Sheila Walsh - God Has a Dream for Your Life

[Dorothy] gave a cry of amazement and
looked about her, her eyes growing
bigger and bigger at the wonderful sights she saw.

THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ

I'll give you a full life in the emptiest of placesfirm muscles, strong bones. You'll be like a well-watered garden, a gurgling spring that never runs dry. You'll use the old rubble of past lives to build anew, rebuild the foundations from out of your past.

ISAIAH 5 8 : 1 1 - 1 2 MSG

If you have never read L. Frank Baum's classic children's book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, I highly recommend it. There is so much more to the story than the movie had time to tell. As a child, I loved the story so much. I have seen the movie over and over, but it is only in recent years that I have begun to see how much it has to say to us as women. The journey that Dorothy and her friends embark on has many parallels to our spiritual journey, so it is a perfect backdrop for this book.

When the book opens, we are introduced to a very gray world. Aunt Em and Uncle Henry live in a gray, weather-beaten house in the midst of the Kansas prairies. When they look out their window, they survey a colorless and bleak horizon.

Aunt Em has, over time, become gray. She hadn't always been that way. She had once been a pretty young woman full of dreams. But years of disappointment had removed the color from her cheeks and hair and the sparkle from her eyes.

Their home was a single, sparsely furnished room. In one corner was an old stove. In the center of the room was a trap door leading to a hole in the ground that served as a storm shelter. There was a table, three or four chairs, and two beds. The larger bed was for Uncle Henry and Aunt Em. The small bed was for a child. They had no children of their own, but in their latter years they took in a young orphan named Dorothy.

Dorothy was not gray. The book doesn't tell us how she became an orphan, but despite her circumstances she still had the gift of laughter. When Aunt Em would hear Dorothy laugh, it so surprised her that she would scream and put her hand over her heart as if the noise was a health hazard!

Baum describes Aunt Em this way: "She was thin and gaunt and never smiled, now." The implication is clear. She used to laugh, but something or a series of somethings had extinguished her joy. Aunt Em no longer had time to laugh or to dream. When she looked at Dorothy, she wondered what this girl found to laugh about.

For Dorothy, that was an easy question to answer. His name was Toto. In the book, Toto was a little black dog with long, silky hair and small, black, twinkling eyes (not the Cairn terrier of the movie). He played all day, and he made Dorothy laugh. She loved him with her whole heart.

As the story opens, Uncle Henry is studying the sky, which appeared even more gray than usual. A seasoned storm survivor, he knew the danger signs. As the wind began to change direction and increase in speed, he called to Aunt Em and Dorothy to take shelter immediately.