While dreaming in the midst of a stormy night, booming lights from the electrical bolts slashed dashing across the walls of my bedroom. I hid my eyes from the frightening waring images made from the shadows.
Miserably, I disdained my life and I, thankfully, welcomed sleep. I hated everything that God gave me and the thunderstorm came to punish me. I was certain that His wrath deliberately chastised me. Surely the grim reaper stood close to my bed. I felt his ominousness cold breath. The rumbling thunder and magnetic energy surrounding my lying body, ushered me into a sleeping journey back into time..

When sound asleep, suddenly, I heard in the distance ~ “the sounds of war?” Bombs and the shaking of the tin shelter where I hid crammed with others, whom I didn’t know. Oddly, they knew me, and there we hid tightly pressed together.
“I must have travelled back in time?” I thought.

They spoke in a foreign language. It was Polish. Everything was gray there, including their battle worn faces. The wrinkles bore sad lines of desperation. Their bodies were almost skeletons. And, I wanted to run, but when I started to leap, they held me.
Then, screaming, “no! Let go of me! Please!” I escaped only to see armed men coming my way! I caught my breath. There, in the dark of the night I saw a sign which hung swaying in the freezing rain and blustering wind. The metal sign creaked “Warszawa, 1943.” I knew where I was… The horrors of death were everywhere. Bleakness and freezing weather, trapped innocent victims.
The enemy soldiers started to grab me, but ~
I prayed that God takes me somewhere else other than WWII, Poland.

So, He granted my wish.

Rolling in the dirt, in fear of The Nazi’s, I was thence transported somewhere else in times past. Here the air was humid and the smell of death and blood permeated everywhere. Flies, fleas and moans came from dying men were everywhere.

I heard, “help me. Please, won’t you help?”
A man lay there in the brush. He was in gray and I was in blue. By his side a rebel flag was standing next to his bloody broken body.

“Where are we?” I asked.
“You don’t know?” He puzzled at my daze. “Mississippi.” He looked at me as if I was mad and he had disdain on his face, even though he was dying.
So, I reached out to lift him away from the fighting as all good men do. It was then, that I noticed my skin was dark. I was a large Negro man. I, aghast, thought, I’m in trouble now. Here I am, “a colored man,” centered on a battlefield in The Civil War. They will kill me. I will die. Now, more panicked than ever, I surrendered to my fear. How then, my old life seemed kind and benign in comparison to Warsaw and Mississippi.

I petitioned God’s help. “Grant me my own life, once again.” Sobbing from the deepest part of my being, concluded that he did not grant my request.

Then He transported me, again. I found myself sitting on a piano bar singing loudly. There was a sign hanging across the wall of the smoke filled bar. It swayed back and forth as the room seemed to move erratically. The sign said, “Welcome Molly Brown.” The crowd applauded and I smiled, warningly. The spotlights were in my eyes. A second passed. I noticed the calendar displayed on the wall said, “4.15.1912.” Gasping. “I’m on the Titanic.The night it sinks.” I whispered with dread. I knew, soon these lives and Molly Browns would be recorded in history. They were unaware and I was petrified. The iceberg floats before us. It will sink this ship and most of the applauders will soon die. Mortified of knowing the fate, I froze.

If I could change the course of history in Warsaw, the battlefield in The South, and on The Titanic, I would. If there wasn’t any goodness within me, then my travels changed me. All three places taught lessons: thankfulness, empathy and compassion. “God, I know, I understand. I’ve been selfish and unappreciative of the mundane circumstances in my “pathetic” life. I’ve been blessed all along and so ignorant.

With the final confession, I awakened in my own skin. It was my room and correct time…
My worldly travels were enlightening and my lesson? i will not murmur, grumble nor whine ever again.