God Speaks In a Dream: Kyle Woods' Story

I spoke with my 19-year-old friend Kyle Woods a few days after a life-or-death surgery to correct a dangerous condition several months ago. When he told me the circumstances surrounding the perfect success of the surgery I was stunned. I asked him to write it down for me so I could share it with you.

Here is Kyle's account:

My name is Kyle Wesley Woods.

In March of 2012 I started to get sick by coughing up blood. Weeks went on and I still was experiencing this and I went from one type of specialist to another during all of March.

Finally, I was supposed to go Vanderbilt Hospital to find out what was wrong, but they did not have any room for me. Instead I was sent to UAB. My Doctor ran a couple tests. I had to go back from Birmingham and Madison every couple days for tests or a procedure. Turns out I had an AVM in my right chest wall sitting on top of some of my ribs.

Basically, an AVM is just a bunch of veins that try to spread out but have nowhere to go so they end up forming into a ball and can make their own arteries and turn into a decent-sized mass. AVM's are common in the head, but there has never been a report of one in someone's chest wall.

I went in to see the doctor on a Thursday, May 3rd. He told me that he would go in and remove the mass. He explained to me that I could lose a lot of blood and that AVM's usually do not cause pain. But mine was. He explained that I may have to take pain killers for the rest of my life and have chronic pain. He then informed me that he cleared his schedule for the next morning and added me to it.

When I heard this, I realized that it is never a good sign when your surgeon tells you “Hey we need to get this out of you tomorrow morning.” I realized I was dying and this mass was attaching itself to other main arteries in my body and stealing blood from other organs.

I was very confused spiritually. I was not angry with God because I knew He would take care of me and sometimes I realize for God to take care of his children that may mean bring them to Him. I used to be addicted to pain killers when I was younger. I was confused why He would let someone who struggled with pain killers for many years be back on pain killers for the rest of their life. It did not make sense to me.

Friday, May 4th, I had my surgery in the morning and when I woke up I was fine. All I had was surgical pain. Other than that I was perfect I felt better. I knew I was not dying anymore.
​My surgeon came into my room and told me that I am a miracle from God. This is what happened:

Thursday night, while I was questioning God of his plan, my surgeon prayed for me before he went to sleep. While he was asleep God showed him in his dream exactly how to do the surgery. Every incision to every stitch, from the start to the end. Friday morning when I was asleep on the table my surgeon started just like he did in his dream. He felt like he was cutting away too much of my muscle so instead he barely cut down into the mass [something that was not in the dream]. When this happened blood shot to the ceiling and he quickly plugged it with his finger and stitched it up. He then said, “Okay God, I will do it Your way.” he then finished the rest of the surgery the way he was shown in his dream.

After I was stitched back up and good, he then took the mass over to a table and cut through it like he originally planned. When he did, the mass cut open to reveal tons of more veins that were still alive and an artery that it had made. If he had cut through it he said that he would not have been able to control all of the blood and I would have died on the table within a minute.

​I am a miracle of God. I am a child of God. God will take care of his children no matter what. I am alive today to help people strengthen their faith and teach them about my Savior. The biggest thing I realized is that this story is not for me. It is for everyone else who will listen or read it. I am alive today so that my family, everyone else and Satan will know that death does not scare me and will not shake my faith.

I am called into the ministry.

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Big Bird's Portfolio - An Odd Dream

I'm risking a topical diversion today. I want to be careful in how I present the follow-up to yesterday's post since there's frequently contention over Bible translations. I don't want to add to a debate on one view versus another, so I'm going to devote some time to finishing that one up tonight. Don't forget where we left off, okay?

In the meantime I wanted to share a dream with you. I take delight in writing about the stranger ones, even though I'm probably publicly giving out some crazy psychological info by doing so.

In my dream (between this morning's snooze button punches), I was scrubbing old, possibly antique, white furniture alongside one or two adults with disabilities. I'm fairly certain they had Down syndrome. The person working on the piece with me was a female; that's all I remember about her.

