Facing Demons - 6/9/12

            It’s amazing how memories work. Sometimes the smallest things can bring you straight back to an experience. The other day the smallest taste of mint on my tongue transported me back to my childhood days of running beneath the trees and digging in the dirt, traipsing along like an adoring puppy behind my older brother. It was truly as if I was picked up and placed back under the Indian summer sun, feeling every emotion as I did when I was eight years old and life seemed so simple. I became utterly oblivious of my present reality surrounding me, and coming back to it seemed as waking from a dream. All from a bit of mint on my tongue.

            The smell of new building conjures up images of Highest Praise, my favorite place on earth throughout all of high school. It was the place where I met my best friends, perhaps my first true friends. And while time has worn away those friendships, still those memories are cherished in my heart as the first tastes of the beauty of God-given community. It never ceases to amaze me how simply walking into a building will suddenly take me 500 miles south to Missouri, music, and melodrama. Yet I always return from that split-second journey down memory lane with a smile on my face. It is an unexpected gift, as was my momentary return to childhood.

            There is no choice when these moments hit me, there is no refusal to go where my memories take me. And sometimes… I wish I could refuse.

            Because sometimes… it feels as though my memories rape me. It is not a romantic feeling of being swept away, but a feeling of being attacked, pinned down, and left hopeless.

            Church seems an odd place for this to happen. But one of the clearest and most vivid memories I have of being accosted by the past was the last time I stepped into Oak Hills Baptist Church. Now, first and foremost, let me say that this has nothing to do with Oak Hills as a church. The pastor there is one of the most brilliant teachers I have ever encountered. Three of my favorite professors in my college experience are members there. It is a beautiful, holy place full of genuine people.

            It is simply a reality that for me, it is a place full of some of the most painful memories I have to face.

            I walked into church that day flanked by two of my favorite people in the world. On one side was my sassy little ginger Nikki, my other half, the person who understands my past better than perhaps anyone ever should. She taught me how to be brave. When my life fell apart, she helped me learn how to become myself and how to stand on the foundation of Christ. Her prayers over me have spoken more truth into my life than I can ever say.

            On the other side was my ox, my protector, my best friend Jake. He is the person in my life who has shown me what it means to love someone, not with words, but with actions. Long before he ever told me he cared about me, I simply knew he loved me, not in a stylized, pressurized, romanticized way, but simply, authentically. It was what made us best friends, what gave me the courage to come to him at my weakest moments. He has given me so much courage, so much joy.

            Yet despite these two gorgeous people that so willingly came alongside me to support me, the moment I stepped into that sanctuary, the moment I took my seat, memories settled in on me like a pressure on my chest, stealing my breath. Nikki took my hand and whispered, “Hey, stay with us,” but I knew I was slipping away… back into the past.

            When I started attending that church, I was neck-deep in an abusive relationship. As I reflect upon the actual memories I have of the summer I attended there, they fly by in snatches and snippets of sunshine, smiling faces, car rides home, bulletins, silence. As I said before, it is not Oak Hills or the teaching that haunts me, it is the way I felt as I stood to worship but found the words caught in my throat, suffocating me. It is the mornings I stood, praying desperately and angrily at a God I had once loved. It is the man who stood beside me, happy and blissfully unaware of the turmoil in the small heart next to him. Each bit of soul he took left a quieter and more submissive partner. He was often frustrated by my sadness.

            I grew up loving God. I grew up believing I could be great. He took both those things from me.

            When I began attending Oak Hills, I had been with him for about a year and a half. It had started out my freshman year of college, on my eighteenth birthday, actually. Two years older and extremely persuasive, he quickly hooked his naive prize and we started dating. Whenever I look back, I expect to say that it started out as a fairy tale and then soured, but really, it never was a fairy tale. Within the first two weeks of dating, my father took my to Culvers for a frozen custard intervention.

            “I’m just not sure this is the kind of man you want to be with, Esther.”

            Well fuck. I guess I should have listened to my dad.

