Trouble (and Peer Pressure) Comes in Threes.

Dear Andrea,

I had the following dream in June. I am a middle-aged empty nester with six grandchildren. I bought a new business in July and took on a significant volunteer leadership role this year in an organization. This dream came about a week before both of these events occurred.

I was teaching a group of college kids at a high school camp. After our lesson, we toured the camp and were walking around looking at different buildings, etc., and I was explaining some of the purposes of them to the students. Across the way, here came three rams running right at us. I did not notice the colors of them. We all froze and were unable to move because the charge of the rams was so great. One of the rams butted one of the young male students. All three rams then ran off.

A few things are unclear. The students are probably those you are responsible for leading, and your actions a metaphor for what you’re doing with them in real life. The meaning of the college students at a high school camp will depend on whether by teaching you mean they were campers, or if you were training them to be counselors to the high school campers. If the former, this could be invoking 1 Cor 3:1-3, that they are at an age where they should have moved onto “higher learning” but aren’t. High school normally shares the higher learning meaning, but in your case, it may again reference immature behavior, as in, “acting like a high schooler.”

A ram is a male sheep, but it’s also, per dictionary.com, “any of various devices for battering, crushing, driving, or forcing something, esp. a battering ram.” Considering the behavior the rams exhibit, I strongly suspect the symbol is a play on words here. I suspect the word “charge” is also a play on words.
The number three–it’s possible it could mean literally three trials or accusations will hit your organization like a battering ram, disrupting your work and leaving you paralyzed, and one will hit it’s target. That number, however, also has the symbolic meaning of conformity, which with the invocation of high school would mean negative, overwhelming peer pressure rather than being conformed to Christ.

It’s also possible the number three in this instance is doing double duty and carrying both meanings.

Running away–I believe this was meant to reassure you and encourage you to stand firm, as it seems to invoke James 4:7, “Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.”

This is all I have received of the Lord. Give it some prayer. The Lord will show you whether I have discerned rightly or if any of my insights are on the mark.