I Love an Untame Lion

   He’s broken every chain. And freedom,
  how can I resist? His voice sings out my name.

I love it when I remember my dreams. My mind seems to go through seasons of remembering or not remembering. A few nights ago, I dreamed that I was riding bareback on a lion.

Without knowing why, I see symbols in dreams plain as day. When people tell me their own dreams, a symbolic meaning comes to me, usually without effort, and faster if I know the person (and their life situation) quite well. The thing is, and I’ll be the first to admit, this symbolic meaning is based solely on my own interpretation of the dream. That is, it might be way off. So to say that I hear a symbolic meaning every time is useless unless my interpretation of a dream means anything to that person. That said, I have been told before that my symbolic meanings make sense. The most profound instances are always interpretations of recent dreams. It’s a lot more difficult to see a meaning of a dream someone had a few months ago. It’s harder for me to remember what was happening in their life at that time, and to draw parallels.

Some people don’t think symbolically. I didn’t realize that until I’d done a few interpretations. If you dream, for example, about your child as a baby (even if your child is an adult now), it may be a dream about your child, but more likely, it is a symbol and the dream has nothing to do with that specific person. It is a symbol for responsibility, fondness, dependency, etc. This concept is hard to grasp for some, just like math and directions are hard to grasp for me.

I don’t necessarily like the idea of dream symbol books; I think any one object has a vastly different meaning for different people (and different circumstances). I also don’t think each and every dream is symbolic. Sometimes I wake up and know exactly why I had a certain dream. Maybe it was a mix between two movies I just watched or something. Other times, dreams have a different quality and that’s what catches my attention. The elements are simple, and not merely a regurgitation of things I saw earlier this week.

My lion dream was one of these.

It was a very short dream. Like I said, I was riding a lion bareback through a forest. The lion was not talking to me, but it knew I was there. The ride was not gentle; in fact, the most memorable part of the dream was how turbulent the ride was. I was hanging on with all my might, but never actually felt like I might fall off. The lion was leaping and bounding, doing whatever it wanted, and yet I knew it wasn’t trying to throw me off. One thing was for sure: I was not steering it. It stopped on an incline beside a log cabin amidst the dense trees. Out of the cabin, a monster emerged. It was gangly, jagged and black, like a skinny wolf walking hunched on two legs. The lion started to move again, and so did the monster. I didn’t know if it was chasing us or if we were chasing it. I did know that I wasn’t afraid of the beast, but would have been if I were not with the lion. Then I woke up.

I was hit with the symbolism nearly immediately after waking up and recalling the dream. It seems apparent to me that the lion was God, and that the beast was, put vaguely, adversity. These seem to be apt symbols considering my psyche; if my problems were to take on a form, it’d be a beast like that. It was the nature of the lion that made it so clear though. It was in control. It was on my side and concerned for my safety (which is why it was in control, not me). With the lion, I was not afraid. The beast was fearsome, but not compared to the lion; it looked scary and malevolent on its own, but puny beside the lion.

What is left unknown to me is the actual implication of the dream. Is this my relationship with God? Or is this what my relationship with God should be, but isn’t? Is it a glimpse of what I am missing? Because, when I’m honest, surrendering control is hard for me. But, to remember what it felt like to ride the lion… well, it’s just really encouraging to me.