Nothing pulls at the soul like a dream of a loved one who’s walked too soon, not only touching your life with their memory, but then also reminding me of my own ephemeral nature.
Mayslick, Kentucky
I could see, through the blur of my eyelashes, a time before I was born, my papaw’s journey to one of the climaxes of his own life, with my mamaw by his side. The Appalachian minister himself landing in the Holy Land, his hands touching the stone walls and the many feet strolling through dust. The visuals were not as strong as the feeling of homecoming and curiosity, in a contraction of returning to a place that his physical body had never touched, the soul. I could feel him well up with fullness in his being, and how it still lives in my mamaw, that she’s been carrying some thirty years later after his return to spirit. Her quiet wisdom holding him steady in her heart, still overflowing with the memories and the lives they touched together.
He was the first man I saw cry, again and again. Not from pain, but from being touched deep within. His deep voice filled with a conviction that not all were ready to hear, still learning and moved by the changing world around him. He reminded many to hold hands with Jesus as the world progressed. Without going against God’s plan, may I say, a life taken too soon. A lot can be said about someone who struggled with their health and wellbeing, yet still devoted himself to touching the world at his depth, not just in a sermon, but in the lives he walked through and the seeds he planted within us.
It’s rare that a dream can feel so real and have the power to make me weep the way I did when I woke this morning, not only in remembering him, but through the message the dream revealed, that I pray is only a metaphor to my days on this earth and the depth we share in my heart. I saw his pain in me, and a calling to get going, that it won’t be long. Surely the urgency is only a metaphor, and that the reckoning is subliminal. One can only hope. Whether it was a visitation or simply memory, the essence of time and depth were vivid. That being touched by someone beyond the heart’s fence and into the mind, as I awaken his conviction within myself, that no matter the outcome, I know that he is with me now and always.
God abides in the recollection, including the memories I did not witness, the pain that connects me to being human, and there are those people who had more to give. Let it remind me to not be afraid, but to boldly embrace the layers of who I am and how we will touch the world together. Not within a sermon, but a story woven through inheritance, not the kind that people quarrel over like land or money. The kind that can’t be bought.
I remember my papaw tearing up as we watched a whale swim to freedom in a movie. I think his tears would be the same for a Christian heart with no church to call home, but nature and the people who walk in and out of this life. My mamaw reminded me you don’t need a church to minister to people, and in my experience I’ve learned you don’t need a sermon. You only need to share your story, because there is room for all of us.
I hope that my dream that woke me up into my fit of tears and dry heaves, as I long for a drink from his well of knowledge and love, reaches anyone who has silenced the voices of the past that tells them to share what’s on their heart. That you know there is a place for you at the altar, even if there are no walls to hold you.
You are held.
© 2026 Phillip Nathaniel Saunders. All rights reserved.