This furniture had been deployed in military use for quite a while and there were stains where something had been spilled on them. The stains were possibly greenish, mildew sorts of stains, but I believe this dream was in black and white. From what I recall, we were using fine-grain steel wool at this point to get the stains off. The pieces we were working on were basically white boxes and were about the size of a typical military trunk.

I usually have a somewhat vivid recollection of the surroundings in my dreams, but that wasn't the case here. All I remember is that it was a bit dark and all I could see was the trunk thing. I don't even remember looking at the people I was working with.

Perhaps most odd and interesting was that Big Bird from Sesame Street was talking with someone nearby, explaining the ins and outs of his investment portfolio. I could hear him talking but couldn't see him (nor was I trying; I was focused on the furniture). He was talking about economic numbers and trends rather nonchalantly; particularly about how stocks had performed over the past year. It struck me that he was throwing out numbers so far and above the social status of the people who were there that it seemed arrogant and aloof. One of the specifics I vaguely remember him stating was that his net worth was $13 billion.

I awoke to hear financial news being discussed on the radio, which was tuned to National Public Radio. This explains Big Bird's talk of monetary figures but not Big Bird himself. My job would explain the military focus of the work we were doing. The people are what intrigue me so much about this dream, though.

I always enjoy your commentary on things like this. Fire away if you'd like.

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A Strange Dream With Ghosts In It

Saturday evening Callie and I got to sleep a bit late. The lights finally went out around 12:15 AM. I'm one of those people who watches TV in order to fall asleep. I set the sleep timer so it won't blare all night and make me have weird dreams. Callie is one of those who gets in bed in order to fall asleep (crazy, I know). She was dozing within just a couple of minutes. I, on the other hand, stumbled across Avatar roughly in the middle of the movie, when it had about 13 hours left before the finale.

So I watched it. It finally went off around 2AM. Toward the end a "spirit tree" thing (just think of a "symbiotic circle of life" and a tree with god-like intelligence and wisdom) is felled by the evil capitalist warmongering humans, and the heroic but physically handicapped Marine becomes a blue creature with full range of motion and essentially becomes the leader of the blue folks' tribe, and so forth. All this happens on a distant planet in the future. But I digress.

Not surprisingly, I dreamt a dream that night. I remember very little of it. I might not have remembered it at all if I hadn't tried to wake myself from the dream and the effort eventually becoming a yell (in real life). I eventually woke up, first halfway into that odd twilight sort of sleep during which I was still asleep but I could vaguely see things in my room though they seemed almost imaginary, then finally I awoke completely when Callie said, "Wake up! You were yelling out in your sleep." My response was something like, "I know. I did that to wake myself up but it wasn't working. Thanks for waking me up." I digress again.

I remember a few details from the dream, but not much activity in it, if there was any. I was in a long hall. In the hall with me was a plethora of ghosts (or spirits or something of that ilk). Several of them looked a bit like the Nazgûl in the Lord of the Rings movies, yet somehow they weren't scary. All were white with a bluish tint from head to toe. I don't recall there being any flowing robes, but neither can I remember what they wore.

There were pillars, spaced about 8-10 feet apart, carved into the walls. In each of the alcoves created by the pillars on either side of the hall stretching as far distant as the eye could see, stood (or sat; couldn't tell) a ghost person, with the hall eventually fading into darkness. It's reminiscent of the hall I've seen in my imagination in which Alice found herself when she'd reached the bottom of her fall at the beginning of her adventures in Wonderland but without the lamps hanging from the ceiling. It was dimly lit, with the warm flickering of organic light from torches rather than electric light, though no torches were visible, either.

The corridor's walls were apparently stone, blue in general with a twist of gold inlay here and there.  I was standing on the right side of the hall looking down its length into the darkness, past all the bluish-white people/things. The only one of them doing anything of note (pun not intended; you'll see) was the one sitting next to me. He was playing the piano, although I don't remember hearing any sound from the instrument. He played while looking down, then looked up (but not at me), and continued playing as he looked back down.

I realized I was dreaming but I couldn't wake myself up by force of will. That's the point at which I began to make an effort to "push" to wake up, resulting in audible speech. It got louder and I knew I was making the sound in real life, but it took Callie saying something to wake me up.

