Dark Forces

 Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.

— 1 Peter 5:8

Prayer meeting always went late. I didn’t mind. That meant getting to play longer with my friends, watching Adventures in Odyssey or McGee and Me on the old Zenith television in the fellowship hall. We’d sneak over and check on our parents from time to time. The church was dark with only the front of the church lit up. Music was playing over the sound system, usually setting a mood of intense prayerful contemplation. Someone would be lying on the floor. My dad might be in a baseball catchers crouch with his back against the wall, bible open, his hand atop his balding head. My mom, fists clinched would be pacing back and forth whispering in tongues under her breath. Then suddenly my dad would stand up, walk over to someone, lay a hand on them, or give them some kind of “word” he felt the Lord had laid on his heart for this person. Sometimes, a reading from the scripture would be loudly proclaimed, or maybe a pronouncement of what God was “showing” someone. Those things would be offered up, and then it was back to the intense prayer. It was really something and if I had to tell the truth it always struck me as odd. I never felt right about any of it. But what was I going to say? This is what being a Christian was for all I knew. And for all they knew for that matter.

It was on one such prayer meeting night that my mother, fists clinched and pacing back and forth began to speak in tongues. Which wasn’t unusual. She always did. But this time she spoke them slightly differently. It was more than just the few syllables here and there that made up her heavenly language. It was full sentences with inflections and rhythms. I remember as we left the church, her face joyfully lit up as she spewed out this new found language at a rapid pace, the church people around her smiling in agreement with whatever it was that was happening. Surely a sign from God. Maybe my mother was about to bring a word! A message, a message from the Lord! But despite the Monty Python humor, this would be a key moment for my family. My mother, by all accounts was possessed, but for good or evil, we didn’t know. I knew one thing. That was not my mom, and I was terrified. She continued with these utterances for what seemed like days and days. It took various forms, but my dad remembers it finally landing on what sounded like an asian language. She even tried to teach him words. Dad became concerned and so did others at the Church including the pastor. But I don’t think there was anyone more concerned than me. Mom was my best friend, and now I didn’t recognize her. One morning while I prepared to eat my cereal, mom babbling on in her preferred speech, I yelled at her. “Mom! English!”. She snapped out of it for a few seconds, spoke to me in English and then resumed. The hair on my neck stood up. I was scared.

  This would become a theme of my life, being scared. There was plenty to be scared of it turned out. Hell, the end times, Satan, Demons, Sin, Sex, Drugs, Rock music, witchcraft, idols, the basement, the hallway, my closet, under my bed...the list seemed to go on. Satan was behind it all though. He was the mastermind of my fears and this predicament with my mom would place my family firmly in the grasp of this fear and it would loom in the shadows of our lives from that moment on. This obsession with the devil and his activities became such a staple of everyday life and I was stuck in the middle trying to make sense of it. Suddenly everything was imbued with symbolism. God began to “show” my dad things. This could be in a dream, it could be during the study of scripture or any number of activities. History was a big source of inspiration for the symbolism. My father began carrying a real sword with him on frequent trips into our woods to pray. A 200 hundred acre farm on a dead end road was the perfect place for a “wilderness” experience akin to Jesus’s 40 days in the desert. The sword began to follow him to Tuesday night prayer meetings where I would see him symbolically “cut” off demonic influences from peoples backs. Pulling out invisible “darts” from the enemy that were negatively influencing the afflicted person. We came to call the demonic forces “stuff”. If referring to someone we suspected had demonic influence we would with wide eyes exclaim “Yeah, they’ve got stuff.”

 “The enemy will run like a wild ass from the man who has tasted the sweetness of prayer.”

— Elder Cleopas of Romania