Note: Usually, when I say “Lord”, it’s interchangeable and THEY know who I’m addressing when I’m speaking to them, but for readers’ sake, in this book when I say “Lord”, I mean Jesus. When I say “God” I mean the one God.
I get the feeling later in this memoir, HE will be Father because HE keeps reiterating that to me. HE told me we’re HIS babies. There are God-fearing people who are sensitive about the “Father” thing because HE’s GOD, though I know folks of other Abrahamic religions have heard HIM say it to them even if it’s not okay in their circles to admit it.
HE, HIM - God
- God is just always right behind me because this sucka is always on my heels. A dream. That’s how it started. Well, almost.
He snatched the gas nozzle from my hand because I didn’t want his help. It was a cold afternoon. I had just left work and I was tired.
We stared at one another – me insecure and wanting him to go away, and him heavy-handed and insistent with a bulbous head and one milky, blind eye. I allowed him to pump my gas, avoided his play for conversation and then drove myself home - forgetting him the moment I turned onto the highway.
Then I was dozing on the couch after work. The house was cold, so I had laid down still wearing my coat. I awoke with a jolt when I saw that white, milky eye behind my eyelids, and the Lord’s voice was loud. He said, “Every time I awake, Satan is in your backyard. He had better leave you alone or I’m gonna beat his MOTHERFUCKING ASS!”
I know what you’re thinking. God doesn’t speak those terrible words. That’s what I would’ve said too.
He also said…louder and angrier. “And tell him I said that if he keeps trying to raise the dead I’m going to break his…”
Right. So…
This is my life.
I wasn’t always wonderful (heh).– I didn’t always know God. But even when I was a bad girl, Satan would call me a “bitch”. Bitch, bitch, bitch. I would hiss. Fight. Scream.
I knew Jesus first. He would stop in periodically to see if I was ready for repentance. When I was, He worked with me. The voices started about four years ago and grew more noticeable after trauma.
Because I pray all day, from morning to night, I figured it was God talking to me. When the voices brought words that made me feel insecure, I thought it was chastening – that I was doing something wrong. I was an old sinner which sometimes equaled to me “no salvation”; that God wouldn’t forgive me for certain things. Every bad thing I did equaled no salvation – to me. I knew what repentance was, but somehow felt that it wasn’t really for me. I forgot that God is LOVE. Why would my God build me up only to tear me down? That’s when I started to wonder – asked God – what is that voice with the quick insults? The condemning and put downs?
When Jesus came to help me repair, I felt weighed down by guilt. God came to get to know me and I fell in love with HIM, and of course eventually, I had to deal with grief.
It seemed that trauma after trauma came – a broken heart, attack from co- workers, a sexually assaulted friend, and on and on. Things that bothered me that were once “out of sight, out of mind” weighed on my brain – child molesters which I detest, a video of a young girl’s rape by a police officer remaining online even until this day, a photo of a child’s face while being molested, stumbling across a video on Facebook of a little girl being groomed by her mother to have sex with a grown man, a toddler masturbating…
When I asked God why people hurt children – hurt other people – HE told me plainly that they were demons. Rapists are demons. Murderer – demon. Child molester – demon.
I had a friend once who told me that a demon was in her brother. I nodded and told her to pray. In my mind, demons were the little girls in movies possessed by evil spirits – ugly, smelly, contorting parasites that could only be vanquished with the help of a good priest because their mothers had no belief in the Almighty God. Demons smile, play games, tell you kind words, and try to trick you but they’re dumb. That was me.
But no. Demons walk side by side with us every day – sometimes arm in arm.
Anything that bothered me popped up. I felt as if I were being attacked. I retreated to gain my bearings, but still I had no idea what was wrong. When I heard stories of people who had fought with the devil, I nodded and shook my head.
Satan coming in dreams and fighting or coercing women into sex – I would shake my head. That could never happen to me. Never. Not that he had never accosted me in a dream. Quite the opposite, in fact. But if I called Jesus, He was always there and the problem would disappear.
Jesus. Anyone who knows me knows that I love Jesus. Jesus this and Jesus that. I can’t see Him but I know He’s around. Unlike God who is a provider and excellent for comfort, Jesus is more like a friend.
I was busy making arrangements – arrangements that I didn’t want my mother to worry about. I was afraid of the afterlife though I had been assured that I would be okay.
This new presence – the sexual stuff – started in the bathroom while I showered. Me being me, I figured it was Jesus since I talk to Him all the time. So me, “Jesus this and Lord that”.
He said something that made me upset.
After I got into bed is when the voice started. I had a vision of the Lord beating me. When I say a vision, I mean there was no physical contact but there was definitely spiritual contact. Satan beat the hell out of me and I thought it was the Lord so my customary fighting, cursing and thrashing was non-existent. I would not raise a hand to the Lord or curse Him, so I got my head “crashed in” that’s how I saw it.
This event was so traumatic to me that I tried to block God and the Lord’s voice, and so much so that I planned to go to a Buddhist Temple to block this “voice”. I did not want to hear. I was afraid. I thought THEY were trying to kill me.
