Was it all a dream?

So, for the past several days, I have been at a student activities programming conference with some of my students. We've had a great time. I met Bob Guiney (of abc's The Bachelor fame) and Dennis Haskins, who is better known as Mr. Belding from Saved by the Bell. There were a few other celebrities as well. We had a pretty good time, but on Friday night, something strange happened. Before I go any further, you have to understand that at these conferences, events start at 8 AM and end around 2 AM, leaving you with about 4 hours of sleep each night. Some of us advisors forget that we aren't college students anymore and by the end of the week, the lack of sleep catches up with us. Well, I decided to turn in relatively early Friday evening, around 1 AM. I rode the elevator up to my floor and got off with one of the artists who was showcasing at the conference whose room was on the same floor. I've had this guy, Matt Larson, (phenomenal muscian by the way, you should definitely hire him for an event) on my campus so we know each other and were talking as we turned the corner of the hallway.

As we rounded the bend, we were greeted by a sleepy resident of one of the first few rooms, warning us that some crazy student had just run down the hallway, breaking all of the globe lights on the walls. Sure enough, there was shattered glass all up and down the hallway and most of the globes on the lights were missing/broken/in pieces, etc. We asked a few questions and continued down the hallway, talking about how silly this all was. As we reached the next corner, another door opened to another sleepy lady telling us she had just called the police. She had seen the guy run into one of the rooms and said he had done all of this with his hands. Then she said, "I hope they can find him." Of course, my first thought was, just look for the guy with the bloody hands! Pretty simple, but okay.

So, Matt Larson and I continue down the hallway, still talking about the senselessness of it all, but not too fazed. After all, these are college students, and alcohol was probably involved. Not that it's an excuse, just a reality. I said goodnight, went into my room, and proceeded to prepare for the ed session I was leading the next morning.

Fast forward to the next morning. My friend Amanda and I are walking down the hallway towards the elevators when it dawns on me, there is no broken glass in the hallways. There are no half broken globes on the lights on the walls. In fact, if you had not seen it the night before, you would have never known that anything had happened. Only a few short hours had gone by and everything was back to normal. Brand new globes were on the lights. The glass on the floor was gone. Nothing was out of order! Perhaps this surprised me more than it should have because I work at an institution where broken things often stay broken for months! Rarely does anything get fixed overnight, and never in the middle of the night! When I saw my students at lunch on Saturday, I relayed the story to them and asked if they saw it when they got to their rooms last night. They didn't see anything out of the ordinary. Let me break down this timeline for you: 1 AM - I head to my room amidst broken glass and lamp globes. 2 AM - they head to their room and nothing is out of the ordinary. Same hallway, same floor, same night/morning, 1 hour difference.

It's at this point that I start to wonder if I dreamed the entire thing up! After all, I have been keeping long hours with little or no sleep. Maybe my mind was playing tricks on me. Throughout the day, my students become more and more convinced that I'm making the story up! I know that I at least have one witness that I can count on to confirm my story, but the more the students question me, the more I begin to question myself!

Was it all a dream? Did I imagine it? It seemed so real last night. It seemed crazy at the time, but it was very real. It's strange how the human mind works. How you start to question truth even when you are sure of yourself. Just one little seedling of doubt can convince you of the opposite. The media counts on this phenomenon. So do con artists, abusers, predators, etc. Knowing truth and beleiving truth are often two separate things. Believing truth requires faith. Doubt is a powerful tool, but only if we give it power.

God's word is right in John 8:32 where it says "And you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free." I did feel free with I found my other witness later in the evening to confirm the story. These hotel people were really on the ball. It must have been like being in a Nascar pit crew when they were replacing those globes. Maybe they should come train our maintenance staff at work. Maybe I should get more sleep.