Kings and queens

Disclaimers: The stuff I'm writing about today isn't me saying, "Everybody should do this, everybody should heal this way, everybody is dealing with the same thing I'm dealing with." Rather, it's me saying, "Here's what I've gone through, here's what I'm enjoying now, writing about it helps me process it, and thank you in advance for reading about it."

Also, I've wrestled with one of the Ten Commandments that says, "Honor your father and mother." You know what else is one of the Ten Commandments? "Do not bear false witness against your neighbor." So, I aim to tell the truth. Doing so in love is the hard part. Lying to cover up people's imperfections isn't an option.

"Kings shall be your foster fathers, and their queens your nursing mothers; they shall bow down to you with their faces to the earth, and lick up the dust of your feet. Then you will know that I am the Lord, for they shall not be ashamed who wait for Me." (Isaiah 49:23)

I've noticed a very interesting "kings" and "queens" motif in my life currently. I'm pretty sure it's God inserting this motif into my life. I like God. He's fun.

Today while I was at the beautiful coin laundromat, I was sitting in my car, and I noticed a potential brawl brewing at the parking lot across the street. While a vehicle was signaling to turn right and waiting to safely merge onto the street, another vehicle came alongside to his right and basically cut him off from the side. I wouldn't have noticed this scene if it weren't for the yelling. The offended right-signaling driver exited his vehicle and asked the cutter-offer driver if he was just gonna bleeping jump the curb, and he kinda charged at the offending vehicle, and his lady friend also exited the vehicle and told her man to get back in the bleeping car. Of course, the offending vehicle jumped the curb and sped onto the street, safely escaping this heated situation.

This quickly reminded me of a scene from my childhood (which I've probably already blogged about), and I had a "No wonder I need therapy" moment. If I remember correctly, I was around 7 years old, and my grandfather was driving me to school. We got stuck in a residential traffic jam that consisted of three cars: us, the car in front of us, and his friend who stopped to chitchat with him while driving his car in the opposite direction. My grandfather honked, of course, but he became very angry, and when the car in front of us finally moved ahead, and when the car coming from the opposite direction finally moved towards us, the driver had a surprised look on his face when my grandfather yelled in his thick Mexican accent, "YES!!" After we continued with our journey, he explained, "He wanna fight." Um, no. He just wanted to chitchat with his friend. I think YOU wanted to fight.

Yes, this was my grandfather who sold Bibles and pastored churches. You would think that someone with that type of resume would be more loving and gentle, right? especially with innocent bystanders who possibly don't know Jesus? You would hope so.

Honestly, this is my heritage-- correction: This WAS my heritage: whitewashed Pharisees who danced around an invisible cauldron, idle gossipers with very short fuses and tremendously hot tempers, and Jezebels and Ahabs on perpetual power trips.

Hmm. I think God definitely had His work cut out for Him when I finally told Him "Yes." Interestingly, He has seemed very eager and very excited about healing me, being concerned when I've given Him reason to be, not freaking out when I've brought all my stuff to Him, and literally loving the heck out of me.

In terms of Bible reading (which I usually do very slowly, because -- as you can probably tell -- I'm an obsessive meditator), lately I've fallen in love with 1 Kings. 2 Kings is also pretty darn awesome so far. Yes, I've read these books before, but I'm rereading them, and I don't think it's an accident or a coincidence that I happen to be reading them NOW.

I understand that you're technically not supposed to be reading INTO the Bible when you read it, but, well... the Bible is living and active. I'm a living and active human being, so I'm probably going to see my life in it when I read it. God is probably going to clear His throat really loudly when I get to certain parts and be like, "Um, you really should look into this. Does any of this sound familiar?"

I'm pretty sure I've already blogged a bit about this, but I used to have a Jezebel spirit (or multiple Jezebel spirits) in my life rather heavily. If you don't know what that is, in a nutshell, a Jezebel spirit is a principality, a very strong demonic power that's extremely controlling, manipulative, depressing, divisive, and destructive. I've read about very severe cases of Jezebel spirits, e.g., a churchgoer literally practicing witchcraft behind closed doors, a woman convincing a pastor to divorce his wife to marry her, resulting in him dying of cancer years later, etc. I don't think the Jezebel spirit(s) in my life were that bad. In my case of manipulating, I was wildly intrusive. In my case of being manipulated, I was severely enmeshed into other people and allowed them to control what I would believe. And that's just for starters. This is my impression of a Jezebel spirit: "Oh, can I be your friend? Can I please be your friend? Oh, good, I'm your friend! YOU SUCK! YOU ARE INFERIOR! IT IS MY JOB TO REPAIR YOU NOW, YOU PATHETIC EXCUSE FOR A HUMAN BEING!!"

