Listen with your life in motion.

A decade ago, I went from Connecticut to New York and walked around outside in New York, having a wonderful time for a few hours in April, and then I took the ferry to New Jersey for an outside wedding. So then I was outside for several more hours and it was fabulous. And then eventually we went inside.

And then the next morning for breakfast, I had honey oat cereal with a huge bowl of soy milk. And while I was having the cereal, I was a little nauseated, which I thought was weird, but I just powered through. It did not make any sense to me, so I just went with it.

And then I got on the train to go from New Jersey to New York to Grand Central. And then at Grand Central, I bought some plum juice along with something to eat, because by then it was lunchtime, and I took it onto the train with me to go home to Connecticut, from Grand Central to New Haven, Connecticut. And I got on the train and I felt like my ears just felt weird, and I was like, Oh, why does the train not start moving? I just want to go home.

So then eventually the train started moving, and a few other things started happening. I started itching a bit, maybe I started to have a hive here or there. So then I realized, Oh, I am having an allergic reaction to something. I do not know what. There is nothing that I know of that I am allergic to that I would have exposed myself to. And so I just wished the train would get home sooner. And then eventually, I started to be a little bit hoarse. And so by the time the train conductor came to take my ticket and I was trying to explain to him, you know, Can I keep my ticket? I am going to get off at the first stop in Stamford and go to the pharmacy and get some Benadryl. So can I just keep my ticket since I am going to get back on and go to New Haven?

And he did not understand a word I was saying because I was hoarse by then. I was in medical school at the time, and the passenger on the train next to me was a college student who wanted to, I believe, be a pediatrician. So we had talked a bit about that and she knew what was going on. So she told the conductor that I wanted to keep my ticket so that I could get off the train and go to the pharmacy and get some allergy medication. Because, you know, I still felt completely fine and this had never happened to me before. It was not making a lot of sense, and so I did not really grasp the gravity of it yet.

And the conductor offered to stop the train at another town, closer than Stamford, that was not an official stop, so that I could get off sooner if I wanted. And I thought, No, I do not want to inconvenience an entire train of people. And so I said, No, I would be fine, because I felt fine overall, even if I was a bit hoarse to them.

And so then the conductor was so great. He got on the intercom and he asked people throughout the train if they had any allergy medication that they could bring to car C. And so people came from throughout the train bringing Allegra and Claritin and Benadryl. They lined up to bring it to me in car C.

And I have never cried when telling this story before, but I am crying now because God is showing me how much that symbolizes, how He knows in advance what we need, and He already puts in place what we need, and He already equips us for what we need, and He already puts in others what we need, and He already puts others around us that we need, even when we do not even know they are there, and even when we do not even know what we need ourselves, and even when we do not even know we need them, and we do not even know what is happening, and we do not even know the gravity of what is happening. We do not even know the gravity of what God is doing. We do not even know the gravity of what the enemy is planning, but we serve a God who knows all of it.

And so we do not have to, and He never expects us to.

And so I took someone's Benadryl with the rest of the plum juice, and the train continued, and that Benadryl was probably one of the things that was instrumental in keeping me alive.

Soon after we passed the town that the conductor had offered to stop in, I started to realize that it was getting a little bit hard to breathe. And so I leaned my head against the window in the train and I texted my other friends from medical school and I wrote, Man, this is some way to go. I wish I still had that phone because I feel like that would be such a message to keep and memorialize and remember. And the significance is to remember what God has done, what God does, what God did then. He has always been faithful yesterday, today, tomorrow, and forevermore. He is always faithful. And that was not my time to go.

When the train stopped at Stamford, I was so relieved because it was getting harder and harder to breathe normally. The conductor had offered to have an ambulance meet me at the train station, which was very kind of him, and I am glad that he did. And that is another example of how God puts people in our paths to help us and support us, even when we do not know what we need, and we do not know what is possible, and we do not know what could be done, and we do not know what God has done before, and we do not know what He is going to do, except if we stay in His presence and His glory, He will show us. And we get to be a part of it. This is the first time God showed me these revelations with this story that He brought to mind right now.

