He Is Looking

A continuation of my story... Click to read
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Once again, I will remind you that real stories are rarely ever neat. With the last post, I offered you hope for the little girl and hope for a God who loves. Today, I will show you that hope rarely springs up without evil attempting to tear it down.

Other things happened once I moved back to the house I had grown up in.

Hell.

Really.

I cannot talk about the metaphysics of it. I cannot explain it. I make no theology (or demonology, as it were) from this part of my story. I only retell it.

I tell it to you.

I was the little girl standing under the pressure of a religious organization that said I was outside the House Of God while I maintained I was inside. I was the little girl standing under the pressure of a religious organization that told me I was less valuable because I was a girl and thus had no hope of ever becoming more valuable. I was a little girl who wasn't sure what it meant to be a family. I was a little girl growing into a woman.

I was very, very fragile.

And evil prowls.

Fear seized me and dark things haunted me from every corner of the house. I would see movement and turn quickly. My eyes struggled to view a reality that they were never taught to view. Like looking at those 3-D pictures, I could feel my eyes straining, searching for something that might have been there.

I survived on very little sleep for at least two years. I ate very little because I believed that the food was poisoned. Death was stalking me. I would walk through the halls and have this awful sense of being followed.

I do not know if you will believe me, but the dark things were able to affect the physical environment. Either the dark things or my fear...or both. All I know was that in my terror, my faith demanded action from God (yes - a demand on God - I know it's blasphemous - but that's what happened).

There is a verse in the book of Psalms. In the King James Bible, it reads like this, "I will both lay me down in peace and sleep for thou, o LORD art with me."

If there was one thing I really, really needed, it was sleep.

The night I read this, my Mom said good night and turned off the lights. Within a very short time, the darkness began morphing from the shadows. I sat up in bed and stared straight at the darkness...

I will both lay me down in peace and sleep for the Lord is with me.

I will sleep tonight because the Lord is with me!

Do you remember the part in The Fellowship Of The Ring when the Fellowship is fleeing through a cave pursued by a great, fearsome demon? And suddenly Gandolf stops and wheels about. Staring straight into the eyes of the demon, he bellows -

You Shall Not Pass!

The Lord Is With Me!

The funny thing is, I had no illusion that my life would be spared when I spoke those words to the darkness. I only knew that living or dying, the Lord was with me. And I grasped on to that Truth with all of the force of my being.

In the Lord of the Rings, the ground under the demon creature crumbles and the demon falls away into a great abyss. But as it falls, it grabs the hem of Gandolf's robe and Gandolf is pulled over the edge. Hanging on by his fingers, he looks up at the rest of the Fellowship and in a hoarse, strained voice he says,

"Run, you fools."

And just like that he is gone.

The Fellowship is me - all the aspects of myself. And I was fleeing from a terror. But something in me broke loose, and with the sound of God's voice in my ear, I had faith that sent the demons screaming into the abyss.

But just like Gandolf, a part of me went over the edge as well.

And the last thing I said to the other parts of me was - run, you fools.

And I became centered in the part of me that was falling.

I expected the ground within moments. I expected to hit hard at the bottom of the pit. I expected it for days - for weeks - for months. But I never hit the ground.

Like Gandolf, I fell for ages.

The thing about falling is that at first you still cling to the idea that reality is the ground - the hard substantive stuff - that is what is real. Desperately, like a mad person, you long for the ground. But after falling and falling and falling, space becomes what is real. And you quit trying to define your reality by the passing rock and earth and you start trying to talk about space.

Space isn't empty, you know.

And maybe you're not falling - maybe you're flying. And maybe things aren't getting closer and further - maybe they're getting bigger and smaller. And you begin to see the underpinnings of other peoples' lives - the rocks that they build on. You can't hold anything against them, but you've just seen too many rocks to believe anyone who says they have the only foundation.

You have a part of the only foundation.

Gandolf and the demon have a round 2 and as he tells the story, "I smote mine enemy." And then he begins his trip back - a trip filled with many enemies - but he has changed.

And he is looking to be reunited with the Fellowship.

posted by Headless-in-GR @ 1/11/2005 10:22:00 PM