I'm leaning toward the idea that the dream was the result of a very tired brain that had been "conditioned" by a movie, but I'm quite interested in your commentary.

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Another Story From the Subconscious

Saturday night I had a dream.

It was a weekday and I found myself driving my police car to school. Yes, I was back in school again -- middle school -- and yes, I had a cop car. It seemed very normal at the time. Why I was driving at middle school age I'm not sure. I drove halfway to school and parked in front of my grandparents' old garage (the long, white one my dad helped build when he was a boy), changed cars to whatever other car I was supposed to drive, and continued on to school.

I rememer nothing of the day but I recall that my son went to another school. Not sure how he got there. Seems like we were both in middle schools.

I recall that the roads were jammed on the way back to the garage where I had to get the police car after school.

I got there, opened the door of the car (I believe it had turned into a pickup truck at this point) and started it, having some difficulty turning the key in the large blue plastic ignition assembly. When it started I was going to put my hands on the wheel and change gears to drive away, and that's when I saw that the steering wheel was gone. So was the steering column, the radio, gauges, etc. The dash was a totally empty blue carpeted panel with a few holes where things like the steering wheel went through.

I wasn't totally sure I was in the right vehicle so I checked around for others, but it was the only one around. I walked to the door of a mobile home that was nearby to check and see if the keys were inside, but didn't even get to the front door because for some reason I felt like I shouldn't. It wasn't intimidating, but I just had a feeling I shouldn't knock on the door. It was a small and slightly older mobile home, by the way, and looked very familiar, though I'm not sure why.

I don't know where we were, but a little later I was standing and listening to a police officer or a relative, I'm not sure which, explain that someone had, indeed, stolen the steering wheel out of a car that had been parked and the doors left unlocked. I was nervous, thinking that I might be responsible for covering the cost of the theft.

Unfortunately I don't remember much more from the night's weird brain waves, so I'll end here and invite your comments should you decide to leave any.

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3 Vignettes From My Pseudo-Conscious Brain

On a few occasions I've woken up from a sound sleep after having had a vivid dream, grabbed a pen or gotten on the computer, and recorded it for the sake of having something really weird to read a few months to a year later. It works; it's far more weird after you've forgotten it all and read it later as if it were the very first time you'd seen it. And hey, since everyone likes to hear about other people's strange dreams, although this isn't over-the-top-crazy, I submit the following:

Last night I dreamt several things, three of which I remember. (In the words of the inimitable John Bunyan, "As I walk’d through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place, where was a Denn; And I laid me down in that place to sleep: And as I slept I dreamed a Dream.")

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i dreamed a dream

I dreamed last night that I was in charge of running a summer camp for some Haitian and American children. They weren't orphans; their parents were there, dropping them off or staying the first night with them.

I recall looking at a map and hoping that the camp would be in America in a little place partitioned off to look and feel like Haiti, as opposed to actually being in Haiti, in which case I'd have to fly there.

It must have been in Haiti, because there was wildlife that was definitely not North American, although I don't remember what any animals looked like. I recall one of the kids saying, "It's been exactly one year [since the last camp]! Remember that animal that's supposed to show up?" And I knew that there was some kind of weird horned animal that supposedly came to the same place one time every year, and if it harassed you at a place, you could bet that exactly one year later, it would show up again.

It turned out that I was the only counselor at the camp and was supposed to have planned everything out, but I hadn't done any pre-planning, and the camp was a total bust. Didn't bond with the kids (who were all around Jr. High age), didn't have good Bible study planned, etc.

The first night I fell asleep and one of the Haitian kids put a booger on my nose. Yes, that's right. I know this because I woke up and a couple of counselors (who weren't helping me with my camp) brought him down to my area to apologize and tell me that he'd done this.

It ended up with some sort of a Christmas celebration. Not a big one, but the kind of celebrative atmosphere when parents are picking kids up from camp, only Santa Claus was there. It was very strange.

Thought I'd share because of the oddness of the dream. It seemed to last a couple of days. It would be entertaining to hear some of your dream interpretations...

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