The Battle

Spiritual Warfare. Separately, you hear these two words all of the time. Together, not as much as you should.

I think its for many reasons – a few being that its scary, its an ‘unknown’, or it doesn’t exist. Sadly, I think for the most part its because we don’t want to think about, its to hard to deal with or we give up the fight when we are in the midst of it personally. Maybe its because we don’t recognize its many forms or we are embarrassed to share our struggles – who knows!?

The truth is that if we did talk about it, if we shared our struggles and joined the fight together – it might not happen as much and we would talk about it more.

I am sure at this point you are wondering what brought all of this on – so, let me share some background and then our current struggle.

When we lived in Peru we lived outside of town. We had a wonderful house and beautiful property, but no neighbors. The solitude was nice, but it made it hard to develop friendships. However, here in Zamora not only do we have neighbors – but they can see into our house, into the backyard and we share a wall with one family. 

We love our house, the neighborhood and even the neighbors but it does make you feel like you are in a fishbowl of sorts. Especially when we are making lots of noise, when the kids are crying or even when we are arguing (Gasp – I know, you thought we were perfect).

So I am not gonna lie – our kids make lots of noise. Oddly enough I feel like we never hear the neighbors, but as American’s we are just naturally loud and our kids are no different (even if they weren’t born in the states, haha). I know its natural for them to be loud, I know its normal for them to fall, to be fussy and to cry – but for example: Sophia fell in the shower a couple of weeks ago. She was crying, obviously, but eventually she stopped and life went on. She did split her head open but it didn’t need stitches, thankfully. The next morning, our neighbor asks – so I heard crying last night, what happened? I explained that Sophia had fallen but that she was fine. Of course she wanted to see her head and give me some cream for it. It was very sweet but it starts to make you feel tense. 

Everyone hears what is happening over here!

So here begins the struggle – The day after Sophia fell she woke up in the night crying (usually Samuel is our crier) but she was really scared and I think, having a bad dream. We calmed her down and she went back to bed. She woke up a couple of hours later, scared again. The next morning, as per usual, our neighbor asked what had happened and who was crying. 

I explained and she nodded her head in understanding and then told me that I needed to crack an egg over Sophia’s head and call the witch doctor to ‘clean out the bad spirits’. 

Yes, we live in a decent size town, not a village, and she is Catholic – but apparently she has a witch doctor on speed dial, she used him for her child when he had nightmares – apparently everyone she knows does, and then they are fine. GREAT.

So, I just kinda smiled and didn’t respond – partly because I didn’t really understand everything she was saying and partly because I was taken totally off guard and didn’t know what to say. So the next night, Sophia throws up in her bed – sometime during the night, she didn’t make any noise so we didn’t know till morning L So gross. As it turns out the whole family had a 24 hour stomach flu or something…. When I see our neighbor she asks how we are and I tell her about the throwing up – she of course says its because we need to crack the egg on Sophia’s head and blah blah blah. 

What is it with the egg? 

Now I am getting a little frustrated and I tell myself to be more prepared next time, so that I can have some kind of response for her – all the while I am praying and willing the kids to sleep all night long. 

Well Wednesday night all hell literally broke lose. Except this time it was Samuel. 

He woke up screaming inconsolably – several times in the night – we tried everything and he finally went back to sleep, but it was loud and long and I knew everyone within a 5 block radius had heard. Not only that but Adam and I were so mad about it (in the middle of the night) we got in a huge fight, neither of us wanted to apologize and then the dog started throwing up --- really!? 

It was so unlike us, so horrible that we finally decided it was Satan. We should have realized it sooner, but I guess we just chalked it up to kids being kids or something. 

So we prayed and read scripture and prayed over our children before bed Thursday night. Of course we saw our neighbor in town Thursday afternoon – she gave her spill about the witch doctor, and I told her that we were going to pray (nicely of course). Then we held our breath. 

We made it through the night – no crying, throwing up or arguing. 

Friday night came (last night) and I couldn’t sleep, I was so tense – afraid that Samuel was going to wake up, and then he did. Not as bad or as loud as before, but still – he had had a nightmare and was upset. 

We got him back to sleep but then we just laid in bed trying to figure out why God wouldn’t be trying extra hard to prove himself to our neighbor by keeping Samuel quiet and his dreams peaceful.  

That’s when I realized that God doesn’t have to prove himself – I just have to trust Him and have faith. 

But it’s hard to have faith sometimes, when you are confused or struggling, when you can’t see the end result or the big picture. 

Thankfully God can and I know that I can trust Him, not only with the big picture but with my life and the lives of our children. However, it has been made clear that we cannot fight this battle alone – it is bigger than we thought and we need warriors to pray us through the nights. We need sleep, our whole family, but especially the kids. We desperately want to show Christ to all of our neighbors and I am afraid that we have had a pretty rocky start. Fortunately this just shows that we are human – which we definitely are - we just want them to see Christ in us. 

We want to be strong and to exemplify faith not unbelief. But we can’t do that without the help of the Lord or without your individual prayers. 

So, we are asking – please join us in this battle. Help us come out victorious in ways we could have never imagined and pray that we will be unified in hardship and persevere as a family.

Psalm 91

Those who live in the shelter of the Most High will find rest in the shadow of the Almighty. This I declare about the Lord: He alone is my refuge, my place of safety; he is my God, and I trust him. 

For he will rescue you from every trap
and protect you from deadly disease. He will cover you with his feathers. He will shelter you with his wings. 
His faithful promises are your armor and protection. Do not be afraid of the terrors of the night, nor the arrow that flies in the day….If you make the Lord your refuge,
if you make the Most High your shelter, no evil will conquer you;
no plague will come near your home.

For he will order his angels 
to protect you wherever you go. They will hold you up with their hands so you won’t even hurt your foot on a stone. You will trample upon lions and cobras;
you will crush fierce lions and serpents under your feet! 

The Lord says, “I will rescue those who love me. I will protect those who trust in my name. When they call on me, I will answer; I will be with them in trouble.
I will rescue and honor them. I will reward them with a long life
and give them my salvation."