Nightmares

The reason I am writing a blog post at 3 am?? Frances has been having nightmares again.
At 3 this morning she started yelling from her bed, "Can someone come sleep with me?" over and over again. She sounded so pitiful and started crying before I could even wake up enough to respond to her. I told her to come get in bed with me (too much noise in the kids' room wakes up Henry and she only has a twin bed anyway). She climbed in bed with her wet, teary face and I asked her what had happened. She said monsters were throwing rocks at her house. Well, our favorite method for dispelling nightmares around here is to change the story a la parenthacks. I told her that monsters were not allowed to throw rocks at our house. Her Daddy is so big and tough that he packed them all up inside a bag and threw them in the ocean. She asked me what they were doing in the ocean and I told her that since they were so heavy, all the monsters sunk to the bottom of the sea. I even told her she could tie the bag shut and help Daddy throw them if she wanted to. That made her giggle; and giggling is much better than crying. She is sound asleep again...but I am not. She snores, steals my pillow and breathes her morning (middle-of-the-night?) breath in my face. Plus I have a hard time going back to sleep in the middle of the night. Therefore I blog.
The other nightmare she had (Thursday morning) is much harder to "fix." As you know, we are coming up on Easter. And I am very proud to say that while my daughter loves the Easter bunny just as much as the next kid; she was the first one to bring up Jesus dying on the cross. She keeps saying that she is excited for Jesus to die on the cross again. Trying to deal with that...but not trying to attach adult hangups to the statement. She knows that Jesus dies on the cross (she knows details, like nails, blood, etc.), but she also knows that he did it to "TAKE OUR SINS!!" and that he rose again. So she is doing pretty well in the religious aspect of Easter. However, here is my problem...the nightmare she had was that after they crucified (that's the word she used) Jesus, they took him down off the cross and put him in a fire. I am not sure where she got that kind of imagery, but she is very concerned about it. Even dreaming about the actual crucifixion would be traumatic for a 5-year old. But she has added this extra dimension in her head, and I don't know how to "fix" it. She knows the resurrection story and the Good News that it is, but I don't think she can get that far before waking up really scared.
Additionally, this is the week the high-schoolers will do our living stations of the cross at church. I had originally made arrangements for a babysitter for the kids while I was at church, but Frances got really mad at me-even though the sitter is "NADIA!!!" Nadia will still watch Henry, but Frances insists on coming to church with me. She wants to help me sing and she wants to watch the re-enactment. With this latest nightmare, I don't know if that is a good idea. On one hand, I am proud and excited that she "gets" the story as well as she does. On the other hand, I don't want to add fuel to the fire, so to speak.
I know that I have a few followers here-and as far as I know they are good Christian people (and mostly mommies, too)-so what do you guys think? Any suggestions? Leave me a comment...