I felt uneasy about my daydreams. They came to me randomly, but they came consistently.

To me they had two no - nos about them: they were about a lady, and that lady wasnt my wife. I therefore looked at it as something bad, as something that was coming from my libido: something carnal as I used to call it, being very religious and conservative back then. The lady was a church member and she was good looking, though not my type. I didnt know why I was daydreaming about her. The daydreams kept popping into my head without my wanting it: in church, in my home, when I was alone, or with other people. I could shut it off, but I couldnt control when they turned on. They started in the middle of a plot, with no beginning and as yet, no real end. All I knew was that she and I found us in a far away jungle, lost and stranded. We crash-landed on a plane. She was scared and we had to find a way home, somehow. So our trek was long and hard. In these daydreams I would sometimes save her from dangerous animals or situations and she learned to be strong and do the same for me when I found myself in trouble. Our appearance also changed. Our tattered clothes were traded-in for skin and fur of animals we had learned to kill. We also got thinner and stronger due to the wild jungle survival lifestyle we had to adopt to adapt and survive. So she got better looking in my daydreams than she was in real life. In real life she was a working mom and housewife raising a teenage daughter and three other kids who played with our kids. I knew her, her husband and her kids. Her husband was not religious and though he attended our church, his heart was not there. She was more religious so she took it more seriously than he. Since I was a minister and overly religious back then, I noted these kinds of things and my goal was to make people as religious as possible, mistaking that for loving God and being a good Christian. My apprehension and opinion about my daydreaming began to change, however, about a month later when this woman came in to talk to the pastor and I about her husband. She found out that he was making sexual advances towards her daughter his adopted daughter. No intercourse had occurred, but some things had been done which he couldnt deny. She like any good mother reported him to the police and they came and arrested him. Afterward, she wanted to talk with the senior pastor and me. She later told me she wanted to talk to me especially, because she felt that I would offer better options and would understand better than the pastor. Her initial goal was to divorce her husband and leave him to rot in jail. She knew the pastors counsel would be against that. The cultural denominational stance was against divorce and she knew that. The pastor also thought that I should handle this so he let me take the counseling sessions and he would only participate in special sessions like when we had to speak to both mother and daughter together. I was young and still inexperienced though, but I had two things going for me: I listened well, and I was theologically broader and more pragmatic in seeking solutions to peoples problems, rather than only be bound by denominational or cultural traditions. In our sessions, she spoke of their marriage, how they raised their kids, how they loved each other and how they had a healthy sexual relationship. She went through the history of their marriage. She didnt really do this to fill me in on details. I think she knew she was doing that, but rather she was thinking out loud and venting and processing through this whole ordeal. She was trying to figure out the reasons for this nightmare. She was

passionate in her feelings and amazingly poetic in her descriptions of her feelings and thoughts about this horrible betrayal as she felt it. My heart is shattered into a thousand pieces. I dont think Ill ever be able to look at him the same again, or love him again like before. I cant believe that this has happened or even that it could happen! It seems like the sun has fallen away from the earthlike the impossible has happened! I listened actively and sympathetically, drawing deep insights into the female psyche. I also realized, generally speaking, how much more holistically women love as compared to how we men love. I didnt try to tell her what she should do. I knew she was free to divorce, if she felt it. I only made sure that she knew thats what the Bible also said, and helped her discern if this is what she really wanted. Of course her love for him made her vacillate and confuse some of the issues. So I would help her see more clearly what the issue really was. As we progressed in counseling, I also visited her husband in jail. He too was heartbroken about his actions and how he had allowed this to happen. He repented and interestingly enough, he saw how badly he had betrayed the trust of his wife and his daughter. He dearly loved his family. He was amazed how he had fallen for what he now clearly saw as nothing but desire, nothing but a smoke screen that had clouded his real feelings and truth about what was important for his family and what was important in his life. I felt for the whole family and especially the daughter. I wont say much about her, but she was a beautiful young teenager who was a good person. If blame was to be put, it would be on the part of the fathers desire that he let get out of hand. It blinded him for a little bit. But once the bubble popped, he really did return to his senses, and to what was best for his family. He was willing to serve out his sentence and only hoped that he could continue helping his family any way he could. In the end, she was able to forgive him. They did not get back together immediately, but only after a long cautious time to allow for frank talks and to live apart to see if thats what they really wanted. Once they got back together, they really were stronger and happier. They also became more spiritual. The daughter also was able to forgive and go on with her life. I remember running into her with my wife years later and she was now married and had a child of her own. She was spiritual and actually had broken out of that conservative denominational culture that was so prevalent in the church back then. Now, I realize what my daydreams were trying to tell me. I wasnt fantasizing about someone elses wife, or lusting. I believe that they were real subconscious insights into what was happening and what was going to happen. Let me explain. By the time I had met them, I already had been doing jail ministry for more than five years. I had already counseled and spoken to all kinds of inmates including those accused of sexual molestation against minors. I believe that those experiences taught me things subconsciously about certain actions, like certain looks given, certain ways of speaking, certain mannerisms, toward objects of lust. I watched the husbands actions towards his stepdaughter, and even though most of the time it was normal and appropriate, there were some things that subtly betrayed what was going on in him. But I blocked out what I thought I was seeing, because I didnt want to accept the fact that these kinds of things