When the EMTs met me at the train station, we then had to walk up a ton of stairs at the train station, and they were a little bit upset, and they said, We do not know why the conductor did not stop at the prior town, which is the town that the conductor had offered to stop at. They said, We do not know why he did not stop there, because if he had stopped there, we would have been able to bring the stretcher to the train, rather than have you walk up all these steps.

So sometimes God will bring things or people to us with suggestions that we may not think are important, or we may not perceive the value of. But God knows why they are there, and God knows the true value of it beyond what we could ever see, speak, or imagine.

My response to the EMTs was, I told them I would be okay, in a hoarse voice, but they understood me.

In the ambulance, they gave me epinephrine by injection, as well as albuterol to help me breathe, and they also gave me oxygen via a mask, and they had a stethoscope listening to my lungs. And I said to them, Can I borrow your stethoscope? in a hoarse voice, and they said, Sure, why? And I said, Because I am a medical student.

I want to hear my lungs. So they let me have the stethoscope, and I listened to my lungs, and it was the most incredible wheezing I had ever heard in my entire life.

And they took me to the emergency room. In the emergency room, I heard to one side of me in another room that they called trauma one. There was a child who had fallen out of a tree and broken their arm. On the other side of me, in the room next to me, I heard them say trauma three, and it was a guy who had become injured in a motorcycle accident. And so when they came into my room, I said to them, Am I trauma two? And they said yes.

And we do not always recognize the gravity of what is happening around us, or the gravity of what is happening in us. We might feel fine, and we are not fine. We might feel healthy, and we are not healthy. We might feel safe, and we are not safe. We might feel like we have it all under control, and we have got this ourselves, and we can take care of this ourselves, and we do not. We might not recognize how urgent our situation is. We might not recognize how dangerous our situation is. We might feel more at peace or at rest where we are, when it is not where we are supposed to be, and it is not where we are supposed to go.

But God knows. And when we are in Him, He will always take care of us. And He will always guide us. And He will always lead us. And He will always bring us into our destiny. As we follow Him and abide in Him and trust Him, He will take care of us.

And so they came into my room and they told me I was trauma two. And they gave me more epinephrine through my IV, and they gave me Pepcid through my IV, and methylprednisolone, which is a steroid, through my IV. And when somebody gets all of that steroid and epinephrine, the body does not know what to do with all that, and so then the blood sugar goes up, even if the blood sugar is usually normal, because the body thinks it is a huge stress response and you need a whole lot of sugar right now to give you all this energy to do what you need to do.

And sometimes God will put His power into our IV to give us all of this energy to do what He is calling us to do. And He will give us supernatural energy and supernatural power and supernatural authority because of who He is and who we are in Him, in Christ. And so He will give us what we need. He is who we need. He is our source of strength and power and health and life. He is our Savior.

And then, because my blood sugar went up, I needed insulin to bring the blood sugar down, and I had never needed insulin in my life, and I will never, by the grace of God, need insulin in my life. But I needed insulin to get the blood sugar down because of that surge of power and energy.

And so when God gives us His supernatural energy and supernatural power, He will give us the support that we need to sustain us. He will bring the people, things, and support we need. He has already equipped us and prepared a way, even when we did not know there was a way, even when we did not think there was a way, even if we did not know what to think about, what to pray about, what to ask for, because we did not see what was up ahead, but He did. And He is always prepared. He is sovereign. He is supreme. He is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. So then they gave me the insulin to bring my blood sugar down.

And then I called my friend who lived in New Haven, my friend who has been my friend since we were freshmen in college at 17 years old. I called her, and she came to Stamford. She drove to Stamford and picked me up and took me home. I did not even live in New Haven. I lived probably an hour north of New Haven. And so she drove about an hour south to Stamford and picked me up and then drove me a couple hours north to where I actually lived.

