Squirming with Worry

I’ve been worrying lately. My worry is not around world issues but the turmoil of my past. When does it end?

My mother is a very dark woman. I was reading today in Isaiah about the fall of Babylon. These words reminded me of my mother’s deliberate scheming:

“Now then, listen, you lover of pleasure,
    lounging in your security
and saying to yourself,
    ‘I am, and there is none besides me.
I will never be a widow
    or suffer the loss of children.’
⁹ . . . They will come upon you in full measure,
    in spite of your many sorceries
    and all your potent spells.
¹⁰ You have trusted in your wickedness
    and have said, ‘No one sees me.’
Your wisdom and knowledge mislead you
    when you say to yourself,
    ‘I am, and there is none besides me.’
¹¹ Disaster will come upon you,
    and you will not know how to conjure it away.

Isaiah 47

The day my father committed the murder, my mother covered for him when she was forced to take him to the hospital near death from a diabetic coma. Almost 50 years later when the police investigate the murder and chat with her, she lies again.

We all lie. The difference with a person who uses evil to conjure disaster away is another beast. “Despite her many sorceries and potent spells.” My mother and father both prayed in an evil, dark language for years. We’ve all heard it. When she’s praying, the tone is frightening and angry. She’s at war, it’s obvious.

This makes me worry that my speaking out is not enough. That she will prevail with her lying like she always has. I have been beaten into submission for years with her and my father’s deceptive stories.

Why do I worry about an old feeble woman? Because my struggle is not against my mother’s flesh and blood but “against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 6). She uses this to her advantage, she believes.

I will win this battle on my knees in prayer.

Today, I will fight the good fight of faith. I will choose to believe that God holds my victory and let go of my anxiety.