Tyler and the spirits...

​I know Halloween has passed, but wonder what you think about spirits?  Do you believe there are angels in the air all around us, as well as demon spirits?  When I first went to work for Judge Ranson, the bailiff told me one day he just really didn’t think he was going to like me at first because I was “nothing but a walking stenograph machine.”  I said, “Well, what in the world kind of comment is that?”  He said, “You had no personality whatsoever, you just sat there and pounded that machine.”  We laughed about it together, as after he got to know me, he found out I had all kinds of personality, good and bad(:  That said, someone also said to me once, “You just think that everything is spiritual.  Everything is not spiritual or has a spiritual connotation to it.”  Wrong – everything IS spiritual.   We live in a spiritual world, full of evil and good, choices for right and wrong.
 
Tyler will probably kill me for telling this story, but about 11 or so years ago, some girlfriends and I went to the beach, and that stupid awful movie “The Blair Witch Project” came out, and they wanted to go to it.  I certainly didn’t want to see that thing, so I offered to take all the kids to another movie, and we chose “The Sixth Sense” with the little boy who talks to ghosts.  I can’t remember how old Tyler was, but I felt he was old enough to see the movie at the time.  We come out of the movie, and I can tell he’s disturbed, and he says, “Mom, is that true what we saw in there, that there are ghosts and spirits all around?”  I say, “Well, the Bible talks about spirits” and gave him some examples of the spiritual warfare that’s woven all through the Bible.  We were all in a condo with kids everywhere, but I think he may have slept with me that night.  He didn’t say much with all the other kids around, but when we got home, he began wanting to sleep with Tom and I, or sleep on the floor next to our bed.  We let it go for a while – a good while – and after months of this, we said, “Tyler, you’re going to have to just get over this and sleep in your room.  You’re too old to be wanting to sleep in our room.”


He and Talia’s bedrooms were at the opposite end of the upstairs hallway from where ours was, and the stairs were in the middle of the hallway.  He insisted he could see “things” coming up the stairs and he couldn’t stand it.  We suggested shutting his door – he didn’t like that either – we suggested all kinds of things, to no avail.  After we laid the law down that he just wasn’t allowed to make a bed by my side on the floor, he began to sneak into our room.  He would wait until he saw our lights go out, and he would crawl down the hall on his belly, dragging all his blankets and pillow with him, and sleep at the foot of our bed.  We would wake up and there he’d be.  I wondered how in the world he got any sleep, watching and waiting for his opportunity to sneak in.  Now that I’m typing this, I’m filled with gratitude that our almost-teenage son felt that close to his parents and chose us over any other form of self-medication, you might say.
 
Time went on, and we laid the law down again – he just wasn’t allowed to sneak into our room.  He started getting better and we thought it was over.  A year or so after we issued the edict, Talia and I went to Ecuador on a missions trip for 15 days.  I guess while Tal was in her room at the end of the hall, he was good, but with the house pretty empty and only he and Tom there, he must have needed that closeness again.  He was 13 then, full of all the changes of puberty, almost 6 foot tall, but still a boy at heart.  Tom says he gets in bed and is reading and all the sudden Tyler just appears with his motorcycle magazines, slips into my side of the bed like he did it every night, lays there and reads his magazine.  Tom doesn’t say anything, just continues reading.  When he turns his light out, Tyler reaches over and turns my light out.  They lay there in the darkness for a bit and Tyler says, “Tom……”  “Yes, Tyler?”  “Uh, in the night, just remember, I am not mom…..”   LOL!
 
I call home from Ecuador to check on things (which is no easy feat, mind you – standing in line to use the phone, pay a fortune when it’s your turn) and I’m thinking I’m going to catch up on all the things I’ve missed, and this is the story I hear – Tom could not wait to tell me – he was dying laughing.  Tyler slept with him all 15 nights, male bonding, and returned to his room without fanfare upon our return.  He told me later, when we have been teasing him about how affected he was by that movie, he says, “Mom, it is all your fault!  Why could you not be like some other mom and just tell me that it wasn’t true, it didn’t happen?  Oh, no, no, you have to go into, ‘Well, the Bible gives us examples of spirits…’”  He may have a point – this could be one of the cruelest things I ever did as a parent.
 
All that said, I do believe our world is filled with spirits, evil and good.  Have you ever had an absolutely terrible thought run through your mind, just something truly awful or cruel?  I have noticed it more lately than I ever did – maybe I’m paying attention.  About two years ago, I was driving on a straight stretch somewhere, and a semi was driving toward me, both of us going probably 70 miles an hour, and as clear as a bell, this thought enters my mind, “Drive left of center and crash into him.”  It was so strong and so bizarre, my hands almost obeyed it.  Thank God they didn’t, but the whole incident left me breathless and shaking, wondering if this is how people commit suicide sometimes, by just a random thought that gets obeyed….and what in the world would possess you to have thoughts that are just awful or mean or scary?  Is it because we open ourselves up to these spirits by things we feed our mind?  I truly believe prayer and reading the Bible are like an armor of protection, and if we don’t do it, we don’t have the armor – we’re vulnerable to satan’s attacks.
 
This drug culture and the abuse and neglect we see in our state and our nation are truly the result of evil spirits – there’s no other way to describe it.  How people can think up the atrocities they perpetrate upon children is not of human origin – it has to be satanic.  The fact that people will give their entire life up to a pill, a substance, is of such unexplainable stupidity that it cannot be fathomed.  I ran across the video below while preparing for my class on The Harbinger (which I would love to come to your church and teach if anyone is interested) – and it left me stricken with a desperateness to call out to this generation to free themselves of the spirits that they have allowed into their lives….oh, we as America must begin to call out for revival, to pray for a boldness that we’ve never had before, to humble ourselves before God….