I hear demons every day.
They speak to me in hushed tones, whispering pretty little lies that, for decades, used to tangle me up in their sticky webs and fool me into believing I was free and happy and in control. They try to entice me the way they easily used to, to lure me in and have their way with my mind, body, and soul—but their tricks don’t work on me anymore.
The demons are angry at their own insignificance in my life. I can feel it.
They’re angry because I also hear God every day. I hear the gentle, genuine love and protection that comes from my faith. I’ve been equipped with a golden, impervious shield of love that repels the paltry attempts made by those once-powerful demons. I’m truly free now—free in a way I never knew was possible. I’ll be forever grateful for that.
I’m not here to push Christianity on anyone; I know from my extensive experience as a practiced and aggressive atheist that it wouldn’t work if I did. But I felt a strong pull today to share what you might call my testimony, and whether you’re a believer or not, it’s a story that is filled with morals, lessons learned, pathways crossed, and, perhaps the most important piece, a life saved in more ways than one.
I hope you enjoy it.
Dispelling demons
I began this story with demons because, while they’re not as important as they want to be, they’re ever present. They want us—they win that war with many of us. I should know—they held me for decades.
Have you ever done anything just bad enough that it was somehow delectable? Maybe you stole a chocolate bar from the corner store; maybe you cheated on your disinterested partner—just a little! Maybe you did something “naughty” and it made you feel powerful—it made you feel rebellious. Unique. Unhindered.
I have a sackful of those kinds of deeds, and I used to be injudiciously proud of a few of them. I was proud because I either got away with them or I secretly esteemed them. Proud, because I felt like I was making myself stronger. I felt, perhaps unsurprisingly, clever.
Looking back, I realize that I wasn’t clever. I was just as broken as everyone else—just as lost and unsure of myself. I know now that I was so open to the luscious whispers of demons—real, awful, alive, and spiritual demons—that they could control me. I think that was the ultimate truth that I had avoided for decades: that I was never in control.
The demons were in control.
Not as nonsensical as you might think
If I’d heard anyone saying anything like this about demons a few years ago, I would have balked at their idiocy.
It’s true: I used to think Christians were morons. How could you believe in a God in a world like this? I would ask. And worse still, how could anyone with half a brain consider the reality of demons?
Exactly how dumb are Christians? What nonsense!
It didn’t take long for me to realize that this reality was already happening in my own life. Before I’d even considered taking the proverbial and literal plunge into Christianity, I started to pay closer attention to my thoughts. I would—and still do—have inappropriate thoughts about people in my life and about how I could mess with them. I would never act on most of these thoughts, of course, even before becoming Christian, because they were just that awful. Thoughts about indecency, deviancy, and self-destruction were so common that my vision had become cloudy. They were so intrusive that I’d become desensitized to them and barely noticed their presence with each passing year.
You can try to deny it if you like, but you have these thoughts too. We all do—evil is everywhere, and it wants to penetrate our walls.
It didn’t take long for me to learn that these thoughts didn’t come from me at all. I remember hearing in a trial for the murder and literal consumption of a little girl that the killer claimed to have had intrusive thoughts from the devil—at the time, I was not Christian, and I thought it was an excuse for his atrocious behaviour. A plea, both literal and metaphorical, for some lenience.
There is no excuse, however. Intrusive thoughts so terrible might indeed come from the devil, but listening to them and allowing that demonic force to control you is no excuse for the butchering of innocents. The thoughts themselves, however, do come from a place of evil. The devil himself might truly be in control of most of the convicted killers in our prisons as we speak.
Demons have one goal: control. They want to bend you for their own dangerous deeds, to use you to wreak havoc and misery and pain. Learning this made me reevaluate my own thoughts throughout history. Thoughts about cheating, for example: if you follow the thought through to its inevitable conclusion, what do you have? The person who is cheated on feels hurt, betrayed, and struggles with trust. This misery might (and likely would) spill out into other relationships, spreading the pain to others. Likewise, the person who did the cheating has hurt themselves, having to live with the knowledge of what they’ve done—that they aren’t trustworthy. They’ve done something selfish and wrong, and that kind of injury festers and becomes foul.