Have I mentioned lately that I'm in psychotherapy again?

So, the first time I heard about a Jezebel spirit and read about its symptoms, I literally gasped out loud, because it described my life: the exhaustion, the depression, the suicidal thoughts, the manipulation, the weird accidents, the financial drain, etc.

I'm pretty sure Jezebel is completely gone from my life now, but it took a really long time to unhook her from my soul. It's been interesting (and quite fun) to take a step back and examine this spirit from the original Queen Jezebel in the Bible.

1 Kings 20, 21, and 22 are shocking and hilarious simultaneously. The following is my summary/paraphrase. So, the King of Syria is like, "Hey, King Ahab! I'm going to conquer you! Your wives and your children are mine!" Ahab is like, "OK." (What??) Then the King of Syria is like, "All right, you whiny little pushover, in addition to your wives and children, we're going to take everything that looks shiny and nice to us." Ahab wakes up finally and is like, "Oh, no, you don't!" Then he was supposed to have killed the King of Syria, but he didn't. He made a treaty with him instead. (Because Ahab is a wussy little guy.)

Then the narrative becomes a comedy movie. A prophet finds a random dude and is like, "Strike me!" The random dude is like, "No, I can't just hit you." Then the prophet is like, "Fine, then. Disobey a prophet, get killed by a lion." (Which he does.) Then the prophet finds another random guy and is like, "Strike me!" The random guy shrugs his shoulders and reenacts a scene from Airplane! So, the wounded prophet bandages/disguises himself and prophesies against King Ahab, who doesn't like getting negative news, because his boundaries suck. (Because Ahab is a total wuss.) Enter Queen Jezebel, who can't stand the sight of her wussy little Queen Ahab. I mean, uh, King Ahab.

I'm sorry, but I can totally see Queen Jezebel being an emotionally macho woman, and I can totally see King Ahab being an effeminate fairy man. Not trying to be mean, but just trying being honest, I grew up around these types of people.

I forgot to mention that King Ahab told a guy named Naboth to give him his vineyard so that he could turn it into a vegetable garden. Naboth, having very good boundaries, told the king no. So, wussy little Ahab was pouting about it, so jerky Jezebel was like, "Snap out of this depression. What's wrong with you?" And Ahab is like, "He won't give me his vineyard." So, Jezebel is like, "Oh, yes, he will." I've heard about how bad Ahab and Jezebel were. I've heard about how bad it was that they took Naboth's vineyard from him. But this time when I was reading about it for myself -- free from the commentaries, just absorbing the narrative -- the severity of this injustice jumped off the page at me.

First of all, Jezebel and Ahab were in charge of the kingdom of Israel. I don't know anything about what the laws were like back then, but they totally could have just been like the IRS or something and safely, sanely repo-ed Naboth's vineyard without killing anybody. Second of all, Naboth said he wasn't going to just give away something that he inherited from his fathers. This wasn't a stupid little knickknack inheritance; this was a VINEYARD. This was more than likely a quality, productive piece of land where wine was produced. King Ahab wanted to turn it into a VEGETABLE GARDEN? That's ridiculous. He could have planted a stupid little vegetable garden anywhere. Let the guy keep his treasured vineyard. Thirdly, Queen Jezebel didn't do something subtle like hire a hitman to get rid of Naboth. She publicly shamed and humiliated him. She arranged for false witnesses to falsely accuse him of blasphemy, and then his own community stoned him to death.

Of course, this entire ordeal got God's attention. He was like, "Ahab, your posterity isn't going to make it. I'm cutting you off completely." So, Ahab ended up dying, and dogs licked his blood in the same spot where prostitutes bathed. I think it was quite fitting, actually.

Maybe I'm just a lunatic, but I was having so much fun reading the story leading up to this. I can totally hear an effeminateness in King Ahab's voice when he talks about a prophet in 1 Kings 22:8: "Yes, there's still a prophet of the Lord in Israel, but I hate him, because he's always talking bad about me."

After King Ahab died, his son Ahaziah became king, but he only reigned two years after dying of complications from a horrible accident in... his upper room? Did I read that right (in 2 Kings 1)? Did he just have a weird accident in the bathroom or something that cost him his life?