Never before had I experienced this. Why would I think it was the devil when he had barely been allowed to speak to me before without divine intervention? In my mind, Christ was spitting hateful words and He had hit me so hard that I would’ve sworn that He held a sledgehammer. I was sick to my soul. I did not call for God. In my mind, I had done something so foul – so disrespectful in back talking God that Christ’s excuse was to blot my name from the Book (which He did in my sight).
Now while I lay getting the hell beat out of me, God came and gathered me up, made me safe, and gave me the Prayer of Manasseh. By this time, I wouldn’t talk to Christ because I refused to let the devil trick me again. Hell lasted for two weeks while God helped me to differentiate between the voices. The spitting, hateful, malicious voice was none other than that rotten dog.
Then I understood – kinda. Weeks before God had told me that something wanted to rape me, but didn’t want me to see it. I thought it was a man.
That was how he tried to worm his way into my life by using something I fear against me > Christ trying to have sex with me; Christ calling me a nappy headed nigra; Christ calling me a whore.
Jesus said to me,
“How did you believe that was me? Why would I waste my time working with you? Why would I hurt something that loves God?”
Guilt.
But all I could say is, “Lord, to cover up that he couldn’t act totally like you, he beat my ass and played on my emotions. If it makes you feel any better, he had some jacked up hair.”
Now God is always sweet to me. HE makes sure I have money to buy dresses, that I eat, that I have a place to go when I’m extra confused (more than “I need Jesus” confused), and HE tells me which way to go. But HE doesn’t seem to sit in one place for very long. All HE says is, “I’m right here.”
HE doesn’t understand the heart attack either, and I’m more of a dramatic person. “Heart attack” meaning, when danger is near don’t call God first, pull out the pistol.
So Jesus is gone and I have God and that’s fine. I’m embarrassed to know that the devil has been in my shower - has made sexual advances toward me. I know a woman who had sex with him willingly a few times and all I can wonder is how and why because he is disgusting, but I guess if he plays like he’s someone you love… I don’t know.
HE said, “Why didn’t you call me?” Guilt.
So even today while I’m writing this, the bastard is walking around spitting obscenities. It’s funny the things that you don’t think about – the mayhem he provokes makes you think that he’s simply evil, we shrug our shoulders at his reputation and move on. But when I’m sitting in my chair and God is talking to me and Satan is being vile to HIM and I’m shocked because the realization finally hits me that he hates the Father God…
Is very disrespectful to HIM to the point that I’m ashamed though the words didn’t even come from my mouth. This goes beyond an “Angel Berry tantrum”.
It’s vile name calling, sexual molestation of Jesus with his clothes split and bleeding up the back, sliding toward the throne hog-tied like an animal.
But alas, he is not the bump in the night. No, no. God is.
Why would God tell us we will be forgiven if we repent if HE doesn’t mean it? HE is glad when we learn from our mistakes and seek repentance with a true heart. But Satan desires to situate himself into our lives – sometimes in the form of something we covet to proceed to tear down first our faith and then our person.
Abusive spouse? Satan. Anyone who loves you would not harm you. Been raped? Satan. Child missing? Demons.
The way I see it from my experience is whatever you do wrong – whatever sins you’ve committed, he will use the guilt against you to make you think it will stop God from loving you - that is if you feel guilty about it because feeling guilt is a form of repentance. If one didn’t care or recognize their sin, who cares what HE says?
It’s natural to want a relationship with God, our maker, but he (the devil) wants you to curse God; he is very disrespectful to God; he wants to shame and hurt HIM through you. God told me he (the devil) sits beneath us and watches our lips move.
He is a God imposter. He will tell you good things to fool you. He will try to weigh you down and steer you into doing what he wants you to do because he is not respected like God where he can make a request and it’s done. He will work on your insecurities. When you’re strong in the spirit of God, he will try to hurt you. Don’t say, “This won’t happen to me”. He will feed you negativity; he breeds ignorance in God through distractions of sex, distractions in the church, money, greed – all to distract you from the Word of God. He will try to exploit your weaknesses.
Say Hallelujah.
It only takes two seconds to screw up anything – meaning our life, state of being, the life of someone else.
One split second.
I’m an adulterer, liar, blah. God knows our heart, but he (the devil) wants us to believe that our sins are so bad that God won't forgive us.
Because I have a mouth like a sailor, I love this example:
“…woe is me! For I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.”
And of course King David whom God loved:
“…David arose from off his bed and walked upon the roof of the king’s house…he saw a woman washing herself…the woman was very beautiful…”
“…and David sent messengers and took her…and he lay with her…”
“And the woman conceived…”
“Set ye Uriah (Bathsheba’s husband) in the forefront of battle…retire ye from him…that he may be smitten and die.”
David repented and followed God until he died.
I began this memoir over a week after I realized that the devil had attempted to situate himself into my life. That day was March 16th and this memoir was started March 23rd. It also contains accounts of others who have had similar experiences. It will follow a short story called The Humble, which was published in 2016. It was my way of expressing a strange experience that I could not explain by use of a character named Hattie Mae Cline.