I’ve always believed my dreams have something to say.
Not because I think every dream contains a hidden message. Sometimes they’re simply my subconscious sorting through life in ways my waking mind hasn’t yet figured out. Sometimes they don’t make sense at all. But more often than not, when I sit with them, sometimes for days, I discover they’re pointing me toward something I hadn’t seen before.
This dream stayed with me.
Not because it was strange. I’ve had strange dreams my entire life. It was different because it broke my patterns.
For as long as I can remember, I have fought to survive in my dreams. If I’m being chased, I run. If I’m trapped, I search for an escape. If danger appears, I fight with everything I have. My dream self is resourceful, determined, and relentless. I don’t give up.
I’ve spent much of my life doing the same thing while awake. Like many of us, I’ve learned to solve problems, adapt, push through difficult seasons, and keep moving forward. Perseverance has served me well.
That’s why this dream felt so unfamiliar.
I was sitting inside an airplane.
I never experienced a crash. No terror of falling. There was no panic, no screaming, no desperate search for an exit. It was as though I had stepped into the story after everything had already happened.
The Dream
The airplane was simply resting at the bottom of the ocean. The cabin was completely filled with water. A few faceless passengers sat several rows ahead of me. No one struggled. No one appeared frightened. Everything was still.
Then I heard a child’s voice.
I never saw the child.
The voice echoed gently through the cabin.
“Why is it so dark in here?”
It was the only eerie part of the dream, yet there was nothing frightening about it. The voice wasn’t crying. It was calm, sweet, curious.
It wasn’t asking for help. It was simply asking a question.
I remember thinking about where the child might be, but I never searched.
I remember just noticing a blue iridescence that was all around me and feeling a tremendous peace that I wished I could radiate to that child.
The blue was not just any blue. It was a soft ocean blue, my favorite color, and there was a light glow, almost like the sun was just slightly beaming into the cabin. It wasn’t bright or artificial. It had a gentle shimmer that was almost shadow-like illuminating everything around me with the quietest glow.
I remember thinking how beautiful it was.
I wasn’t noticing the airplane being at the bottom of the ocean and the cabin filled with water. I wasn’t feeling trapped or breathless, or fearful.
I just remember beauty.
And then a complete feeling of peace.
There was no need to fight anymore. Not because I had given up. Not because I believed there was no hope. There simply wasn’t any need because I wasn’t afraid.
I was completely at peace. Pure acceptance.
When I woke up, I wasn’t shaken. I was curious. Why hadn’t I fought? Why hadn’t I searched for an escape? Why hadn’t I done what I always do?
Over the next few days, I couldn’t stop thinking about the dream and mostly, of that child’s voice.
“Why is it so dark in here?”
It was an eerie, yet sweet peaceful echo of a voice. I couldn’t figure out why that resonated across the cabin, why it was the only voice in my dream, and how it fit with my peaceful feelings.
Then I thought, what if that voice wasn’t just any child?
What if it was an echo of my own children?
Two of my adult children are entrepreneurs. Like so many others, they have been fighting their way through the financial challenges that followed the pandemic. I’ve watched them work hard, make sacrifices, experience disappointments, and wonder when things will finally get easier.
As a parent, those struggles never leave your heart.
Perhaps that child’s question wasn’t about the darkness inside an airplane at all. Perhaps it was asking the question so many of us ask during difficult seasons of life.
“Why is it so dark?”
Then I realized, it also could have been an echo from my past self. My own struggles over the past 10 years that were curiously questioning the darkness.
Perspective
What I find interesting is that we were both experiencing the exact same place, the child and me.
The child noticed the darkness.
I noticed the blue.
Neither of us was wrong. We were simply looking through different eyes.
And maybe that’s what this dream was trying to teach me.
Perspective doesn’t always change our circumstances, but it can change our experience of them.
How often do we stand in the same circumstances as someone else and come away with completely different experiences?
One person sees only what is missing. Another notices what remains.
One sees uncertainty. Another sees possibility.
Neither person is pretending. Neither is denying reality.
They’re simply focusing on different parts of the same landscape.
Life gives us opportunities to do this every day.
A setback can become the end of a dream, or the beginning of a new direction.
A detour can become an inconvenience, or an unexpected adventure.
A season of waiting can feel like wasted time, or it can become the place where patience, wisdom, and resilience quietly grow.
The circumstances don’t change. The way we see them often does.
That doesn’t mean every situation has a happy ending. It doesn’t mean we ignore grief, illness, disappointment, or financial hardship. It means we leave room for the possibility that there is more to the story than what first meets our eyes.
The blue in my dream didn’t remove the darkness.
It simply reminded me that beauty and difficulty can exist together.
Peace and uncertainty can occupy the same space.
Hope doesn’t always wait at the end of the journey.
Sometimes it’s already present, quietly surrounding us, waiting to be noticed.
I’ve started asking myself a different question since that dream.
Not, “How do I get out of this?”
But…
“What else is here that I haven’t noticed yet?”
Perhaps that’s the real gift of perspective.
The landscape doesn’t always change.
Sometimes…
we do.
Strength & Peace
For much of my life, I’ve believed strength meant perseverance, determination, pushing through, solving problems, finding another way. Those qualities have served me well.
The airplane remained at the bottom of the ocean, cabin filled with water, no way out, yet I experienced overwhelming peace because I had stopped believing I needed to fight my way out.
Strength looks different to me now. Strength means trusting, accepting, being still and allowing ourselves to discover beauty in places we never expected to find it.
As I thought about the dream, another realization surfaced.
How often do we spend our lives convinced that peace exists somewhere beyond the struggle?
Beyond the next promotion.
Beyond financial security.
Beyond healing.
Beyond retirement.
Beyond whatever mountain we’re climbing today.
What if peace isn’t always waiting on the other side?
What if it’s already surrounding us?
Quietly.
Patiently.
Like that impossible ocean blue.
Maybe that’s why this dream has stayed with me.
It wasn’t showing me the end of a journey.
It was showing me a different way to travel through it.
Sometimes life feels dark.
Sometimes all we can see is the depth of the water around us.
But every once in a while, if we’re willing to become still…
we notice the blue.
Weeks from now, I probably won’t remember every detail of the airplane.
But I will remember the child’s voice echoing softly through the water. And I’ll remember that feeling of complete peace with the impossible ocean blue glowing gently around me and seeing the beauty without the need to fight. I’ll remember my shift in perspective that changed in my dreams that night.
Sometimes changing our perspective doesn’t happen while we’re looking out the car window.
Sometimes it happens with our eyes closed.
In the deepest depths of my dream…
I found peace.
I started this blog because I wanted to encourage people to look differently at the world outside their car window. To slow down. To notice beauty. To question assumptions.
Maybe that’s what dreams do. They don’t just replay our days. Sometimes they quietly rearrange the way we see ourselves, our fears, and the world we wake up to the next morning.
