Eve’s Daughter

All this spiritual warfare stuff it is wearing me down. I didn’t know that it was gonna be such hard work - it just never stops, it’s always there, always waiting. Not that there’s demons behind every tree and you can’t ever let your guard down, but it is a war that we’re involved in whether we fight or not. And of course, when you fight, you get targeted. Like I’ve mentioned in another post, our family is often attacked through it’s health and that mostly the health attacks are on T and the kids and I’m beginning to realise that the attacks I’m under are on my mind and emotions. And when I go off, boy do I really go off, and I hate it. 

I am realising now that I have always had the subconcious beliefs that I’m not good enough, miracles don’t happen for me, this is my life and I’m just gonna have to put up with it, that I can’t really succeed, that we’ll always be struggling financially, that I’m messy and disorganised and that’s just the way I am etc. I do believe in miracles, they DO happen, but when they do it’s for other people, not me, or my family.

If there were a preacher up the front and this was their sermon I believe they’d be calling it ’stinkin’ thinkin’. But what I’m really finding sad and scary, when I think about it, is that a heck of a lot of other people feel the same way about themselves and their lives. Everything I’ve been reading about spiritual warfare and how the devil works tells me that these subconscious beliefs are seeds that have been planted within us (usually as kids), they are the seeds of weeds and these are the weeds that can grow up and choke us and prevent us from living the life that God created us to live. All these things that I have grown up with, believing, are lies that the devil has planted in our hearts to block us from being all that we were created to be. 

The following is from notes I wrote a couple of weeks earlier about what was happening and what I was thinking…

As soon as I started typing this X woke up hacking his lungs out and making vile throwing up sounds. I expected to find vomit all over the bed. He sounds like a smoker. And he started crying again. I couldn’t leave him in the room with his brothers, his coughing had made it difficult for them all to get to sleep earlier and although I didn’t want to get him back up, there was no hope for it. I sat with him in my arms and prayed. What was interesting was the more I prayed for healing, the louder he protested and the more violent his  squirming became. It was at its worst when I was praying against “infirm spirits” and doing all that “binding” stuff that I know virtually nothing about, but have heard enough times, boy he got really bad during that.

But is it real? Or is it just all in my head and I’m looking for something to ‘blame’ for all the stuff that is going wrong. Perhaps X was just going through another bad patch of being unwell and it just happened to coincide with me praying for healing and against evil spirits? Am I just being paranoid? It just seems so silly, so ridiculous. I don’t understand any of this ’spiritual warfare’ stuff, but, well, there are times when it just seems all a little too coincidental, too convenient. And I am finding that it is showing up these subconscious beliefs for the lies that they are. These beliefs that I have grown up with, that I have accepted as truth, are being challenged again and again, and every time it happens my heart, my real heart is being exposed to the light a little bit more…

I thought it was over and it wasn’t and I had to do it all over again, although it was shorter this time round and X is now asleep and he stayed asleep when I put him back to bed. There could still be more of this tonight. And I will need to be prepared. I almost gave up. I could hear the lies being whispered in my head, “give up, it’s too hard; you don’t know what you’re doing, it’s not working”… And although I was crying, and almost succumbing to them, I cried out “NO! I don’t accept that! I won’t accept that! I believe in my God and the promises in his Word. I trust him.”

And then there was peace.

I began writing this post weeks ago. X has been coughing since May and this cough just comes and goes. It’s very chunky, very rattly, yet every time I’ve had it checked out by the Dr. there’s been nothing - not that I have great faith in Dr’s and I don’t want to give X antibiotics if I don’t have to.

Anyway, T and I both feel as though we are under attack, through our health again, especially the health of the kids and I have a feeling that the subconscience beliefs - LIES - in my head have a lot to do with it. I don’t think I’ve ever had a time when I’ve been healed of something. No, not true, two things - I’ve been healed of chillblains on my toes which I suffered dreadfully with for years every winter and I’ve had headaches heal after we’ve prayed for them (not every time). And it’s not just a faith thing - you know, when others (generally well meaning) tell you that your faith is weak, so it’s your fault your sick, you could be healed, just like that, if you just believed! Sometimes God works like that, but not all the time.

But I also know, that I’ve let those lies sneak in and take root and so I’ve just lived my life, saying, “well that’s just my lot”. Now whenever I’ve said that to myself, I’ve buried it pretty quick smart, it’s not something that I want to hold up to the light and have a really good look at. I think I’ve known for a while now that this thought is just pure crap and if anyone else had said that about themselves and their lives I would have been telling them to stop being a victim and get out there and do something about it! So I guess I’d better start listening to myself!!

We’ve put up with a mediocre life for way too long - bad health, bad finances, stuck in the suburbs… (I hate the suburbs, but that’s just me) and we know that we are not living the life God created us to live. We’ve let all the mundane stuff get in the way of living the great adventure hand in hand with our creator. And when I think about that, about all the years we’ve frittered away, I get sooooo mad.

The enemy is trying to steal our joy, yet again - my Grandma turns 100 and the boys are sick, so instead of T and I going out with the family to celebrate, (a grand affair at $100 a head that we’d been saving for since Grandma turned 99!) T is staying home to look after the boys with help from his mum and sister. The devil wants to bring us low, he does not want us to break out of this little black box that has been our lives and has been slowly killing us.

I am guilty of giving him a foothold in my life by believing crap like “healing only happens to other people, our life is never going to be better than it is, dreams are just dreams, this is the reality, our life is this, mind numbing, heart numbing, soul killing…” and by not taking “every thought captive” I’ve let crapola get in and stay there long enough to put down a significant root system; I’ve not been too worried about putting on the armour of God - I’ve always considered people who do that to be a bit cooky, until I started reading this spiritual warfare stuff and now I think they’ve got a valid point - so now I’m remembering to put it on more often, although I still forget. And of course, I’ve let the devil get a great foothold by forgetting that I am a child of God, by not understanding what this means and by not completely believing it.

Now that I am aware of all this stuff, I am starting to fight back - it’s hard and I’m not always successful, I don’t always recognise it. But now T and I are both walking closer with our Creator, our Protector, our Friend, our Father, our Lover and it is très exciting, invigorating, scary and totally awesome. Despite all the crapola going on, life is getting better. Especially as I am understanding what it means by guarding your heart and your mind - that’s why it’s soooo important to capture every thought and not just let any old thoughts slide in there and take root and that’s why wearing the helmet of salvation is so important - it protects your mind, your brain. There’s that saying, “as a man thinks, so he is” and that is just so scarily true, too true, frighteningly so. I mean, that’s how I’ve been living for so long. And you gotta protect your heart because that’s where God puts our deepest dreams and desires and when you let these get taken from you, like I did, then you start to die, my life has been slowly killing me for a long time. It’s taken me a long time to see it for what it is. In fact, neither T or I had our eyes opened to this until T’s illness got worse and the counsellor he was seeing gave us both something to think about - “what if you never get better? What if this is as good as it gets? Would it change the way you do things, think and live?”

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