Hello, tender friends!
It turns out that Anthony could not take the day off of work today for our day trip, so here we are.
Even though I’m pretty far out in my healing, this is hard to think about. My arms and chest feel jittery, like electricity is going through them. But I believe it’s time.
I want to share because I took solace in several people’s blogs when I was going through my health crisis because they reminded me of God’s sovereignty. For example, I read one woman’s account of being shot at point blank range after a carjacking in South Africa. She’d been resigned to certain death and prayed to Jesus, and the bullet landed next to her on the pavement instead of striking her.
Every blog account I read strengthened my faith as I begged God to talk to me (as I discuss on the links on the welcome page.) Could those bloggers have been lying? Of course. But I believe that woman’s story and many others are true. And those stories gave me the courage to believe that God would come through for me even though I wasn’t receiving the clear words from Him I longed for.
I encourage you to take everything that follows to the Holy Spirit and ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to you whether or not it is true. I have taken care to include details that might make you doubt my encounter, because I wanted to be as accurate to my memory as possible, even though you may conclude what happened wasn’t “real” as a result. It’s important to me that I record this with as much precision as possible.
The first demons that I actually saw in a physical form appeared to me right before Anthony and I took a mission trip to Costa Rica in 2016. That was when I first learned to say the name of Jesus to make them disappear. Sometimes they went for my throat before I had a chance to get the words out, but fortunately God hears you even if you whisper through a chokehold. For some reason I can’t fathom now, it took me a few encounters to realize I had to ask God to stop them from visiting. I did, and I never encountered another one during that time period once I prayed.
I had one more series of demonic encounters in 2017. Those encounters were under very different circumstances, so I am not recording them in this particular post.
All of these encounters took place when I was trying to sleep or half asleep. I have therefore struggled with understanding if some of them were “just dreams,” as I know the encounter that most terrified me, described below, couldn’t have taken place in my actual house. Other attacks took place in my bedroom, seemingly in the earth realm.
Most of you know that my body started falling apart during pregnancy, and I reached crisis after Cub was born. Watching my body fall apart terrified me. I wish I could say I took the authority I knew I had to banish illness and evil, but it wasn’t like that at all.
I started seeing demons again after a hiatus of a few years, and fear overwhelmed me. In the last and most vivid encounter before the tide turned, a demon sat on a red couch smirking at me. It’s the smirking that got me the most. I thought to myself, “He (the demon) thinks he’s won.”
Terror seized me, as I initially interpreted his smugness as proof that he knew he would have victory over me. Of course, that’s not accurate. Only God knows the future, but that demon’s confidence intimidated me. Our couch is beige, not red, so this was a “dream,” but every moment felt real.
And at the risk of sounding like a weirdo, I still believe it was real, and that I really encountered that demon even though I saw our couch as a different color than it really is. (The couch I saw the demon on was actually the same couch my ex-boyfriend from my early 20s had. That particular boyfriend was evil, and I don’t use that word lightly. I use it because God revealed it to me to get me out of the relationship. I don’t know if there’s a connection between him and the demon, but it was the same couch).
I continued to pray and read my Bible and beg God to do something during this time. But most of what I read in the Bible scared me.
Then I read and reread the book of Job. “Who are you to question my wisdom with your ignorant, empty words?” (Job 38:2) stilled my soul. It reminded me that my vision is limited. Over and over again, I read that verse, and I quit my addiction to logic. In the middle of the storm, that verse brought me the peace I was so desperately seeking.
It wasn’t logical that I struggled so much in a job that I hated, a job that I worked until the day before Cub was born, a job that God had clearly led me to take (a job that left me so depleted that I believe it was a contributing factor in getting sick).
It wasn’t logical that I got so sick when people my age were casually drinking themselves into oblivion and eating McDonald’s to ease their hangovers while I diligently went to the gym and ate chicken and broccoli every night.
It wasn’t logical that God allowed illness to strike me when I had a newborn to care for.
It wasn’t logical that when I was searching for some corporate spiritual experience in the form of church, everything shut down. Anthony came home and said, “I found the perfect church for us, and the pastor’s wife had severe postpartum struggles like you’re facing.” We said we would go to the following week together, but the church shut down for the pandemic the following week. We called the pastor and his wife and left multiple messages, asking them to come over for dinner or meet in some other capacity. The messages went unanswered.
It wasn’t logical that every local doctor and naturopath refused to see me, even when I said I would come up with the exorbitant $500 first visit fee with no guarantee of actually getting help.
My pleas to God, reminding him that the situation wasn’t logical, weren’t getting the response I wanted. Reading that verse changed the relationship I had to the fear that gripped me. Instead of trying to cast fear out, screaming declarations at it, and trying to find something evil in my house that could possibly have let demons inside, I relaxed. (Anthony often woke up in the middle of the night at this time to hearing me plead, out loud, to God, and said, “What are you doing? Go back to sleep”).
I understood, for the first time, the meaning of this verse: “And the Lord said to Satan, ‘Behold, all that he has is in your hand. Only against him do not stretch out your hand.”’ (Job 1:12) I knew that even though I felt tormented by demons, God was in control and that nothing could happen outside of his will.
I don’t remember if it was the next night or the next week, but the demon from the couch returned, this time while I was laying in bed, trying to sleep. But he wasn’t smirking, and he looked inquisitive rather than smug. I can only describe the next moment as God’s mercy, because I clearly wasn’t brave on my own. A peace settled over me. I said, “Jesus,” with full certainty the demon would flee. Then I turned away from where he was standing and pulled the covers over my shoulder.
I didn’t even watch him go, and the following day, I thought, “Well, that was anticlimatic.” I’d spent time trying to prep for something grander, something dramatic after all the mental torture.
Of course, I’d been making the demons leave the whole time by saying the name of Jesus, but I’d been terrified as I said it, unsure what would happen. This time was different, in that I knew they had no choice but to leave, and that if they were permitted to stay, it would be because God himself allowed it.
Now, two notes: 1) Jesus wasn’t actually named Jesus, because there is no “J” in Hebrew. (I don’t really speak Hebrew, but I have learned this from people who do). But the demons seem to understand anyway, as I resorted to “Jesus” instead of “Yeshua” in every single encounter, both at this time and the other two periods of attack years earlier.
2) I know that you can cast out a demon through the name of Jesus and still not be known by Jesus, but that’s not what I’m asking (Matthew 7:23) here. I have wondered how people who don’t know or believe in Jesus cast out demons. Does God honor their plea if people call Him by another name? If you have ever cast out a demon by another name, I am genuinely interested in hearing your experience. I’m also obviously interested in hearing if you’ve cast out a demon in the name of Jesus.
Ok, that turned out not to be as difficult to write as I feared. But I’m a little nervous and I’m not revising to add any sort of creative nonfiction elements to this piece. Something about that doesn’t feel right, so I hope this post doesn’t seem boring to you.
Ok friends, I’ll be sharing a food post on Thursday. While not all our crops are ready, we have been feasting on some new combinations that I’m excited to share. I’ll see you then!
Thank you for sharing!
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tea and tenderness 
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