            We almost broke up a couple of weeks in. I’m not entirely sure how we didn’t. There were so many times I was determined to end things, determined to finally stand up for myself. And I would walk away, still with him, nothing changed, and wonder what had just happened. I was completely and utterly powerless with him. I wanted so desperately to have power, not over him, but simply power to affect him in some way. Yet even my tears were of no consequence.

            I cannot count the number of times he saw me absolutely broken, utterly crushed, sobbing so hard I could barely breathe, begging him to stop, to relent, to hold me.

            And he never did.

            He simply told me that I too was flawed, that I couldn’t expect him to fix things that I did myself. My tears only frustrated him, only drove him to more anger. His anger possessed him like a demon, and while he was in its grip, there was no hope of changing it. Hopeless and powerless. That was my reality for so long.

            These feelings became living things inside of me, and they controlled me. I have always been a bit shy, a bit reticent and unwilling to show my true personality to others. But with him my true personality was so pushed down, so buried for so long, that I forgot what it was like to be myself. After it ended, he said he felt as though he didn’t even know me.

            Well, you never did. You knew what you created me to be – a girl pushed down, stripped of hope and power, and placed firmly in her appointed place. And the strangest thing is, I truly believed it was my place. God had placed me with this man for me to help him, to transform him. That was God’s plan for me, and so it was where I should stay. For as long as it took. This was my lot.

            And this brings me to a Sunday morning when it all broke. I came to church, sat in the second pew, and fought back tears throughout the entire service as I came to grips with the thought that God hated me. It seemed only logical. This was my lot in life. My lot in life was slowly draining the life from my body. Therefore, the God who placed me in this situation hated me. Because, you see, God never wanted us to be happy. He had greater plans than simply our happiness. So my depression was simply the means to God’s greater plan.

            This logic seems so utterly pitiful now, but at the time, it was the only way I could survive. Surviving was all I did then. I strove not for happiness, but for something above despair. I sought only to avoid the fights I knew would come. Keep the status quo. Keep him happy.

            Walking into Oak Hills that day brought all of this back. Though I had been out of that relationship for six months, the feeling of being wretchedly weak, utterly powerless, tragically hopeless took me over once again.

            It will perhaps make some people uncomfortable, but I frame these kinds of feelings in terms of possession. Yes, as in demon possession. I believe wholeheartedly that demons are real, and I also believe that possession is real. I simply think that the devil realizes that for the American church, it is far more useful if he disguises it in terms we can sterilize and therefore make socially acceptable. But possession to me is the person who cannot escape depression, who cannot free herself from addiction, be it to alcohol, drugs or pornography, who is a slave to greed, to insecurity.

            We accept these things. We call them struggles. We say you should pray for me. But we have no intention of actually getting rid of them.

            You see, we like our demons. And truly, we have no idea how to get rid of them. So we put a pretty face on them and pretend everything’s all right.

            And for a long time, I could do that. I thought I was ok. My demons were long gone, right? It’d been six months. I’d tried to deal with them. I really honestly had. God had taught me so much about relying on Him, on the people He had placed in my life, and letting go of the past. But walking into that church threw me into a frenzy. I came home and screamed. I never scream. I hit Jake so hard I left bracelet imprints in his arm.

            Never in 20 years of life do I remember such an outburst. But it was almost as if I was speaking to all the feeling that possessed me for so long – trying desperately to convince them that I. am not. worthless. I. am not. powerless.

            Fast-forward almost two months. Tomorrow I will enter that church again. I will sit in the pew, stand for worship, listen to a sermon. I will see the sun stream in the windows, see the smiling faces, hold a bulletin. He will be there.

            But I will be holding someone else’s hand. And while I don’t know what will happen tomorrow, I know exactly what the outcome will be. I will walk out of that church, and I will smile. Because I will face my demons. I will stare down all the feelings of hopelessness, powerlessness, worthlessness, and I will win. Because you see, the outcome is already determined. Christ has defeated death, and when death dies, all things live. I will live. I will no longer simply survive, I will live deeply and richly. I will grow, and I will learn. Evil holds no sway. Lies have been overcome by truth, darkness by light.

            I am free.