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I was lying in bed a few weeks ago, when Emily brought Rosie into our room. "Tell Daddy what you just told me," she said.
"There's a scary movie in my room," she declared. And the spiritual warfare began.
Some people in this community are often aware of the spiritual world; I usually am not. But there are times, like this one, where God places something in front of me and says, "Fight this." Then I swing my sword with all my might. So I went into the kids room, raised my hands, and prayed. I prayed to God that he would drive out all of the "scary movies," and send them to the feet of Jesus to wait. I prayed that God would fill that room with his Spirit, and that there wouldn't be space for anything else. I prayed that I would be able to see what Rosie was seeing, so that I could fight it more personally.
After I prayed, I still hadn't seen or sensed anything. So I asked Rosie if the scary movie was gone. She said it was, and she was now willing to go to bed. I spent the night sleeping next to her, ready to fight again if needed.
For the next week, scary movies showed up every time we put Rosie to bed, and occasionally at other times. Eric started to talk about them as well. I began to wonder if this was just a ploy to get attention. But then, a tantrum hit. Rosie's tantrums come in two forms: mad, and out of control. "Mad" tantrums go away fairly quickly; she makes her point, then realizes that we aren't going to change whatever we told her to do, and we move on. You can talk to Rosie in a "mad" tantrum, and reason with her. You can give discipline, and expect it to work. With "out of control" tantrums, though, her eyes close, she throws her head back, and it's as if she disconnects from the world. No words, soft or hard, will penetrate. She will demand toys, or food, or drink, but throw them when given them. Nothing will calm it. All you can do is to buckle her into her timeout chair (preferably in her room, with the door closed), and wait for it to blow over. In one case not long before this, that took 4 hours before she stopped screaming.
This time, as I saw she was heading into an out of control tantrum, I asked her, "Rosie, are you seeing a scary movie?" She said yes. I prayed for her, and asked God to take the scary movie away. Almost immediately, she calmed down. We still had a tantrum to deal with, but it was "just" a mad tantrum, and it was handled quickly.
I don't think that she's has a out of control tantrum in the weeks since.
I believe that it took 6 days of hard-core battling before the scary movies stopped coming back. But the changes in Rosie, particularly at bedtime, remain. I now believe that she had been seeing demons in her room, and in other places, for God alone knows how long, and it took until that day for God to give her the words to tell me what was going on.
It's not over, entirely. Every once in a while, one of the kids will come and ask me to pray, because they see a monster or a scary movie, but these are now rare, and quickly dealt with. I don't know if the things that they see nowadays are spiritual, or normal kid's imagination. But I pray for every one as if it was a demon, and let God sort out which is which. (For the sake of the kids, I always call it whatever they called it. If they say it was a scary movie, then I pray against scary movies. But God knows what I really mean.)
It's a wondrous thing to be able to battle for your kids. In the past, I've battled for friends, and for Emily. I've even seen a couple of the demons which tormented Emily, and have fought with them in a manner so intense it was almost physical. But it is a wonder to be able to battle for your kids. And more so to have them ask for it, and to learn that they can ask for it. Often, in that 6 day period, I would still be in the middle of my prayer when they would interrupt, and announce that the scary movie had gone away. It was amazing.
There is something even better which has been happening. Shortly after we started battling the scary movies, Rosie declared, for the first time, "I love Jesus." Over the weeks, both kids have sometimes wanted to join in thanking Jesus for various things. Prayer time, which had always been for the parents, is slowly beginning to include them as well.
But the best is for last. Three nights ago, we had a friend over for dinner. He is somebody I expect you will all meet at Vespers someday; currently he doesn't believe in God, but God is in hot pursuit. But he has also had a spiritually charged life, and when he comes for dinner, we usually have to fight scary movies as we put the kids to bed.
Three nights ago, Eric was in our room before bedtime, and came out to the living room. "There's a snake," he said. I followed him into our room, and asked where it was, since I couldn't see it. He said that it had been on the floor, but that it must have crawled under the bed. Of course, our bed sits on the floor, so this isn't possible. I started to realize that this wasn't a physical snake he was talking about. As I started to pray, he said:
"Pray to God about the snake, Daddy, and it will die."
I prayed with great joy, and it went away.
I thought that it was wonderful to fight for your kids. But it's something else altogether when they declare, with great confidence, that demonic forces "die" when you pray.
It gets even better.
I asked Rosie this morning how she slept last night. They slept long and quietly, and expected a positive answer. "How did you sleep last night? Did you sleep really well?"
"No," was her answer. "A monster woke me up."
I was instantly on the alert. "Why didn't you wake me up, then, so I could pray for you?" I asked.
"You prayed, and the monster went away," she declared with absolute conviction.
I don't know if Rosie had a dream, or if it really was a "monster." I surely didn't do any unusual praying for her last night. But God got her through whatever it was. But if it was a dream, then her subconscious dreamed that I would pray in that sort of situation, and that the monster would go away.
I can live with that. |
