Eve’s Daughter

In my last installment I wrote…

It’s time to stop moping around, to stop worrying that ”nobody loves us and we’re not good enough…” - that sort of thinking is soul crushing and keeps us in little boxes. God loves us and  that is enough. It’s time to step out and be the women has created and called us to be! And to also now be aware that we are going to be attacked even more!

And the last few days have been nightmarish. At least I was aware of what was going on, but it was so, so, so hard to fight it, especially as this “spiritual warfare” stuff is so new. T and I have ordered some books on the topic - we need to know what to do. One book we’ve got coming is called ‘Spiritual Warfare for Beginners’ - hope it’s good. And we’ve both started to read ‘Victory Over the Darkness’ by Neil Anderson, (lent to me by the same friend who initiated the ‘Captivating Group’ with me) and also recommended by John & Stasi Eldredge on their website.

One of the curious things I noticed about these attacks was how they centred on two of the things I have issues with - of course, I mean the devil isn’t stupid is he? So he’s going to go for known weak spots. It’s just that I have only just seen them for what they are, weak spots, wounds inflicted upon me again and again and again, wounds the devil had helped get bigger and bigger, deeper and deeper. And although I may have uncovered them, these wounds are still open wounds, very open and very messy - there’s an awful lot of healing still to happen.

So anyway, I had a couple of days where I felt down and flat; I felt as though my parents didn’t love me or their grandkids and I felt as though I was a failure as a mum and a wife, especially in the area of “domestic duties”. I’m still not sure about this attack stuff, but I think that’s what it was. I find it so hard to say the scriptures and the stuff I knew to be true when I felt like absolute crap. The words became like concrete slabs in my mouth and were just too hard to say. It was a real battle, a real fight to push the promises out of my mouth. When they were said, they weren’t exactly said with conviction, they kind of just slid out, were muttered out of the corner of my mouth. Added to that I had crap happening in my head; a little voice saying, “why bother, nothing’s gonna happen. It’s not gonna work, there’s no real power here.” And the whole time I am lying on my bed in a depressed heap. Being in this state it took me many goes before I got anywhere.

But even though it felt so hard and so bad and God felt so far away and I felt so powerless, I know, from recent experience (perhaps it will be in another blog), that if I say the good stuff, the promises, then I can rise above the attack and God will help me defeat it. Rememberring this and doing it though, that is the hard part. When I was being attacked, my victorious experience seemed like a very distant and vague memory that had no power now. I guess that’s all part of the attack too. But I remember now, as I write this that there was power, great power - I claimed the promises of God and I was lifted up, defended. The attack was defeated. I was victorious, loved by God and strong. I was an overcomer! The enemy could not hold me down! This is a memory to treasure, a memory to remember and play over and over in my head. I have the victory. I have been redeemed. I am restored. Jesus has set me free.

It wasn’t only I who was attacked, another woman in our small ‘Captivating Group’ copped it too. It was interesting, very interesting. T suggested that I called both women to find out how they were going, were they having trouble too, or was it just me being attacked, and to make sure that they realised that they were not alone. The first one I called was easy, and she was out. The other one, well, I didn’t want to call her. I sat there on the couch with the phone in my hand just looking at it, thinking, “I don’t want to call her”. There was no particular reason why - just this vague fear, this vague uneasiness about calling her, which added up to me not wanting to call her. So, I thought, “well, because I don’t want to call her, I’ll call her!”

So I did! And guess what?! She’d been having a bad few days too, ever since she decided to join our group!! Hmmm. We prayed over the phone - that feels very strange, very bizarre and awkward to me, I don’t like it, but I didn’t want us to just talk about what we’d been going through without doing anything positive about it. So even though I felt like a fool, we prayed together over the phone. And since that time, things have been better. Not perfect or rosey, but better.

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