it has been a very crazy few days.
now i'm so tired i feel like my head is swollen. i mean that... it literally feels like my head is huge and i can't hold it up anymore. i am resting its gargantuan weight on a pillow and typing this as i get into my pre-sleep mode.
emerson has called me in or come into my room about 6 times now because he is scared tonight. he is having bad pictures in his head. :( its hard not to get frustrated with him. but part of me can so relate... when i was about 7?, maybe 8, i went through a massively dark time in my life where i was scared at night. i didn't like to be alone at night at all. my imagination went wild. i was scared of all kinds of things and couldn't watch even the mildest of cartoons. scooby-doo was too much for me during that year. and the blood hound gang sent me sobbing from the room because of their one episode with a ghost. i remember it being an oppressive year of my life.
it was during that year that my parents taught me to pray and worship. it got so bad that they had to begin to teach me some skills to deal with it myself. otherwise... i probably would have just had a nervous break down. i'm sure i must have been pestering them to death the way that emerson is pestering me. i'm sure that it seemed so absurd to them in so many ways. i remember being very fixated on zombies... afraid a zombie was going to come into my room. afraid that if the covers were over my head i wouldn't see them in time to call for help. afraid a face would suddenly appear outside the window in the dark. my parents must have thought it was all very tedious but they had the patience and wisdom to give me something to fight my way out. my mom taught me worship songs, gave me phrases to repeat over and over again... mostly things like... "thank you Jesus, i praise you God. i love you Jesus. Be with me. Praise you God." etc. my dad taught me to fight. to command evil to leave me alone in Jesus name. they both prayed over me and with me and for me a million times each. interestingly enough... it worked. i began to get stronger and to feel that i had power against the darkness. i began to have somewhere to run - a haven to retreat to when fear overcame me. i began to find my way out. and i also learned to find God in the dark. i still find myself going to the same place with God when life becomes dark.
anyway... that year was terrifying because of the zombies but i remember there being a second layer to the fear at night. i remember a process very clearly happening in me in which i began to know the world as a dark place spiritually. during this year i learned about abortion, about adultery, mental illness, etc. concepts that a 7 year old can't possibly process or categorize. (this education was thanks to an older girl who took it upon herself to enlighten me.) i remember laying in bed terrified at the concept that my father could love someone other than my mom... and literally undone to the point that i had to call my mom into the room to set me at ease. i remember learning that some people have hallucinations and feeling terrified that i would hallucinate strange and horrible things and not know it wasn't real. and i remember a ten year old girl describing to me at seven the process of abortion and feeling that the world was a place filled with horrors that i hadn't known up to that point. i found out that some mother's neglected their children because a neighbor boy came to our house crying one morning that he couldn't get the bathtub water to turn off and his mother hadn't come home last night. the world was not as i had imagined. it was dangerous and broken and awful in places. and my little 7 year old mind just crashed in a bit.
i look back on that year and feel that it was a tremendous spiritual trial. it was all mixed up... the bits about the ghosts and zombies and the bits about morality and goodness. i am thankful that my parents did not trivialize it and tell me i was silly but that they took me seriously and taught me to combat what threatened to swallow me with something more profound and just as intense. they gave me something that year that i have with me to this day.
so just now when emerson came in here and looked nervous and troubled - i stopped being irritated and i held him in my arms and i prayed for him. and then i told him to pray and i taught him to say... "Bad pictures go away in Jesus name." and then i told him to ask Jesus to fill his mind with good pictures - pictures of the things he loves and emerson loves. my heart ached for him as he went back to bed and i remembered that year. but i know he'll be okay and he'll make it to the other side of this darkness knowing he has the power living inside his heart to fight it.
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