(As always, when I write about my life this openly, it is not my
intention to diss anybody. It is simply my intention to honestly work through
some stuff and to share it with some people who might be interested in reading
about it.)
Reader, I apologize if I alarmed you with the title of my post. Don't
worry. I wasn't talking to you. I was talking to the demons.
"For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against
principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age,
against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places." (Ephesians
6:12)
"Blessed be the Lord my Rock, who trains my hands for war, and my
fingers for battle..." (Psalm 144:1)
This evening at the church bookstore, when I saw this CD of Messianic
Jewish praise/worship music in Spanish, something inside me ripped open and
said, "AAAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHH!" in a good way. Yes, during my drive home this
evening, I was praise-grooving in ways that I'm not sure my soul had previously
dreamed possible. Yes, I was the half-Mexican chick clapping while driving down
the local strip. And, of course, I cried. Don't worry. That type of thing is
normal for me.
Perhaps my cross-cultural appreciation has something to do with my
upbringing. I was raised by a white polyglot linguist who juggled foreign
languages as a hobby, made money with them as a career, and spoke them as a lifestyle.
And yet, I will always have something that he will never have: ethnicity. He
may always be a wannabe Mexican, but I will always be a half-Mexican. Ain't
nothin' ever gonna change that.
Your natural heritage is a pretty important thing to know about,
because many of your issues are inherited from your parents. Sometimes your
ancestors' secrets follow you around like a ticking time bomb, and then
suddenly when you least expect it, BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEEEEP! KA-BOOM!!!!! in
your face. And then your ancestors aren't around to help you clean up the mess.
It's all YOU. Good grief.
Of course, if you've given your life to Jesus, He helps you clean up
your mess, because He now owns the mess, and He's very intentional about
helping you work through it, and He's very eager about making something brand-new
out of it, and He's dead serious about giving you abundant life, and you
couldn't do any of the above without Him.
And, of course, when I say "you," I mean "me."
So, honestly, if you were to tell me that my paternal grandfather or
great-grandfather had ever had an illicit sexual encounter or full-blown affair with
another woman, or another man, and they never told anyone about it, or perhaps their wives had
found out about it and just covered it up like good little helpless females...
honestly none of that would surprise me. I'm not saying that any of that
happened. (I hope it didn't. I'm just using my imagination.) I'm just saying
that IF it had, it wouldn't surprise me, and it would explain a heck of a lot
of the stuff that God and I have been working very hard to clean up in my life
lately. See? Keeping family secrets from your kids is a very bad idea. Good
grief.
But lately, I've been thinking about my other grandfather -- the
Mexican one. I've written about him here before. I didn't attend his funeral, partly because I didn't like him. Several years ago, he had a temporary bout
with dementia, and I liked him better that way because he couldn't remember who
I was. He was a lot nicer, and he actually made an effort to get to know me.
But when he was in his right mind, he was the type of guy who would
preach a sermon at a pulpit on a Sunday and then pick a fistfight with an
innocent driver while he was driving his grandkids to school on a Monday.
When I was in college, I found out the real reason why he and my birth
mother's family emigrated from Mexico. He pastored a Baptist church in Mexico
that was growing and, consequently, taking people away from the local Catholic
church. Apparently, this ticked off the Catholic priest, because he hired a
hitman to take out my grandfather. My grandmother got wind of the plot, and the
entire family was whisked away to safety in Texas, where they settled. For some
reason, my birth mother wasn't told about this entire ordeal until I was in
college.
My Mexican grandfather was not the type of guy you'd want to mess with.
He was really tough. And yet, since he raised four daughters, he had to have
had some sort of soft side to him. (I'm not exactly sure at what point my birth
mother decided that she needed to marry the wussiest, most controllable guy she
could find, but I guess that's none of my business.) But my grandfather was
definitely a Mexican warrior.
If you've been reading my blog for the past couple of years, perhaps
you know that I used to have a Jezebel spirit. In general, that means that power is
like a drug to me. I used to be abusive, intrusive, manipulative, and very
controlling. Now I understand that I can manipulate and control things like
art, music, and blog posts, NOT people. (Notice that AAAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHH! is spelled
very intentionally with 10 As, 5 Gs, and 3 Hs. Hmm. I can be pretty obsessive. I
can be pretty obsessive. I can be pretty obsessive. I can be pretty obsessive. I
can be pretty obsessive.) A Jezebel spirit can take a really long time to
uproot out of a person. I can definitely vouch for that. Being Jezebel was sort
of like the family business.
But that was then. This is now.
I recently listened to a teaching that said that part of having a
Jezebel spirit is using intimidation against people. Recently while I've been
working through job-related offenses, I've found myself being very willing to
verbally assault my bosses, especially the ones who have very subservient
wives. I've imagined myself bullying them and getting pleasure out of the fact
that they're probably not used to having a woman stand up to them. So, as I've
taken that to God and confessed, "I have this intimidation inside
me," He's just kind of casually declined to take that from me and said,
"No, use it on the demons."
Oh. So, this violent ticking time bomb inside me is supposed to stay inside
me... and it's supposed to be wielded to make war against the demons, NOT
people. Cool. No problem. Can you hear my knuckles cracking?
"And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of
heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force." (Matthew 11:12)
I've heard this Bible verse quoted lots of times, usually in
intercession/prophetic contexts, so from what I understand, the verse is
talking about spiritual warfare (like Ephesians 6). But, of course, I could be
wrong.
And I don't know exactly what God had intended to work inside my
grandfather or my birth parents, and I don't know exactly what could have gone
so wrong years ago before everybody was born or while I was being raised, but I
do know some things for sure: God is real. He's the King, and His Kingdom is at
war. He takes people like me, cleans us up, and turns us into demon-massacring
warriors. (In my case, I would be Tirzah: Warrior Princess.)
I still have a lot to learn, but this is a very good, interesting learning
season for me. Lesson #1: The battle is against the evil spiritual forces, not
against people, period. Lesson #2: I am so much stronger than I had previously believed myself to be. God basically told me once, if I understood
Him correctly, that the enemy attacks some people with abusive situations so that they will
believe the lie that they are weak and helpless... when the truth is, they are
very strong. I believe that I am one of these people.
I can be very sloppy when I pray, especially when I do spiritual
warfare. I can be even sloppier when I praise with music. I kind of think of
myself as using a machete to hack through all kinds of infested territory. It's
definitely an exhilarating rush. I don't really politely "rebuke"
illnesses or situations when I pray for my friends. I bully the demons, corner them, relieve
them of their demonic assignments, and command them to go straight to hell. And
I don't really tiptoe onto the praise battlefield. I use my voice as a chainsaw
to do business, and the other evening I noticed myself wagging my head at the
demons. I think God liked that. The Psalms sometimes talk about the enemy
wagging their heads at us, so I think God decided to take revenge on the
enemies who mocked me by letting me mock them back. Maniacal chuckle.
A quirky hobby of mine is driving past other-religion temples in town
with my windows cracked while praise/worship music is blasting inside my car...
so that the music can soar toward the demonic forces in the air and confuse
the heck out of them. Heh. So, the other night, this half-Mexican chick -- whose
grandfather was once intimidated out of his homeland -- took great delight in
intimidating the demonic forces of an other-religion temple by screaming, "JESUS IS LORD!!!" while she sped down the road with her windows cracked. Maniacal chuckle.
I hope the members of that particular temple wake up one morning
wondering why Jesus appeared to them in a dream and told them that He wants to
be their Lord. I ain't gonna lie. That would be extremely cool. That would make
my day. That would make my year. That would make my entire life.
That would be worth everything. AAAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHH!
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