Eve’s Daughter

This post was originally written on 18th June, 2007, but I have been adding to it and rewriting it slightly as I have been redoing it and putting the poem up as a pdf which makes it a heck of a lot easier to read than just in a post. As I have been doing this, I have had a few bells go off, or lights come on. These have been italicised

This morning was a toughy. I was up at 5:45am staggering out of bed to get to the baby before he woke the others. The house was cold and I’d just been wrenched from a lovely dream, so I was staggering around trying to put my dressing gown and slippers on quickly. I wobbled over a few times, bumping into walls and doorframes - and I wonder where these mysterious bruises keep coming from! I was up, but that was it, definately not awake and functioning on all six cylinders. At 6am I had put him back to bed, but he was coughing and sounding really bad, so in another twenty minutes he was up again. And there was nothing I could do to comfort him, everything I did was wrong! It was during this time that it all just went pear shaped and I fell to pieces.

Was this a spiritual attack? This side of Christianity is pretty much unknown territory for us, it’s only through God’s leading that we have started finding out more about this “spiritual warfare” stuff and what it all means. I knew I had to stand firm and fight, although I’m not exactly sure what this means - I mean, what do I actually “do”? (You know what?! I’ve just had a revelation of this as I looked up Ephesians 6 and the ‘armour of God’! I shall write that in another post, something about The Armour Of God).  Anyway, I let the attack just wash over me and engulf me. Needless to say, I fell apart.

Yet, there was still a part of me that resisted, a part of me that saw the truth, knew that this was an attack from the pit of hell and knew that I had to stand and fight. If I didn’t, then the devil would win, again. I saw the words, “Write it down” - I guess you’d say it was ‘impressed upon my spirit’ (Christianese I know, but sometimes it’s the best way to describe something!) I knew I could win this fight if I wrote it down, and I also “knew” that in this particular case it would take the form of a poem.

So I did, I wrote it all down and voila! ‘Victorious’ came into being. Needless to say, by the end of the poem I was feeling much, much better. I was victorious!

Later when I was talking with T he posed the question. Is our life always going to be like this forever? having to live life with sword in one hand? Always on guard, never relaxing? Always fighting? Can we do it? Do we have what it takes? Not if we’re just relying on us, that’s for sure! But the bible says we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us (Philippians 4:13), so as long as we are fighting through Jesus, then, yes we can. It’s just not gonna be easy though. Damn! And I thought being a Christian meant that my life just all worked itself out nice and easy!!! 

I’ve heard many a preacher say that you “should” hand over your day to God before you even get out of bed. It’s a nice sentiment and I agree with it, but it’s mighty hard to do when you’re the mother of young children. I am often not exactly what you’d call awake when I first stagger out of my room, generally wrenched from my peaceful slumber by a screaming child! It takes me about half an hour to an hour to actually warm up and become mentally fully functional again, instead of staggering around like a zombie, sometimes I sort of pray, but only sometimes.

Hmmm. As I write this, warning bells are going off in my head. For half an hour to an hour I’m a really easy target for the Devil, his demons and any foul thing. That’s not really a good thing. So what can I do? I mean my brain just don’t function when I first get up, I’m just going through the motions, and praying, spending time with God, yeah right. “Ding!” another little bell has also gone off in my head. I’ve just had a thought! Perhaps believing that I cannot function or pray when I first get up is one of those lies that the Devil is very good at whispering into my mind, a lie that I have believed, I have bought into.  

I am also reminded of a poem by George MacDonald which I read in ‘Waking the Dead’ by John Eldredge, the last three lines really described what happened to me. The Devil and his demons set a trap for me while I was sleeping, and I stumbled into the trap completely unaware, unpreprared and unprotected as I tried to comfort my sick child. And then the trap was sprung.

With every morn my life afresh must break
The crust of self, gathered about me fresh;
That thy wind-spirit may rush in and shake
The darkness out of me, and rend the mesh
The spider-devils spin out of the flesh -
Eager to net the soul before it wake,
That it may slumberous lie, and listen to the snake.
(George MacDonald)

So what do I do? I need to do something. I don’t want to be leaving myself vulnerable and open to attack when I first get up and then I am defeated before I even begin! Even if all I do is say the name of ‘Jesus’ over and over as I stagger around, would be a good thing.

Okay, back to the question, are we gonna have to live our lives with a sword in one hand, always alert, always ready to fight? As much as I don’t like the answer, I think the answer is yes. The more I read, the more I am beginning to understand that we were born into a war, a war between Heaven and Hell and we are the meat in the sandwhich. Whether we choose to fight or not, we are in a war and we will be attacked.

We are just now truly beginning to follow our hearts, to follow the dreams and desires God has placed deep within them and reawaken them to the possibilities. As a result we are growing closer to God and walking more in the life He has created us for. And that, we are discovering, makes us much more of a target. We are beginning to become dangerous to the enemy’s plans for us and this world, and he doesn’t like that one little bit. The Devil wants us to continue living our ‘normal, average, powerless Christian life’ the one we’ve been sucked into, fooled into believing that this is it, just learn to live with the fact that life’s hard, not fair and not as good as you’d like it to be. He wants our hearts, coz if he’s got our hearts, then he’s won. Because we’ve been rising up and throwing off the shackles and the things that bind and hold us back, the Devil has attacked us again and again and again. He hopes to stop us, to send us back to our prison cells and forget about a better life. But we will not give up and we will not give in, with God on our side, he cannot win.

I’ve also realised that T’s question was the question that all guys ask (read the ‘Wild at Heart’ books by John Eldredge). “Do I have what it takes? Can I do this? Can I be the head of the home I need to be to be able to live this kind of life?

I can’t answer T’s question, “do I have what it takes for this deeper relationship with God and greater exposure to attacks by the enemy?” Only God can do that. But I can say that I will stand with him and we will go on this journey, this adventure together, as a couple and as a family hand in hand with our God, with Jesus our Saviour and with the Holy Spirit who is our comforter, counsellor, strength and guide.

Click here to go to ”Victorious” post.

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