<Warning – This lengthy excerpt shows the authority and abundant grace of El Shaddai, God Almighty, but contains violence, sensitive subject matter and demonic activity.>
I mentioned earlier that, as part of his covenant, God protects us.That’s a problem for many many people because we do not appear to be protected. We have diseases, we experience natural disasters, and we suffer unspeakable crimes which people commit against other people. Where’s the protection in that? Why follow a God who allows those kinds of things to happen? How can such a God be considered good? While I understand that and am not untouched by pain, I answer that God is not the only force at work and should not take the blame for everything. I answer that while he could prevent catastrophe, as he chose to prevent the death of the birthday boy <previous chapter>, he is not a God who controls us as though we were puppets. Everyone has free will, even those who use the honor selfishly.
Sometimes things just happen, as accidents, or as natural consequences of our behavior. But I believe God has our best interests in mind over the long haul. I believe that his perspective is much different than ours, and that his priorities are far more noble than ours. What we see as catastrophic is sometimes the groundwork for a more beautiful and permanent joy because he is able to do whatever he sees is best to do. I have suffered through some painful experiences, but Elohim was always with me. He would share my sorrow and heal my wounds, calling them ‘hard won tools’ for his work. Looking back, his Presence has been more than worth the pain.
Let me share with you an example of when God intervened on my behalf. I believe this encounter is further descriptive of the Powerful Elohim. There are in fact many names given to him which begin with El – the title of respect and acknowledgement of his power. The particular name I’m thinking of now is El-Shaddai (el-shud-eye’), which we translate as Almighty God. It is El-Shaddai who makes a covenant with Abraham in Genesis 17, and was powerful enough to faithfully keep it. I believe I saw a glimpse of that power – in particular, the power over evil.
This will be shocking to you Lilyan – I apologize for that and promise to relate the story as gently as I can. There was a day in the summer of my 17th year when I was relaxing in my backyard swimming pool. I thought I was alone, but a boy from the high school I had attended had slipped into the pool without my noticing. As I became aware of a presence in the pool and began to turn toward him, I saw his face briefly. It was twisted in anger and hatred, contorted into a startling visage. He grabbed me in a way that spun me, keeping me facing forward, away from him. Ignoring my pleas, he caused me great pain and intense terror. Perhaps in an effort to silence me, he even held me underwater for a time. Perhaps believing I was dead, he suddenly left me. He also left me pregnant.
My parents, the great-grandparents you never met, were enjoying an extended vacation on the opposite coast. They were unreachable as there were no cell phones back then, but that didn’t matter; I could not have found the courage to have told them what had happened. I kept my trauma to myself. When I realized I was pregnant, I dealt with that alone as well. I did speak with a counselor, a minister, and the nurse on my college campus; all of them said that abortion was the only way to deal with a baby conceived by rape.
I listened to them. Even though I was uncomfortable with the idea of abortion, I set up the appointment and followed through. Coming out of the clinic it seemed as though the sky had peeled back; I felt exposed and traumatized. The abortion had taken place at an expensive clinic in a major city and nearly killed me physically, emotionally and spiritually. Not only did they puncture my colon, setting up an infection which nearly took my life, they also pierced my soul. My conscience became numb and lay like a cold foundation beneath a badly built house. It took decades to heal from that abortion, but that’s another story.
So, where was El-Shaddai, Almighty God my protector, in this part of the story? Looking back, the first I noticed a glimpse of him was in the elevator on the ride up to the abortion clinic. A woman stepped quietly into the elevator with me and smiled at me as she pushed her own button for a different floor. I noticed a small pin she was wearing on her lapel. She noticed my focus and smiled at me again. I apologized for staring but couldn’t keep my eyes away. In a kind voice, she told me it was a replica of the feet of a human fetus at 2 to 3 months, actual size. Lilyan, I could have covered both those feet with a single fingertip. It impressed me deeply, but God had presented himself so quietly, so gently, that I did not know it was him until later. He gave me a way out, but I did not choose that way. I followed my plan. Ever since, even now, I feel regret.
After dealing with the ensuing physical pain and real danger which the puncture of the colon created, I struggled through the remaining school year and came home from college, again on summer break. Initially, I mostly cried. I spent weeks on my knees begging the Lord for help and forgiveness. The experience had changed me – the whole experience, not just the abortion. What I felt was bigger than guilt and regret; I felt excluded from life as I had known it. I no longer felt close to comfort, or to grace, or to peace, or even to the person I had been before. I felt vulnerable, unable to know who I could and could not trust, so trusting anyone became impossible. Though I could not feel him, El-Shaddai was watching. He was listening, waiting for the perfect time to show me his Glory. It happened one incredible night, after many nights of torment at the hands of his enemy.
