A Bad Dream

The other night Mariah (almost 7 years old) had a fever in the middle of the night. Due to this fever, she had a continuous nightmare that would not leave her alone. (As a child, the only time I had nightmares was when I was sick and each time, it was the SAME dream. To this day, if I am sick, I have the SAME nightmare that I had when I was a child. Weird).

In the middle of the night, Mariah ran to my bedside and woke me up, all out of breath and in tears. My heart broke for her. We went and got a drink of water, I tucked her back in bed, and left a little light on for her.

Not even five minutes passed, and Mariah was back at my bedside.

My heart broke for her so I went and laid in her bed with her. I wanted to take this nightmare from her. I attempted to calm her down, rub her head, talk about different, random things to get her mind off her dream, but every time she closed her eyes, the nightmare occurred again.

It was difficult for me because I could not take this dream from her. Dreams are weird because they aren't very tangible, you can't give a child medicine to take away a bad dream like you can give them medicine to take away a headache.

This isn't very earth-shattering, but the girls have never had major nightmares before (thankful for that), so this is new for how I am processing it.

I wanted to just be able to give Mariah a band aid to make the dream go away. I wanted to give her a kiss and have the nightmare magically disappear, but I couldn't.