On February 28, 2011 I had another significant dream. I call it the
Avoid the Crocodile dream
Scene one. I was out swimming in a large body of water. Like a large saltwater sound with some distant surrounding lands and hills several miles away. I had no vessel, no raft, no life jacket. Just me out in the open bay (not unlike my 2008 tsunami dream).
I see other ships in the sound. Large ships. Two ships are near me. One smaller and the other larger. These two ships were comparing themselves to each other like who is bigger kind of competition. It was like the owner of the larger ship had divorced the smaller ship and now was lording it over / dominating them. Then a third ship much larger than the other two was in turn doing the same, dominating over both of the other ships. Like mine is bigger, I am better, I’m more important, I’m more powerful than you.
Scene two, there is a river estuary leading to the sound. I decide to leave this area and swim up river. I was thinking, hey maybe I could get a kayak and this would be a lot easier. But no kayak was to be had, so I just kept swimming. I’m moving up river and I see the back of an alligator or crocodile. I take note and my awareness is heightened – I’m on high alert! I had a good sized hunting knife. My instinct was to defend myself with this knife and deal with the crocs straight up. But, wisdom got hold of me, and I decided the best course of action was instead to continue swimming and just avoid the crocs. I reach the end of the river and make it to a shore. There are crocks all over the beach sunning themselves. I decide my best chance was to tip-toe by them and make way off to the right. To continue to avoid them instead and not stir them from their rest. To quickly get out of there. Exit, stage right!
I took the ships to be companies competing with each other in the marketplace. I had no such ship, no such strength. I was alone and vulnerable. No ship strength. The crocodiles were liken to those in the bible. In Ezekiel, God referred to Pharaoh and Egypt’s people as a crocodile and fish stuck to its scales. In my case, I think the crocs represented the creditors (predators) who were trying to come after us for blood as part of the Egyptian system of slavery. I took it that God was saying don’t tangle your creditors. Avoid them and come to me. I will help you find the way of escape (like in 1 Corinthians 10:13).
So I had no leading to try and jump into action and become our own attorney and defend our inability to make payments. We had agreed not to do anything in our own strength leading up to the summer of 2011. We had let our last attorney go the summer prior in 2010 because we could no longer afford his services. Now we were naked. Just like the dream.
I also remember one summer up on the cape I tried to fix our XBOX 360 myself because we had no money to replace it. After disassembling, cleaning and reassembling and attempting to reinstall the boot software, I still had the “red-ring of death.” What a disappointment. Even using special tools and spending all that time working on it, the project was a failure. I felt like a failure. I was so frustrated. I can’t do anything here! Argh! Later that year I got a refurbished one I think through a Microsoft warrantee program and then the kids also received a second XBOX as a gift that Christmas!
It was a lesson and a check against my own self-strength. God was showing me don’t resort to your survival instinct. Your own abilities. This is not the time for that. Trust me. Once more, it was like God was tying both hands behind my back and asking me to trust Him instead. It went against my instincts to fight. To try harder.
The first fruit of this “let go and let God” strategy was a second mortgage, home equity line of credit. The bank had released the mortgage lien from the land record, and instead sued us for the amount due, which was around $400,000 plus interest and fees. Banks often use this tactic if they are second in line to a foreclosure, because chances are there will be nothing left for them after foreclosure. But it was a big deal being nearly half a million at stake.
Because we had left the case alone and allowed it to proceed to judgment (known as the court issuing a default judgment, given for failure to appear, or failure to answer the complaint), I was expecting the worse. That the court would grant them execution of the judgement against us and the court would take the little money we had from us and/or force a sale of our homes.
Instead, the court ruled for the bank in judgment, but as far as order repayment, they only ordered we pay $35 a week and also assigned no post-judgment interest. I was like – woah – that’s huge. $35 a week is doable and we would have spent way more to hire an attorney to help us. We were praising God because this was far better than what we had imagined (like in Ephesians 3:20)!