Make of It What You Will...

Every day I fight with that demon that tries to control me. My struggle shows progress from the days when he did have me under his crushing influence. I now have help, but that is a long story I don’t think you would--actually, I think you should hear it. It may be a strange tale but it happened to me. Make of it what you will but this is something I cannot withhold without denying you the greatest experience of my life. The tale of how I first learned to live.

It is the demon that tells me I am worthless. The one who comes to me, drags me to the bottom and after silent screaming tells me no one can hear me. No one would care anyway. That I'm not worth the air I breath. It would have been better never to have existed because then I wouldn't have taken up space.

I take his thoughts and images and ideas shoved down my throat and swallow it all. I take it as fact, a solid reality of what the rest of the world must think. I see from the inside of this dark cone. This existance that defies acceptance and cries out for an end. I take it and want to give up. This is the edge of depression. This is the edge of darkness.

I turn around and look through eyes covered by his lies. Everywhere I see the things that reinforce the power of his bond over me. I forget about his existance. It is only me. Alone I stand faced with the truth that there is no reason to fight. Truth has the greatest power is that not what I've always been told.

I am still and silent. No more hope throbs through my mind like the blood beating through my veins. I am a disgrace of the race I was created to be a part of. Nothing I do or have ever done is worth anything and all I am is a dead weight to the world. I should just give up. No one would care if I simply disappeared. Simply existed no longer. Life would go on.


But there is a side I cannot see from here. I am blind to it's existance. He stands just beyond where I sit. In thunderous anger and panic and tears he pounds with all his mighty force upon the prison of my lies. Sweat turns to blood on his forehead from the excruciating amount of his agony. What does he suffer for so completely? Me.

His voice is hoarse from roaring at the heavens over me. His clothes are in shreds from his prodigious torment over my chains. The mountains tremble with the power of is emotion. Earthquakes and catastrophes cover the land that is empty and without life. He will not give up. In his endurance his passionate fury and vociferations for me he lasts for days in a violent battle for my life.

With dogged tenacity and awe-striking willpower he turns to the last resort to defeat the devil that holds me in its grasp. He stretches out and turns to take the final blow that was meant to end my life. The uproar of the elements, of thunder and oceans in turmoil and lighting and the wrending of the earth, there was a sudden silence. Time stood still, if in this place it existed at all. Nothing stirred for an eternity that lasted three days. The fires and storms ravaging the earth continued in their paths of destruction.

If this were a story this would be the point where everything ended. This would be the point that you throw the book against the wall and have your own little tantrum of the unfairness of it all. But I am here writing this am I not? Had that been the end I would not be alive. He who died was my loving Jealous Guardian. He who died had power to subdue the whole earth. He who died had power to give life and bring distruction.

He who died, died wholly. But then the miraculous happened. The only being in greater athourity than he raised him from his death. In his death he had gone to a place of infernal feriocity. Through fire and brimstone he went to the place too terrible to write about, the place of no return.

He went to the demon who had power over me and fought those three days for me. He took what was given to me. That which I had handed over to it. He took it back to himself. It was life. When once his task was accomplished the one who's athority was greater than his raised him from that death into life once again and put him above all else. His name held the greatest power and authority for he was the one who had battled and fought death and conquered with life.

I was utterly unaware of what raged beyond my silent depression. In the stifling thick darkness I was ready to give up. I longed for an end and reached out to give myself release. But before that darkest deed could be done a dot, a tiny light, distracted my attention. For a moment I had something real to focus on something other than myself.

As I looked through bleary eyes without hope at that small fragment of light it grew. I had become so adjusted to the darkness my eyes began to sear with pain. The pain made me blink and groan reaching up to try and block out the horrible light. The pain began to rouse me, I wanted something. I desperately wanted something for the first time since the beginning. The beginning of what? I didn't know. I wanted that light to go away. I wanted the pain to stop. I wanted to scream but still I was not awake enough for even that.

I rolled and writhed on the ground trying to block out the light. But it grew brighter. It surrounded me. I forgot where I was and only focused on the pain. Then suddenly a voice like rolling thunder sent a shock like a lightning bolt through my being.

"Awaken. Come to me. Come. Wake up, you have been asleep for far too long."

It was soft and gentle but to my ears that had been deaf to noise for so long it was too loud. A new pain sourced in my ears began throbbing through me. I finally dared open my eyes again. I forced myself to focus through the pain and slowly it began to ease. My eyes began to focus. As they did I saw a man. He was dressed entirely in white and shining like the sun.

He must be where all this light is coming from. I would have asked him to go away if I had been able to think but I couldn't speak. My eyes adjusted more and I realized he was no ordinary man. If I had been fully myself he would have taken my breath away. As I was I lay there forgetting the pain that still throbbed through my head and stared dazedly at this divine being.

He was human, I could see that, but somehow so much more than just human. Words escaped my muddled confused mind to describe him then but still there are no words to express his awesome existance. Like a wave of electric current flowing out in a pure untamed form I was struck by his presence. It flowed through me, radiated from me and utterly surrounded me. I felt more alive then it seemed possible, as if at any moment I might explode from the amount of life surging through me.

To simply be alive in the same world as this being made me want to jump and shout and sing and cry and laugh and...live. Tears blurred my vision and I shook with the powerful emotion that struggled to find its way into expression. I lived again. I was awake. I drew breath for what seemed like the first time. The air set my lungs on fire and again there was pain but I could bare it now. I was alive and he was here beside me. Nothing could stand in our way.

He knelt beside me and gently drew me into his embrace. The sweet rich scent of earth and sky, flowers and fruit and even sound such as that of a mighty waterfall and a cooing dove, filled my lungs and I rested.

After a long while he lifted me in his strong arms and put me on my feet. Looking into his eyes I knew he had a purpose for my life. I knew that I was not worthless to him. He made me want to live, to love, to exist.

"Will you come walk with me?" he asked.

My eyes brightened and I nodded breathlessly. He took my arm in his and turned towards the world.

"I have so much to show you."

I could sense the excitement in his voice and I felt it flood me as well. We took a step in unison and I began to truly live for the first time.