Whether you believe in the scriptures or not, there’s no question that when we do bad things to people, we feel it. It sits as a heavy weight on our hearts that is rarely unburdened.
Until you ask for it to be unburdened, that is.
A life of sin
I have never gone on a killing spree or stolen large sums of money or dealt drugs to kids or anything else quite so horrendous — but I’ve still lived a life full of sin.
The true definition of sin is to “miss the mark,” which can be as simple as going the wrong way in life. Maybe our sins don’t hurt anyone but ourselves (and God, if you’re a believer), but they are still wrong, and that leaves a mark. My sins, however, have hurt many people. My sins might still be affecting them, particularly as they still affect me.
There was a time not that long ago when I was living entirely for my own selfish desires. I had a problem with alcoholism, and my marriage was a winding, unsteady rollercoaster that left us both breathless and winded at times. It was falling to pieces in the slowest and most excruciating way imaginable. I had a child who was my world but whom I was constantly failing. If I’d continued down this pathway—missing the mark, so to speak—I feel certain that I’d be in a very different place than I am now.
I can envision a blurred future for the way I was living: a rough, wounded woman who had lost her husband’s love and rights to her own child. A shell of a woman who had sacrificed her humanity for her selfish whims and who’d won nothing but loneliness for her efforts. An alcoholic divorcee who only got to see her child on supervised visits—a child who would have no respect or admiration for this person who had merely birthed her and was, in no real way, her actual mother.
Maybe that’s dramatic; maybe not. The point is that a future as bleak as that—or possibly worse—scared me into making a change. I needed to face my demons head-on, and I’d never been less prepared to do so.
But honestly, I had no choice.
The rooms
Full disclosure: My addiction recovery process didn’t involve being in the rooms. I didn’t once set foot in my local AA chapter, but I did call them.
A lot.
Recovery is personal—there’s a reason they call it “alcoholics annonymous.” It’s unique to each person, as each addict has a reason for their addiction. As individual as the recovery process is, it also takes a support group of some kind, and for me, a big part of that was reading books about recovery. I’ve never thrown myself into a research project as hard as I did for my own recovery.
One thing that those in recovery, especially those who have gone to AA, agree on is the importance of God in their new lives—or, if not God, at least the serenity prayer. If not God, the idea is that there is a higher entity in power. If not God, the empowerment to relinquish their control over their lives to someone who can responsibly wield that power.
No matter how you look at it, there’s a reason addicts lean into religion during their early days of recovery. They need to leave their deep, dark woes at the feet of a loving father who will pick them up, dust them off, and tell them they are so loved, so valued, and so capable of making better choices. They need someone to take the wheel for a while.
I desperately needed someone to take the wheel, and I’m grateful for the people who sent me on the path to my recovery.
Rebirth
In the end, turning to Christianity was what ultimately saved me, in both the literal and spiritual sense, and it took me a while to become comfortable with saying that part out loud.
My way of life isn’t for everyone, but I do think that for many of us, Jesus makes the most sense. When you need someone with more clarity and calm to take the wheel, it’s easy to know where to turn. When you’re alone and feeling desperate, you know, innately, that you aren’t alone at all. When you need someone or something that you know won’t let you down, the answer is always clear.
I hear the demons, even now, but I’m in good hands. I calmly bat them away because, now, I know what they really are. Those thoughts that pop into my head when I’d rather they didn’t aren’t mine—they’re planted. I know what the enemy is trying to do, and like any good warrior, I know my enemy’s style. I know that he’s sneaky and will stop at nothing, but I’m no longer in his grasp.
If nothing else, I hope this story helps you make choices that are better for you and those around you. In a world in which “self care” is God and dating is “hooking up,” it is so easy to let yourself and your innate goodness slip through the cracks. Find something to anchor you, and you’ll find that you can weather whatever is thrown your way.
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This post was previously published on ILLUMINATION.
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