I have been hurt in my life. I have been seriously hurt in my life. Even in the midst of it, I continued to cling to God. I continued to hope in Jesus Christ. Then I saw the passing of the prematurely born baby as a pastor and had to do it as my first funeral for people in my church. At that point, I began to wrestle with deep questions: why? Why do all these things happen? Why did God allow all this ‘senseless’ pain and suffering to go on?
I lived and prayed lament psalms. They allowed me to express my grief, my anger, and my frustrations, yet they also gave an express of hope and trust in God. Yet, somewhere along the way, the lament became more the former and less of the later. Never entirely giving up hope and trust, I became enmeshed in a feeling of deep, pervasive, unending anger and pain.
It is there I discovered the enemy. I came face to face with what can only feel like a horde of demons, hounding and attacking my mind and heart in a series of emotional beatings and lashings. You’re no good. You failed. You screwed up. People don’t care for you or love you. Even when I heard what was positive direct towards me, I heard it with a sense of “this can’t be real.” Can someone actually want me?
I never gave up my faith, but I saw and experienced something: demonic realities are very real. It is like they hover just beneath the surface of the observable fabric of reality. They try to find ways to take you down, to break you up, to draw you far from God’s good purposes.
I made one fundamental mistake in my struggles. I failed to give thanks for the blessings I did have. I so focused on what I had lost, what I felt like I could never have, that I made my heart open to their attacks. I was opening my heart to hearing their voices speaking. I could still find God’s direction as I discovered at various instances and I still longed to pursue what it was that I believe God to speak about love, but I was leaving room in my heart for them to speak and distract me.
I have spent time today in prayer, in resting, in talking to other people, in not engaging in any sort of distracting activity. I am not sure if I am whole yet, but it feels like my mind is clearing. But yet, I see so much what I was fighting.
I believe that Jesus left me on the thread there to help me to see and to understand. As a “rational” person who believed in science, math, etc. as the ruling forces of the world, demons didn’t easily fit into my worldview. I saw them as somehow existing in the world, but almost in a distant way. I know that isn’t true now. They lurk and hover just beneath the surface of observable life.
Pray for me, please. Pray for me. I am broken and faulty in so many ways emotionally.