This is the 3rd part of a four part series to read the first part, please click here!

I never, ever returned to the haunting landscape of the grove but the Virgin Mary, would return to me, many decades later, in ways unimaginable. And by the grace of God and supplemented by incessent prayer, I wouldn't run. I believe we see the world through the prism of our own experiences. And thus, for me, an encounter in a grove of trees in Brae Head Farm, New Jersey, when I was 4 yrs old, would form and shape me for the rest of my life. Not long after my encounter in the grove, I had a dream that would become a recurring vision for me for the next 40 plus years.

In this dream, I was 4 yrs old and I was straddling a wooden fence on a farm in New Jersey (but not Brae Head Farm where I lived). I was looking towards a pond that had a barn and silo behind it. The sun was going down in the background. The most frightening part of the dream was my 4 year old self looking at a shadowy figure in the pond. It appeared to be an adult figure who wasn't moving but simply standing there. As I looked at this person, I was worried that they were perhaps drowning and needed help. Then I saw a man and woman walk behind me and towards a light blue station wagon. They said nothing. Actually, no one spoke audibly in this dream. I jumped off the fence, hurried to go into the car with them, and looked back at the shadowy figure in the water. The man went into the driver’s seat. The woman (with brown hair and eyes) sat in the backseat but on the passenger side. If these 2 people were a married couple they would have sat together in the front seat. My 4 yr. old self sat in the way back of the station wagon on the drivers side. As the man began to drive away, I looked back at the shadowy figure and anxiety gripped me relentlessly as we slowly drove away. I couldn't take my eyes off the shadowy person in the water.

Wasn't someone going to help them? And who was the figure in the water? What were they doing in that pond? They were motionless in the water and appeared like they were simply basking in it. And why would this simple dream haunt me and reoccur throughout my life?

As a child, this vision of my dream would flash in my mind roughly once a month without any rhyme or reason. At times, if I was near water it would also occur. I had friends try to help me make sense of it because it occupied so much of my interior life. I was simply perplexed about why this dream would continually follow me for decades. My friends had a multitude of suggestions...
Perhaps it was an accidental drowning? a traumatic event? or other scenarios? I even looked in newspapers from the time period to try to figure this dream/vision out, to no avail. And none of the explanations rang true to me.

When I was in my early 40's, I saw a spiritual director who had a background in dream interpretation. She gave me the tools in which to figure out my lifelong dream. I went home and within 2 minutes had it figured out. I was stunned!