot about my children. It was only when I saw the look on the faces of his helpers as they made plans for my children that I was shocked awake.
I knew that it was the thoughts that I entertained that put me on the road that would put my marriage in a dangerous place and without the protection of a strong marriage and loving family my children would be left more exposed to the Tempter and his helpers.
This dream instantly changed my life. It made me realize that there is nothing that I love more than my family and I didn't want to do anything that would put my children in the Tempter's path.
Many times, when life gets hard and I'm feeling overwhelmed I've asked myself, “Are errors in my thinking putting me on the wrong path?” “Am I a good example to my children?” “Are the things that distract me or entice me of an eternal nature or are they only paper?”
