Darkness of Soul

          My soul in anguish

My heart, taking a beating

The whips in the hands

of my own

Lashes from within

Voices mocking

Cutting off my life supply

Closing in on all corners

Jesus, why are you far off?

 

Am I Job being stripped?

Doors slamming in my face

My plans frustrated

What I attempt, it fails

My worth tattered like a discarded blanket

That my child trades in for something “better”

Am I the brown pastures

Where they want green?

I am a fall leaf,

only worthy for a season.

Accepted, then discarded.

Over and over, a cycle.

They're hurt by others,

then it’s thrown on me

When will it stop?

When will the sky lift?

Lord, who?

Who will you send for me?

I found a seat a sat down for dinner. On each of our plates lay a unique handwritten note from members of a church in Seattle. Every note had a different message. I was stunned when I read mine.

“You are on the front lines of a spiritual battle…Keep fighting the good fight. The enemy can only be defeated by love.”

I looked up, looked around. Looked at other people’s notes. Each one was different, and there was only one message meant for me, the one “randomly” lying on my plate.

I believe there are plenty of coincidences in life, but more than that, I believe God handcrafts certain moments that are tailor made, just for us. As if His angels were the ones not only writing the cards but also handing them out, placing one on each plate, knowing ahead of time who was going to sit where. There couldn’t have been a better message for me. I was on the front lines of a spiritual battle. I was being targeted, hunted, attacked. Battered and bruised, I was in anguish. I was tired. Tired of loving.

Since January of this year, I started experiencing something I can only describe like Mother Teresa once did: a darkness of soul. My external circumstances were nothing to complain about really, but my internal anguish was like a deep, unreachable wound. Like I knew something bad was going to happen, but I couldn’t stop it.

In fact, I did know and experience this. Several of my girls had gone home for a week over the Christmas/New Year holiday because they had earned it. However, not all of them were able to have safe visits. Knowing this, I practically begged one of the girls not to go. I gave her other options, I gave her ideas, and I told her exactly what would happen if she went where she was not supposed to go. And I asked her to reconsider the week she earned. She’s of age and earned it, so I couldn’t remove the privilege just because I was worried. But it’s like my spirit knew. She made me promises we both knew she wasn’t going to keep. She believed her biological mother was suddenly, miraculously a new woman and was safe. To withhold her from being with her bio mother would simply be cruel, and yet, I knew. I knew the devastation that was about to hit. Sure enough, she broke her promises, she went where she wasn’t supposed to go, her mother wasn’t who she was supposed to be, and horrible things happened to her frail body in just a week’s time. She came back, and I tried. I tried so hard to help her put the pieces back together. But she was already gone. Her body was there, but she had never returned.

A depressing chill fell over the place. A strange shift in the atmosphere. We were battling spirits, now. A power of darkness. One of the youngest said she’d rather be a queen in hell than God’s angel because, well, Queens are better and have more power. Suddenly girls were talking about running away or killing themselves. A spirit of death. The thief had entered. A physical thief had broken into my home two years ago, but now it was an unseen one. Some of the girls who had gone “home” for the one week holiday had come back with the very demons they were once delivered from.

I wrote:

It really felt like suddenly the enemy was within. A darkness of soul, a thick, suffocating blanket. Prayer seemed to help, but it was like momentary relief. I poured out my unshed tears, dried up from the shock of runaways and the hatred that seeped from deep corners of their abusers still whispering over them.  

So I did the one thing I know how to do best: write. I prayed and wrote and filled my journal with prayers, pleas, and prophecies that flowed. And this is one that spilled out onto the ink of my pages:

“Attack her heart,” the enemy ordered. “I have tried for ten years and failed. There’s no way to get her from the outside. We must plot from within.

I will put an enemy inside her walls, Masked as a support. She will lean on the supports after I’ve beaten her down as much as I can.

And then I’ll pull the support out from underneath her. What she thought would be for her, I will use against her.

They will reject her, betray her, mock her. They will play with heart like a bouncy ball until her spirit is broken.

Yes, it’s her spirit we must break. We’ve broken her heart but He just keeps mending it. Now, we crush her heart until her spirit breaks. And the only way to her heart is through the very ones she gives her heart to.”

I still remember the way my heart jumped to the roof of my head and got knocked back down to my toes. “We can’t find them. Their cell phones are gone. They ran away.” In the cover of darkness, they slipped under the fence, took their early inheritance, and ran back to bondage. My daughters, gone.

And right before my conference, too. So I went to the conference emotionally exhausted, spiritually dry, and physically stressed. Dr. Becca Johnson reviewed the warning signs for burnout, and this time I knew how to respond, how to protect my hope. Thanks to the entire Atlas Free network (men and women from over 23+ different countries around the world all in the same fight with me), I felt supported, encouraged, inspired, and my hope reignited. I received needed advice. “You are enough. What you’re doing is enough. You’ve given them the greatest gift: the opportunity to choose. They may choose wrong, and some will and it will be devastating, but even so, you gave them a gift they didn’t have before, and that’s enough.” I also reconnected with old friends and met brand new ones. I felt cared for, intentionally noticed, seen, and appreciated. I was prayed for, and I felt held. Held together. So to see the completely “random” hand-written note by a “stranger” sitting on my plate on the last day of our conference, I was struck. Hope Surged. Healing Began. Someone sees me, sees my battle. And sees the love I have is enough. Love wins. Love defeats the enemy. 

And my prayer journal reflected exactly that. God responded to the revelation of Satan’s plan to attack my heart: 

“Attack her heart,” he ordered

But I say, “The more cracks, the more light you let in.”

He knows he has no access.

He can only pierce the surface

His weapons will never touch the heart of the heart, your spirit!

He only thinks he’s clever,

Planning a downfall like the trojan horse

But he forgot in his prideful foolishness

Whose palace he put the trojan horse into

Bait for bait.

I baited him.

It worked.

When the supports fall, it will fall on him.

What he seeks to crush will be the very thing that crushes him.

So, take away the fool. He cowers in the corner,

But you can find him by the sound of his chains shaking

In fear.

It is finished, Satan. You with your trojan horse crushing your own head, are defeated.

I AM has spoken.

Kate, I Am here.

 

If you missed my previous blog similar in theme but centered on forgiveness, check it out here: "Take Me Down"