can also happen in church lifeand also I had developed the habit of always trying to think the best of people. I didnt know how to balance these two things yet. Back then, before this crash, I spoke more with the wife, because she would approach me more than him to talk to me. As a good church member, she was active in getting to know us, and staying in touch with her pastors. He wasnt. In retrospect, I realized that his aloofness wasnt non-interest or irreligious. He was hiding. My subconscious caught something of what was going on in the family, but I was unaware of it. My subconscious therefore was trying to tell me something about what would ensue. Im sure I probably had night dreams too, but as I said, since I cant remember anything particularly, I probably blocked these out too and I pay attention to my night dreams. My daydreams, I believe, were telling me in mythical form what she and I were going to go through in anticipation of what was going to happen. I believe that our human minds do that regularly and consistently and have done so since probably pre-historic times. We have definite proof in ancient literature and ancient sacred writings that this type of mental activity went on in ancient times and into modern times. In a sense, the wife and I did go through a jungle. It felt like being stranded after crash landing. We did have to find a way back home, and in the process, we both helped each other make it through, as it were. In the end, therefore, we were in better spiritual shape for it. I wondered why my daydreams didnt include the husband, or the daughter. My guess is that our subconscious, generally speaking, respects the convictions and principles we consciously hold to, as well as working with what it has to work with. I wanted to see the best in them. I knew the wife better than her husband and daughter, since we had more interaction. My subconscious gave me what it was allowed, and did it in a nice way respecting my conscious convictionsand probably catching my attention the best way it knew how. I know our brains and nervous systems (including sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system) work on many levels and our minds are wonderfully complex because of all this neural interaction and activity. I know that we usually absorb much more than what we are consciously aware of when we meet someone, and in our surroundings. We, therefore, usually know much more than what we consciously know and understand. Aware of this insight, I realize that a persons spiritual abilities and values have probably been active long before that person was even aware of them, and lay dormant in their subconscious until they finally became aware of them to develop them further. Even though I may be generalizing, by the same token, we are probably not as sinful or depraved as organized religious doctrine makes us out to be. I dont deny that we sin, and make mistakes, and make wrong choices in life. But I also know that all this wiring and information that is stored, or passes through our very body, works not to deceive or destroy us, but to help us live (better?) and help our species survive. I believe that spiritual part of our mind that all of us are born with is meant for our good and not to lead us astray. Personally, Ive come to realize that God is more in the subconscious and influences us more through the subconscious than the conscious. I have come to trust that. To feel pangs of guilt when the subconscious comes to our aid using normal things to help us, as in my case with this family, is a sign that something is not quite right. Paranoid fear of sinning or disobeying or failing to keep certain rules and

regulations will trip us up, because were distracted into thinking about self-centered punishment and loss, or artificial standards, rather than helping others. We should pay attention to how the I speaks to the me, and maybe we might avoid approaching problems. Im not advocating becoming suspicious of others, because that too is a harmful distraction. But I am for trusting our subconscious that maybe it is pointing to something important and that it is doing it as an act of love. Im sure that husband, wife, and daughter, all had their subconscious speaking to them before and after this problem came on. How much attention they paid to it, I cant say and if I could go back, Id ask them just to verify my gut feeling: that the subconscious is always working and usually working for our good. But I cant verify that. All I can do is describe what went on in me and how I became a wiser minister and person by learning from it.