God will bring people into our lives to support us, to give us what we need, even when we do not know what we need, and even when we cannot provide it ourselves, because we are not meant to be self-sufficient. We are meant to be in community. We are meant to let other people love us. We are meant to love other people. We are meant to be a part of God's body, and we are meant to show the world what it means to live in love and community with each other. For they will know we are Christians by our love, the Word says.

And so, the thing is, I did not know why that happened to me. I did not know why I had such an incredible reaction to literally anything. I had no idea what it was, and so I did not really know what to do to prevent it again. I just figured it was one of those things that would happen and you do not really know why, and hoping it would never happen again. Because all those things I mentioned to you I had done before. I had obviously been outside for hours in April before. I had probably been on a ferry before. I had been at an outside wedding before. I had had soy milk before. I had had honey oat cereal before. I had had plum juice before. There was nothing I did that I had not done before.

I had never had any response like that or reaction to any of those things before.

So sometimes in life things will come up, things will happen, things that are unexpected, and you do not even understand, and you do not know where to turn.

But God knows. And He will bring people who can help enhance your understanding. He Himself, through His Holy Spirit, can enhance your understanding, and He can bring other people around you to help enhance your understanding and give you what you need.

Six months after this event happened, I had a visit with my primary care provider, who was one of my faculty in medical school, one of my teachers in medical school, and during the visit it happened to come up. He asked me if there was anything he did not know about from the past year. I said, Oh, yes. There was that time that I was in an ambulance and the emergency room. He wondered why I had not thought to bring it up myself and let him know this had happened to me.

There are people that God puts around us who care about us and want to help us and want to support us and want to see us succeed and, more importantly, want to see the advancement of the kingdom. And it is important. It is vital that we collaborate with these folks in what God is doing, that we recognize that we are partnering together and co-laboring together in the kingdom, and that God never typically intends for us to do it all ourselves.

And so I told him about the ambulance and the trip to the emergency room and how I was Trauma Two. He prescribed an epinephrine pen for me, and he referred me to an allergist. And he decided that I did not have to go on not knowing what that was due to.

And so I went to the allergist, and I sat there with tears silently running down my face as they pricked my arms ten times on the left and ten times on the right to test me for allergy to every pollen in the north of the United States and every pollen in the south of the United States. Every tree, every plant that people could be allergic to in the entire country. Proteins in the pollen. And they also tested me for mold and dust and animal dander. They were committed to figuring this out.

And God will put people in our lives who will contend on our behalf and will press into God on our behalf and will press against the gates of hell and will advance against the enemy on our behalf. And God puts angels in our lives and angels in our paths. The scripture says that the angel of the Lord encamps around him who trusts in Him and defends them. God does that for us. God loves us. He takes care of us. And so as tears silently flowed down my face, I let them do the testing. I let them help me and contend on my behalf to figure out what was going on.

Then at the next visit with the allergist, she was very kind, very sweet. She had listened to my story. She had asked about every single detail. And that is why I told you every single detail. I probably told her a lot more details, but the details I told you are the details I want you to remember, the details I want you to recognize, because it is so important for what we are learning.

She also asked me if there was anything that I ever eat or had eaten that I felt weird or any sort of strangeness with. And I said, Yeah, I guess when I eat walnuts, I have this, like, oily taste in my mouth. It is so hard to explain, but nothing beyond that. And so it is not like I stay away from walnut because of this weird oily taste in my mouth.

And I told her that I had walked around for three hours outside in New York in April, and then took the ferry over to New Jersey for the outside wedding.

And then the next morning I had the honey oat cereal with a huge bowl of soy milk. And while I was having the cereal, I was nauseated, which was weird. And then at the train station, I had plum juice, and then on the train, I took somebody's Benadryl with the rest of the plum juice.

So then she told me about something called oral allergy syndrome or pollen food allergy syndrome. And most people do not really know anything about it, and it is sort of rare. And what happens is when somebody is really allergic to a certain kind of plant or tree, there are a few different variations of it, a few different plants or trees that are part of this. And so if somebody is really allergic to one of them, they can potentially also cross-react to the protein, the allergen in herbs or vegetables or fruit that are similar to the allergen, the protein in the tree or the plant that they are allergic to. And even though it is not that common, when people have it, most likely the tree they are most allergic to is birch.