I will say that it seems like Elijah recovered very strongly after his freaking-out-into-the-wilderness episode (in 1 Kings 19). One of King Ahaziah's captains shows up with his men to bring Elijah to the king. Elijah is like, "No, thank you. I'm not a fan of Jezebel's kid. I'll just ask God to send fire from heaven to consume y'all instead." So he does, twice. The third captain who shows up gets smart and asks for mercy, which he and his men receive. I thought that was cool. Elijah wasn't like, "AAAGH! I'm gonna die!" He was like, "Nope, I realize how much power God has given me now."

I think I had a similar experience a couple of weeks ago when suicidal thoughts breezed through my mind for the first time in a long time. I didn't have time to find an appropriate Bible verse to fight back with, so I came out swinging with the first thing I could grab. And I was livid, so I cussed at the devil. I was like, "Bleep bleep bleep God opens His hand and satisfies the desire of every living thing bleep bleep bleep!" Then I started crying, knelt into my "prayer chair," opened my Bible, and started praying the first thing that popped open, which happened to be Psalm 86. God and I talked through some stuff for a little while, He told me about riding waves of emotion, and then I was fine for the rest of the day. I hung out with friends that evening, and I was fine. The entire ugly episode was very short, and it was over very quickly. God and I handled it. I guess you could say fire from heaven suddenly swooped down on my enemies and burned them to a crisp.

I'm not taking credit for what happened. I'm just saying that when you're fighting for your life, it's imperative that you actually WANT your life. I know that God wants me. I know that I want me. Now I'm working on learning that other people want me, too.

In my research about the spirit of Jezebel, I learned that this principality can take root through a rejection wound, and/or a neglect wound, and/or an abandonment wound. I'm pretty sure the reasoning behind it is, "I'm going to force you to love me, and I'm going to control you so that you will constantly pay attention to me, always accept me, and never leave me." So, God and I have had to dig really, really, really deep inside me to flush all this crap out. I think we're still digging. But thanks to Jesus, who is my Conqueror, I'm winning, because He made me more than a conqueror.

Meanwhile, it's been so validating (and so fun) to see Jezebel's handiwork come to life in scripture. I think it makes all those teachings about her make so much more sense. When I read it, it's like, "Yup, there's the weird accident... and there's the witchcraft... and there's the manipulation... and there's the fear... and there's the depression... and there's the forced submission... and there's the wussy king who's enabling her." Yup, all this activity mirrors the activity of many people who I used to know. Yup, I used to engage in a lot of this activity myself.

Have I mentioned lately that I'm in psychotherapy again?

Speaking of queens, yes, I've become quite obsessed with Queen's music lately. (But mostly just their first, second, and fourth albums. I thought their third album was boring. (Sorry, just a personal opinion.)) One song that has really intrigued me lately is Freddie Mercury's "The March of the Black Queen." I'm not sure exactly what the song is about (although I would guess it might be about all kinds of stuff that I'm not supposed to know about), but from what I understand about the songwriter, he would want me to interpret the song to mean whatever I wanted it to mean. When I listen to the song, I think about Jezebel: the controllingness, the power, the subtle seduction. It has hauntingly beautiful melodies all smushed together in crazy time changes, key changes, and blaring chaos. You know you need psychotherapy when... while listening to "The March of the Black Queen," you smile and think to yourself affectionately, "Awww, Mama."

So, in this leg of my healing, I think God and I have been having a lot of fun together. We've been listening to music together, and we've been sharing my current season of "WHERE HAS THIS MUSIC BEEN ALL MY LIFE???" together. And yes, I totally thought about "Bohemian Rhapsody" when I read 2 Kings 1 and God was like, "Seriously, Ahaziah? You're inquiring of Baal-Zebub? Do I not exist to you?"

I'm glad Israel did have some awesome kings in its history. I think one reason why I like King David so much is because he didn't whitewash himself at all. He was extremely, excruciatingly vulnerable, and God made sure that his art was collected in the songbook that sits smack-dab in the middle of the Bible. He even included the stories behind a couple of his songs. For example, as a musician, I'm used to seeing directions at the beginning of a song like "Legato," "Allegro," "Moderato," "With feeling," "Introspective," etc. In Psalm 51, King David cuts loose with "I wrote this after I committed adultery with Bathsheeba and after I got told by Nathan the prophet." I wonder what the chief musician's reaction was to these directions. "You want me to play WHAT kind of song??"

Life is so much fun! I need psychotherapy!

God is fixing stuff inside me that's been broken. He's been straightening out some stuff that's been crooked. He's been awakening some stuff that's been asleep. He's been killing some stuff that's needed to die. He's been reviving stuff that's needed to live again. I like God. He's fun. He's like the perfect King and Queen simultaneously.

Or, as Brian May would say, "I fought with you, fought on your side / Long before you were born."