What is my subconscious dream trying to tell me?

I had the weirdest dream last night. What made it weird wasn't the subject of the dream but how I felt during it. It was so disturbing that it woke me up. I lay there for a while thinking about it, trying to shake the feeling of dread and emptiness. As I thought about it, I came to the realization that the dream was not actually about me losing my phone.

In my dream, one second I had my phone and the next it was gone. I tried to find it. I looked for it. I talked to people about it. I tried to use find my iPhone, but the more I tried to struggle to regain it the farther it got from me. My phone was really important to me. It was filled with photos and videos of our lives. It had a calendar with our future plans. It contained info about our possessions. It contained outlets of communication and venting. It could give me directions or help me look up a bible verse. It helped me keep track of my children.

I could not possibly survive without it. And I couldn't just go out and get a new one. It wouldn't have all of the things my old phone had.

So, I know, is this just Crystal trying to make some point about smartphone addiction or a lesson on how material possessions aren't important. Nope not at all. Although I may need to explore those issues for myself later, because WOW, my subconscious compared Justin to a phone. I may need to go to counseling today.

This morning after that dream, I woke up with the same sense of dread as I did the morning after we lost Justin.  And many of these same things ran through my head. One second he was there and the next he was gone. We were with him in the field. I sat next to him while we ate. All three of the girls went for a ride with him in the combine. I told him bye while sitting in my van and drove off to go back to the house. He was supposed to be there. I felt like I needed to go look for him. He had to be out there. Maybe he was just hurt and needed to go to the hospital.

In that moment of losing him we lost everything we had with him and everything we had planned for the future. And though we still had all of our memories of him, they were all now changed by what had happened. We now look at those memories through the filter of him being gone from this earth forever.

He was the keeper of the finances, the guardian of the passwords and the safe deposit boxes. He was the holder of the titles. He was his own directional guidance system. We joked that we didn't need GPS we had JDL (Justin Dale Leighty). And in general he was an endless source of knowledge. He could store more useless info in his head than I had ever learned.

And the hardest part was losing my best friend. He was my main source of communication. He was the person I wanted to talk to about my bad day, about the kids misbehaving or about what to do in a particular situation. I find myself having trouble with decision making because he isn't there to bounce things off of and work through with.

It is so fascinating how a dream created by our subconscious can give us clarity on a feeling. Although I remember that feeling of being distraught and hopeless, I no longer feel that way. I know that I can survive without Justin, though not without my phone (baby steps). It is not easy. It requires faith and persistence. It requires a village of people supporting, helping and praying and driving children around. Sometimes it is sad and depressing. Sometimes we can look back at the last six months and say look we did that. We made it and we can keep moving forward while glancing backwards and it will be okay.