That summer, I often had a dream. In it, I saw a fetus in the distance, spinning constantly as it moved closer toward me. When it came close, it would darken, exploding in my face, and I would awaken with heart pounding. Nights had become unbearable. The dream, which came often, was bad enough, but most nights I experienced something much more terrifying. I would feel a presence come into my room. You know how we notice when someone is staring at us? Or maybe how it feels when you’re around someone who gives you ‘the creeps’? You know how it can make you feel cold and all the little hairs stick up on your neck and arms? It was something like that, in the first few moments. I’d be asleep when I felt the thing come in, from the direction of my window near the foot of my bed. The entire room would become cold as it would sweep over me. I could smell its rank odor and hear its laughter. I could clearly see the shape of its face and the fire filled color of its eyes. There were fangs in its open mouth. I always felt panic.
After a couple months of these visits my physical appearance had begun to change as, understandably, I no longer slept very well. My brother noticed, but I was reluctant to tell him or anyone what was happening. I told our mother that I was just having ‘nightmares’, though I knew it was real. Perplexed, she told me to sleep with my Bible.
That night I lay on my stomach, propped up over Psalms. I fell asleep reading in Psalms about how I need not fear the dark of night, nor the arrow that flies by day. I awoke with the same cold draft sweeping over me, hearing the same laughter…until I rolled over to face it, as I always did. This time, when I rolled over, the Bible was exposed. This……this is the moment that has shaped my belief that the Bible is the Living Word of God, full of power and authority. At the moment the Bible on which I had fallen asleep was exposed, that hideous demon absolutely freaked out. Its eyes diverted to the Word, it immediately stopped coming forward and started backing up, shrieking in a way I can hear echoing to this day. It seemed to be sucked out of the room backwards, through the same window it always used to enter. I lay still for only a moment, wondering what had happened.
Then, I saw a light enter my room through that very same window. It was not like headlights shining into the room; it was a vertical light, about the size of a man, moving as a pillar just beneath the ceiling and just above the floor. It was golden and white, and appeared to be alive as its particles moved around within its space. It moved slowly to the center of my room and stopped. I have no idea how long it stayed there because the feeling of peace it brought covered me like warm honey, and there was quiet in my soul. I smiled at the Light as I fell sound asleep. I never experienced the dream again and was never confronted by the demon again.
I wasn’t sure at that point what exactly had happened, nor who it was that had vanquished that demon. I had no idea if the Light was God or Jesus or an angel sent by them. But I did know that there was something disgustingly hideous and evil ‘out there’, and that there was something beautiful and incredibly good ‘out there’. It was also clear that the evil thing was terrified of the Good, and had no choice but to obey the Good. Whatever their names were, I knew for certain which one I wanted. And I have come to believe that it was the Lord, a glimpse of the Elohim, El Shaddai.
Before I end this story, let me speak to the possibility that I was just experiencing guilt and sleep deprivation, because before that Light came to free me from harassment I had the same concern. But years later, my sightings were confirmed when my mother (your great grandmother) began to reminisce about a time she had tangled with a demon. As I listened, she gave very specific descriptions of the face and everything else about it, matching my memory exactly. In answer to my questions, she gave a time frame that preceded the time frame of my experience by only a week or two. She had known to send it away in the Name of Jesus, though she had not forbidden it to return and apparently, it had returned to me.
Why the Name of Jesus when we were talking about Elohim and El-Shaddai? Interestingly, those names have a plural quality. They imply a trinity. That is why, in places like the story of the garden of Eden or the tower of Babel, scripture uses the pronoun “we” when God is speaking. The Trinity refers to God the Father, Jesus the Son who is One with the father, and the Holy Spirit of the Living God. They live as One but the Name of Jesus is powerful because he is God’s Love and God’s Word and God’s covenant of mercy, articulated by the sacrifice of his own body and blood. That’s why the name of Jesus has power.
So in closing, while we may not be protected from everything, as I was not protected from the rape and my mother and I were not protected from harassment by a demon, I consider myself privileged to have seen that Light. It saved me. I can’t prove who it was but I do know that the authority and the love in that Light were absolute and incontestably powerful. The glory of El-Shaddai was there, in full command, and I would not trade that experience for anything.