So with the test results, the allergy testing that I had done of me, for me, the results showed that I am allergic to every single tree or plant that one can be allergic to in the United States. I am allergic to all the tree and pollen that they test for from the north. I am allergic to all the tree and pollen that they test for from the south. I am allergic to mold. I am allergic to dust. The one thing I am not allergic to is animal dander.

Now I understood why whenever I would sweep my room in college, I would be sneezing and coughing, because I am literally allergic to dust. That is why I hate having dust around, because I am literally allergic to it.

And that is why, after walking around for three hours in April at the peak of the birch tree season in New York, for three hours I primed my body, breathing in and out, taking in birch pollen.

There are things that we allow into our lives, there are things that we allow into our bodies that are not meant for us. There are things we allow into our lives, there are things that we allow into our bodies that are not what God has designed for us.

There are things that we allow into our lives, there are things we allow into our bodies that were never meant to touch us, that are not good for us, and yet we allow ourselves to, unknowing or knowing.

For me it was unknowing, but what are you going to do? Stay inside? Stay outside? There are lots of decisions to make, but I did not even know. And so there are things that we let into our lives, that we let into our bodies, that we let into our eyes, that we do not even know or understand.

But then when God opens our eyes, when God shows us the truth, when God shows us the evidence, then it is up to us to decide what to do. It is up to us to then determine what is good, what is right, what is true, what is faithful, what is meant to be part of our lives, what is meant to be part of our hearts, what is meant to be taken into our lives, what is meant to be allowed into our bodies, what is meant for our eyes to see.

We get to decide who we are going to be. And once we know, then we are expected to take authority, authority over our bodies, authority over our minds, authority over our lives, and let the Holy Spirit guide our spirit.

She explained to me that my biggest allergy is birch, and my second biggest allergy is oak. Birch pollen is prominent in April in the northeast of the United States, including New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.

I was being primed that whole season, and then that day when I chose to walk around outside in New York for three hours, and then be outside for more hours in New Jersey for that wedding, I chose to expose myself to the biggest threat to my life in the realm of allergy, and I did not even know. And God sustained me.

In our lives, there are things that we will go into, there are things we will experience, there are places we will find ourselves, and we do not even know what the risk is. We do not even know what the threat is. We do not even know what a danger is. We do not even know when we are walking into the enemy's territory. We do not even know when we are in the midst of warfare. But you know that as a Christian, we are in a spiritual battle that is already been won. We find ourselves in the midst of warfare, and yet we are already more than conquerors through Christ Jesus our Lord. We do not fight alone. There was another man in the fire. There was one in the fire that has more power and majesty and authority than we often understand that we have.

We often do not understand the power and authority and majesty that we have, because God is our Father, and we are co-heirs with Christ. And we do not understand that. We do not grasp that.

So my body was primed for hours and hours outside at the peak of the birch tree season in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut.

And then the next morning, I had a huge bowl of soy milk. Not a little bowl, not a regular size, but a huge bowl of soy milk with my honey oat cereal. I had had both of those things before. So when I was nauseated, I did not think much of it. But when I was nauseated, it is because the allergen, the protein, the allergen in birch cross-reacts with the protein in soy. And so that huge bowl of soy milk was like drinking a huge bowl of birch pollen. So clearly, I had not had enough and I wanted more.

Sometimes we do not understand when we are bringing things into our lives or into our bodies that are not meant for us, things that are not safe for us, things that are not healthy for us. And it may not seem like much, but when it combines with other things, it can be.

The enemy is like a roaring lion seeking to kill and devour, destroy. He will come in ways that are not always obvious, that are not always flamboyant, ways that are often counterfeit, that seem fine, ways that feel fine, or feel great. But they are not great for us in that moment or ever. And sometimes it is a combination of things. Sometimes it is what we call a slow fade, one step here, one step there, one step closer.

