Dreams and demons

My friend Jeff, who still lives in the duplex next to where Storm died, tells me he was feeling pretty crappy and sick.  He woke up one night and Storm was standing there.  Storm said, "Get off your ass and do something."  So he did, and ever since then he is feeling entirely much healthier.  

Storm doesn't visit me here.  Storm doesn't visit me in dreams.

After Storm died, I didn't dream for a long time.  I think that was a mercy and a comfort granted to me by my Father Yahweh.  There were no dreams of any kind, and that was just fine with me.  When the dreams started coming back, they were disjointed and broken, like shattered glass.  Right before I moved, I was waking up from a recurring falling water dream, but I'm sure I just felt overwhelmed.  The first real dream I had was a few months ago.   It wasn't a bad dream, but I woke up feeling that way.  Praise Yah again and again for Pepe, my catty cat.

Sometimes, right before I fall asleep, I wake up from those tiny, little dreams, usually with the sensation of falling or twitching.  Lately, those tiny dreams have sometimes been dreams of Storm.  Good dreams, but they still hurt, and wake me, and make me cry.  Dreams where he touches my hand, or puts his arm around me.  They make me want him so bad.  They make me miss him so much.  

I don't know if this is him reaching out to me in the only place he can, between sleep and life, or just my brain reflecting the desires of my heart.  I know that my Torah tells me that I am not to consult mediums or to commune with the dead.  I don't reach out to Storm.  I don't seek his face.  I don't search for signs.  He made his choice, and that choice was death over me.  So be it.  If that was his choice, I wish he would say what he has to say, and then leave me in peace.  There can be no comfort from the dead.  He owes me an apology.  I owe him one.  I think that is the only thing either of us has left to say.


Which brings me around to the subject of demonic oppression.  After my front-row seat to suicide, I know that demons are real and active in our world.  I have been reading a course on spiritual warfare.  One of the potential signs of demonic oppression is a seemingly unsolvable problem.  The problem that came to my mind was mowing.

I have issues with grass, and lawns particularly.  I'll save that rant for a different blog, but as in almost everything, the evil of man has turned a beautiful creation into something damaging and ugly.  As my husband knew my feelings on the matter, and wanted grass anyway, it was understood that he would tend it, and he always did.  I never had to mow.  I never had to cut it.  If it needed love, he gave the love.

Fast forward to my first real home, and the giant backyard.  I intend to turn it into my backyard garden escape, but right now, it's just a big field of grass.  I hate loud, gas-filled machines, so I bought myself a cute little push mower, which is a great work out, and a good way to spend some time.   However, that little guy is a maintenance tool, not a cut down tool.

It started with a friend saying he needed to make some money.  I offered him $40 to cut the grass and clean up after dogs.  He agreed.

Then he didn't show.  For two weeks he said he would, then he didn't.  Then it rained.  And it rained, and it rained, and the grass grew and grew and grew.  I felt the anger coming up in me.  Every time I looked at that grass growing, I felt more and more helpless, more and more abandoned, which made the stress tornado tune up inside of me.

After the rains, I tried to mow it.  I gave it the old college try, but it was a total fail.  My little pusher was not up to the task.  Mostly, it just knocked it down.

So I figure...ok...I'll power up my gas powered weed-eater, and kill it with that.  Except...it wouldn't start.  I thought it was my fault.  I'm fairly incompetent wish such machinery, and a little pissed off at this point, so I was probably doing something wrong.  Except I wasn't.  My brother came over, twice, and together, we tore the thing apart.  New spark plug, fresh gas, clean carburetor, no start.  Still I'm watching my grass, now waist high, not be cut, and the city is bugging me about the weeds on the other side of my fence.

Through it all was a feeling of anger and hopelessness.  It took full will not to break down and scream and cry and break something.  I was so tired, and so angry, and so tired of feeling so angry and helpless.  This was all Storm's work, not mine.  It was his job to run the smelly, loud machinery.  His job to cut down the offensive grass, and even his job to tear up the dirt for my garden. This is why I had a husband!!

Right after Storm's suicide, I had a lot of angry episodes.  Screaming, breaking things, tearing screws out of walls, throwing my hands up in helplessness.  It wasn't like me, I didn't like it, and I felt like it was out of my control, which only made things worse.

I haven't felt that frustrated anger, that stress tornado twisting up inside of me, for a long time, yet any time I went near my lawn, tried to solve that problem, it started all over again.  It burned inside me, and kept me from completing this task.

I was reading the spiritual warfare material, and I decided this must be the work of a demon.  If it could cause me to be provoked to anger, it might cause me to sin, which would give it access to come in and torment me.  I rebuked the demon, in the name of Yeshua, and prayed for a resolution.

The next day my brother asked if I would like him and our neighbor Jeff, the one who saw Storm

View of the Yard (The cat is Thing.)

bitch at him, to come over and mow my lawn.  It was Jeff's idea.  This is not the first time that Yah has worked through my former neighbor Jeff, and I knew that's what was happening here. 

The area behind the fence.

The grass is cut.  The back fence is in compliance, and the dogs, and the people, have a place to be again.  The children can play in the play house, and the work in the back yard is actually getting done.  Very ugly cinder shelves have been erected poorly in the tent-storage, and the back patio is empty of pots, trash, and other miscellaneous items that had lived in there since we moved in.  Tomorrow I will maintenance mow, and maybe knock down the bits they couldn't get to for time.

Next week I hope to entice my brother to come build a wood rack on the back patio, and we can get that reorganized so that I can use my cinder block.  I am going to use all of my block to create the garden beds.  So one project leads to the next, and then the next. Breaking the blockage of the demon, who sought to drive me to anger, has opened up the floodgates and let all manner of blessings through.

The anger is mine.  It is not demonically driven.  I can allow it to flow over me and then away, or I can allow it to engulf me and lead me into sin.  I pray that Yah gives me the strength and courage to pass the next test.