I woke up about 15 minutes ago from a dream that stuck with me.
I was in our house, helping a baby with some kind of rash on its ankle.
Simple enough.
Except it wasn’t.
Somehow it turned into complete chaos.
There was shit everywhere.
On me.
On the wall.
On the floor.
Even on a chair that had no business being involved.
I didn’t even know whose baby it was.
But I was responsible for it.
That’s the part that stuck.
Later that morning, Peyton told us about her day.
One of her students had been having a rough time.
Crying. Angry. Acting out.
He yelled at her.
Pinched her.
Pushed every button he could find.
She snapped a little and pinched him back.
Honestly? Fair.
But the part that lingered wasn’t the behavior.
It was that something was clearly off with him.
And then it clicked.
Maybe the baby in the dream was Joshua.
Not literally.
But symbolically.
A kid dealing with something he doesn’t understand…
and it coming out messy, loud, and all over everything.
And the people around him?
We’re the ones trying to clean it up.
Even when we don’t know where it started.
Peyton told me later that he apologized.
Which means somewhere in all of that chaos…
there was still awareness.
Still something good trying to come through.
Maybe that’s what the dream was.
Not about the mess.
But about what we do when someone else’s mess becomes ours for a moment.
Where this feeling leads next…
The things we didn’t say…
She wrecked the car and still made it to first period…
We both knew it meant something…
If this resonated with you, you’re not alone.