See, fear and faith are sort of like two sides of the same coin. One side of the coin, you are believing. You are believing in what God can do for you. The other side of the coin, you are believing in what you are choosing to fear.

And so in the same way that God calls us to take one step at a time in what He is calling us to do, at times, when He will, at times, only show us enough light to see what is by our feet so we can take that next step. On the other side of the coin, if we turn and go in the opposite direction from where God is leading us, then we can take one step further and further away from Him, and one step closer into what the enemy wants. And so sometimes we do not realize that something that does not feel right, that something that is not right, is actually very wrong.

And so that nausea that I had when I was having that huge bowl of soy milk was because my body was reacting to the soy in the milk, in the context of hours, hours of deluge of birch. And my body was trying to tell me it was not right for me. It was not meant for me. See, there is nothing inherently wrong with soy milk in general. I had had soy milk before. People have soy milk and do not have any problems. But in that moment, soy milk was not meant for me. Soy milk was not safe for me. And I did not know. And so I kept having it.

And had I paid attention to the signal, had I recognized how to be sensitive to a change that is happening, a shift that is happening, maybe I would not have had the whole huge bowl of soy milk.

And so spiritually we have to remain in tune. We have to remain aware. Even if it is something that seems like it should be fine, or something that is fine for other people, it does not mean that in that season it is fine for us. If that does not make sense to you right now with the translations, it is because I am speaking in tongues.

I am so grateful to God for how He chooses to teach us, to train us, to love us, to create us, to protect us, to defend us. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him and defends them. And so even as I was having a little bit of nausea, as I was having that cereal, God was defending me. God was protecting me, even if I was going to be Trauma Two. God had the authority.

And so when I went to the train station and had something to eat and had the plum juice, see, I did not know that plum juice that I grew up drinking. I did not know that plum juice has a protein in it, has an allergen in it that cross-reacts with birch. I did not know that after having been in birch for so many hours, my body did not need plum at that moment. Plum was not right for me in that season. There is nothing inherently wrong with plum. Plum would have been fine for somebody else, but plum was not right for me in that season. And then on the train, I took somebody's Benadryl with the rest of the plum juice.

When God brings us what we need, when God brings us what will save us, we do not always recognize it for what it is. And when there is something in our lives that is not quite right for us in that season, we do not always recognize what that is. But God knows, and He sees, and He hears. And that is why He tries to tell us. And that is why He sends us what we need and who we need.

He sent me people lining up in car C to help me. And I took the Benadryl from one of them, and I drank the plum juice with the Benadryl.

And so sometimes we do not even know what we are doing to ourselves that is not quite right for us. Even when we are trying to grasp hold of what is right for us, like right now the vision that God is giving me is of a woman who is on the floor, and she is reaching her hand up and reaching out over yonder to hope, reaching out over yonder, reaching out in desperation, reaching out for a glimpse of glory, reaching out to touch the hem of His garment.

And so I took the Benadryl with the rest of the plum juice, because that is what I had and that is what was in my hand. And so in seasons, we will not recognize that what we have in our hand may not be right for us in that moment.

But once we know, then we get to decide: what do we have in our hand?

The reason I say it that way is because when Moses was standing at the burning bush, God said to him, What do you have in your hand? And then when he told God what he had in his hand, God told him what to do. And when he obeyed and did what God said to do, then he saw it transform. And God used that through him to transform the story and history of the kingdom of Israel and of the kingdom of Christ, and to transform our own lives.

And so we have to learn how to recognize what do we have in our hand. I had the rest of the plum juice in my hand, and I used it to take the Benadryl. But now I know that plum juice is not necessarily right for me, and it was not right in that season.

And so now I know that in the northeast of United States, I will react even more strongly to various herbs and fruits and nuts and vegetables because of birch. And now I know that in the southeast of the United States, I will react more strongly to various herbs and fruits and vegetables. And I know that even without any of those, I will react simply because of oak. And so in the northeast, it is birch; in the southeast, it is oak.

