To Hell and Back

I awoke before five this morning, my soul jarred by a dream. 

My husband, unaccustomed to my rising early, stirred and asked, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I just had a very troubling dream,” I said, pulling on my pants and sweatshirt.

“About?” he asked groggily.

“Do you really want to know?” I responded.

“Later,” he said, falling back to sleep.

In my kitchen, heading to the coffee maker, I was overcome with emotion as I thought about my dream, and I wept. Pouring myself a cup of coffee, I sat down and wrote.

If you choose to journey further with me, I want to warn you:  it’s not a pretty dream. In fact, it’s downright ugly. But it ends with a dance.

How did I get in this apartment in this dark city? I’m on the rougher side of the city, being held captive in an upper apartment by two strong men. No one knows I'm here and I’m terrified. I’m being held against my will, locked away.  

They have plans for me, these “men.” I don’t believe they were always this wicked, but in my inner spirit I understand that this evil came from their choices of long ago and it has become the only nature they know. 

What are they doing? They are busy making preparations and I know it’s for me, for my pain and demise. I’m frightened and feel small in this apartment. They are talking between themselves, reveling in their planning, getting excited for themselves and the evil they will be dividing between them as they plunge into their hellish scheme with me. 

They are in a small room, outside the bathroom and are organizing instruments of torture and storing them away in cabinets and drawers to use on me later. Oh God, how did I get here? I’m so scared, God. My body breaks out in a chill and a light sweat covers my forehead and spreads beneath my arms. I feel like a small child again, backed into a corner, but this time, the monsters are real. 

They call me over so I can see into the open drawers. They taunt me by showing tools, instruments they will use to torture me and, strangely, several clear plastic bags filled with differently colored salts. I imagine that there are metal handcuffs or shackles somewhere in their drawers, and I wonder if the salt will eventually be used to rub into the open wounds I will surely have from being shackled for days. 

My heart pounds as I anticipate the terrific pain, the sheer humiliation of nakedness before wicked men and the assaults awaiting me.

They are so bent on their insidious plan and so taken with themselves that they are completely void of any care for my fear, my humanity, and my personhood.

What are they doing now? Oh God, they're preparing a dish for me-- “food”. There is a pile on a plate that looks as if it were birthed in the bowels of hell. It’s an unidentifiable pile of dark, bloody, wormy looking mash, and they are preparing this horrific meal for me. I retch at the sight of it. 

The fiends are so busy with their planning that they lose track of me for a few moments. I see there is a large room off the vanity closet where they work, and I manage to slip into it and close the door behind me. I scan the large room and spot a telephone on the floor. My heart leaps with hope, the hope of rescue. Could it be? Could I possibly be rescued from this nightmare? I pick up the receiver and pray for a dial tone. It’s there! I quickly dial “0” and a woman answers. 

“Help me”, I whisper. “I'm in an apartment being held hostage for  bondage and torture! Please send help!” 

“Okay”, she responds, “I'll try to get help to you right away!”

A man has entered the apartment and comes into the vanity closet where the sordid plan is about to be executed. He could be a slick talk show host. He has well manicured hair and is dressed nicely.  He is slight of frame and has a cheesy smile. He seems to think his winning smile alone will turn this situation around. I begin to despair again knowing this pretty man isn’t going to save me. He is not powerful enough and he is not able. He’s simply not qualified for the task of rescuing me from these two, strong men.

Just at my moment of despair, three large, vigorous men storm into this ranking, putrid place. They are a curious trio.  Two older men who I intuit to be brothers, in their 50’s or 60’s, are joined by the young adult son of one of the brothers. One of the older men has a scarred face. They storm in with confidence and an aura of command that shows they are clearly familiar with these sorts of operations. All my fear has melted away. Their bodies and their faces show that they have done this before, that this is no problem for them. These are the Seal Team 6 of rescuers, the elite of the elite.

The one with the scarred face looks at me with a generous smile and kindness in his eyes, and says with gusto, “Didn’t you believe Us when we said we’d come? We ALWAYS keep our word!”

I am amazed at how quickly they got here. I just called moments ago.

The fiendish men begin to stammer and cover up their schemes and point to the plate of  “food”. 

“We were merely making her a meal,” they lie. 

I begin to open drawers and expose their evil plans to my trio of  rescuers. I point out the instruments, the handcuffs, and the multi-colored salts they were preparing for me.

My rescuers bind them up and take them away. When those three men stormed through that door into my living hell, I went from a slave to a free woman in an instant. They did it all! I am free!

And now I am at a festal occasion, a wedding perhaps. The men who rescued me are here and they are dancing in celebration with other people, both adults and children. I feel myself being invited into the dance, and just before I wake up I walk onto the dance floor.

And there it is. I opened the door a crack and invited you into my dreams last night. But why?

When I woke this morning and walked downstairs, I felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude and fantastic relief that I was rescued from the horrors. My heart was light because I was granted freedom and release from captivity. I had been spared from torture, humiliation, and, ultimately, from death. But when I approached the coffeemaker I was overwhelmed when I saw my dream from a different perspective; Jesus wasn’t rescued from the torture. He went to the torture chambers of hell and endured every foul, vile assault that could only have been imagined and created by hell’s curator. And that is when I wept.

His open wounds were made more excruciating by the salt of fiendish taunts, the salt of betrayal by the very ones who shouted his praises a week earlier, and the salt of the humiliation of being utterly and completely forsaken. Alone.

I weep in a new way for my precious Savior’s pain.

We’ve heard it before, how they drove a crown of thorns into His scalp with their clubs, how they tore His clothes from Him, covered His bruised face in their wretched spittle, tore out the hair in His beard, mocked Him, cursed Him, laughed derisively at His nakedness, physically abused Him, beating Him to the point that He was unrecognizable as a human being.

They used cruel instruments against Him, designed for torture, for tearing, slicing, and disfiguring. They drove cold, ugly, metallic nails into His wrists and feet. Oh, the agony of Jesus of Nazareth.

Our gracious, kind Abba, our Daddy-God, paid the price. He came to ransom us from our captors and the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit ALWAYS keep their promises. The scars testify of all He went through for us. 

The coming of Jesus was foretold over and over again in the Old Testament. Hundreds of prophecies pointed to His coming. The prophet Isaiah tells us of the “Suffering Servant” in Isaiah 53. 

Jesus’s torture, execution, and resurrection accomplished for us what we could never accomplish on our own.

We, like the milquetoast talk show host in my dream, don't have the capability to save ourselves. Our “good works” may look slick and polished, but like an inappropriate, cheesy smile at the wrong time, they won’t save us in the end. 

On this Good Friday, as we reflect on Jesus’ betrayal and suffering, I’m thankful we also remember that Sunday is coming. 

And I will dance. Will you?