Incapacitated

Sunday morning arrived much earlier than anticipated, and brought with it liquid lead, which it fed to me intravenously.  I felt as if my body was no longer attached to my mind ~ heavy, burdensome, exhausting to move.  I was dizzy to the point of nausea when I stood and God forbid I make a quick movement.  Had I been drinking the night before I would have sworn I had the worst hang-over known to man.  It was exhausting to get dressed and ready for church, and I was so loopy that I was afraid to drive.  I collapsed into the car and fought hard to prevent succumbing to the darkness in and around me.

Once at the church, I collapsed into a pew and literally wanted to die.  My body felt as if it were not my own ~ disconnected, not responsive to what my mind willed for my body to do.  Ironically, the sermon topic was exhaustion over doing good.  I can't tell you much more about it because I couldn't listen.  Whatever had a hold of me refused to allow me to pay attention, and I fought the urge to break down and sob.  It took everything in me to keep from making a tearful spectacle of myself.  After service, more than one concerned soul asked if I was OK.  I lied, of course, claiming that I was just overly tired from a particularly long week.

The truth of the matter, I would come to discover, ran far deeper than detoxing medication.  Our family had been invited to an all day party at a friend's house Sunday afternoon.  I told Josh to take the boyz over and I would meet them there after I'd slept for a while.  Two hours later, just as I was getting the strength to swing my legs out of the bed, my cell phone rang.  Josh was wondering if I was going to make it over at all.  I did make it ~ and felt like a salty, anti-social 5th wheel.  It wasn't that I didn't want to join in and have a good time, I literally didn't have the ability to do so.  I sat, half conscious and half aware of what was going on around me, feeling like quite the pill for almost 2 hours before bowing out and making my way home.  Our friend tagged me in a facebook pic ~ not one of my better photos.  When I commented that it was obvious that I didn't feel well, another friend chimed in to state that it was obvious to her because I wasn't smiling, and I was always smiling.

Once home, I collapsed on the couch for another couple of hours.  I tried to be productive as I lay there like a bump on a log by reading, but my eyes refused to focus.  I thought that I needed to get off the couch and get some house work done, but I literally couldn't move ~ my body forbade it.  As I sat there, wallowing in my pity-party, I realized that what I was experiencing went beyond detox.  I could hear laughter in my head and see the accompanying darkness.  I was under spiritual attack, and the devil was enjoying every minute of torturing me.

A hot bath sounded like a good place to retreat.  I could close the door and run the fan so the Boyz wouldn't freak out at seeing Mommy fall apart.  I lay there, debating whether to slip under the water, fighting the tears that were welling in me.  And as the tears fought for their right to be expressed, my mind's eye saw blackness, darkness, evil ~ all consuming and overpowering.  The light may have been on in the room, but I never would have known.  Though I wasn't frightened, I was a little freaked, and the only remedy that came to mind was prayer.  As I tried to pray, the blackness interfered with my focus (or lack thereof on a good day) and I couldn't get very far.  So I started to recite the Lord's prayer.  I knew it by heart and could force my way through it facing every distraction under the sun if necessary.  As I lay there engulfed in hot water, my body twisted into a position that was less than comfortable and certainly not of my choosing, reciting the Lord's prayer, my mind's eye could see light again ~  a thin band on the horizon at first.  And then suddenly encompassing my entire field of mental vision, crushing the darkness, forcing it down.  And my physical being went with the darkness, sinking into the water, feeling at once like lead and completely weightless.  As I acknowledged my limp, non-responsive being, I was convinced that this is what mortal death must feel like ~ conscious recognition of one's lifeless being.  No words can adequately describe the feeling.

My lifeless body lay in the water for an indeterminable amount of time, then the evil returned.  The fighting back tears and extreme darkness rushed back into my being with renewed vigor.  Once again, all I could do was recite the Lord's prayer.  And again the light came crashing into me, knocking me down, and the evil with me.  I can't begin to count number of times I went through this battle in my bathtub, but each confrontation left me weary, battered, and shredded.