There are different seasons in our lives, and there are different places to which God will call us, and different moments in which He will greet us. And we have to choose to be sensitive to those moments and to those callings and to recognize the different seasons that God will take us into and through, and the different components of our spiritual, physical, emotional, intellectual lives that are meant for us and the things that are not. Everything is not meant for us.

In Corinthians it tells us, All things are permissible, but not all things edify. And so what it is saying there is that there are certain things that might be legal, it might be okay for somebody else, it might have been okay for you at some point, but it is not for you anymore. It is no longer who you are. It is no longer where you are called to be. It is no longer your portion.

And we have to press into the Lord. We have to press into the Holy Spirit to recognize what that is, what those are, when that is, when those are, because He knows what we do not. He is omniscient. He is omnipotent. He is omnipresent.

So what does this have to do with interpreting dreams? Do you see how every component of the story that I told you had a purpose? Do you remember that I mentioned when I got on the train, I felt weird? My ear felt weird, and I just hoped the train would start so I could leave and go home. The reason I tell you that part of the story is because had I known what was happening, had I known what was going to come, had I known why my ear felt strange, had I known why I felt weird, I would have gotten off the train, and I never would have stayed on the train to go to Connecticut. I would have gotten off the train in New York and gotten the help I needed.

Do you remember when I told you that the conductor had offered for the train to stop at a town that was not on the itinerary, and it was not meant to be the first stop, but the conductor offered to stop there? And do you remember that the EMTs, the emergency medical technicians, they were a little bit upset that the conductor did not stop at that town and let the ambulance meet me there and let the stretcher come directly to the train instead of having me walk up those tons of stairs.

Do you remember what I said? I did not want to inconvenience a whole train of people. I told them I would be okay, is what I said hoarsely to the EMTs.

Because we think we know what is best. We think we know what is going on. We think we have a view of everything. But how many know that we do not? We do not know everything we think we know. But you know what? We serve a God who does. We serve a God who knows everything. We serve a God who knows all the things we do not even know that we need to know. All the things that we do not even know that we do not know. He is omniscient. He is omnipotent. And He is omnipresent.

So what does that have to do with interpreting dreams? If I had told you my story as a dream, it would not necessarily be obvious what to think of it.

If I had told you about walking around outside in New York, going to the wedding in April, having honey oat cereal with a huge bowl of soy milk and feeling nauseated, and then having something to eat and some plum juice. A lot of those details you would not have thought were important. Me wanting to go home and wanting the train to start moving while I was sitting on it waiting, you may not have thought about the significance of me sitting there waiting.

And so every component of the story was important.

Do you remember the walnut? Walnut is one of the nuts that cross-reacts with birch. Soy, plum, cherry, peach, tomato, almonds, apple, parsley, kiwi, and coriander also cross-react with birch.

Those are all things that I have reacted to since becoming aware of that birch allergy. The only one I had reacted to before that was walnut. But those six hours, those six-plus hours in birch in April in that season, primed my body to begin to react to other things that I had not necessarily reacted to before.

And so now, when I react to any of those things, now I know it is something that is not as safe for me as it used to be. It does not mean it will kill me. I am still here. But it means I have to be wise. I do not react to everything on the list of nuts, fruits, herbs, and vegetables that could potentially react with birch, but I told you the ones that I have reacted to ever. I have never ended up in the emergency room again because of that specifically.

Because now I know, and now I get to choose whose report I will believe. I get to choose what to expose myself to, what to say yes to, what to say no to. I get to choose how to let my yes be yes and my no be no.

So what does that have to do with dream interpretation? When there is a dream, it is important that we ask the Lord if He is telling us something in that dream and what it is. And He teaches us how to interpret dreams if we let Him teach us. And so we can recognize that is why it is so important for us to record and remember and recollect and document every aspect of the dream, because every aspect of the dream means something. God's word will never return to Him void.