Calling on the Ultimate Ghostbuster

Nothing like a nightmare to remind me of God's presence and how he doesn't want the evil one to snatch me.

The scene was this: Grandma and I were returning home at dusk, making our way up some ratty stairs just inside the building (not sure if it was a house or apartment) and headed for another door at the top. Suddenly, these mostly invisible and faceless phantoms (like those of my childhood nightmares) wafted about us and Grandma collapsed and I just grabbed hold of her before she fell down the stairs. I asked her if she wanted me to call for help first or try to get her up the stairs. I don't remember what she said but the next thing I did was yell out for the ghosts to go away, in the name of Jesus. They didn't right away, but Grandma was able to stand up and she was fine, as if she hadn't fallen. Then I kept saying it over and over, until the persistent devils started slurring my speech. Then I woke up.

I have an idea of why I dreamed what I did last night—at least for the most part, though I don't know why I was hanging out in a rickety old haunted house with my grandma—but aside from the why I'm just glad that the outcome was waking up to safety with my husband to comfort me and my thoughts to turn to Jesus and how he really will push Satan away if I ask in his name.

I've actually had more than one dream of casting out demons or asking the devil to leave in the name of Jesus Christ. It's not that I'm reading my Bible before sleep—notably where the disciples are doing the exorcizing—or that I'm practicing this casting out in real life. Truthfully, a fair share of stories and movies have permeated my eyeballs and imagination telling the tales of bad ghoulish guys wreaking havoc and good guys using some sort of power to vanquish the evil. Last night I fell asleep after reading Harry Potter out loud to Luke. It was book two just through and after the part where Harry defeats the basilisk and, for the time being, He Who Must Not be Named. Creepy stuff, but Harry always gets help when he asks for it (we'll save other Christian allusions in HP for a different conversation). That's the positive of these entertainment offerings: I'm keen to only ingest the stories where good wins. And I could definitely believe I might suffer nightmares from Bible study, especially what Luke and I are studying lately with the Old Testament.

But Good wins. Oh sure, in my nightmare the bad-guy spirit made my tongue go all wonky so that I couldn't keep saying "in the name of Jesus Christ be gone!" so that is where I woke up really freaking out. BUT. Good wins. Good WON. That's a sigh of relief. I have no clue why the bad awful horrible stuff keeps going on generation after generation, but I have to keep reminding myself, or listening to God remind me, that he took care of the darkness and continues to do so by shining very brightly so that darkness is no more.

If I don't remember and believe then good will stop winning—at least in my little life but not eternally. And I can't make good keep going, the light stay on, by trying to do it myself. In my dream maybe I was trying to get rid of the evil and, duh, that won't work. I have to call on God because only he is strong enough. I want to believe that it is not just a dream-world situation or a Bible-times disciple thing. Jesus died for every single person. We can all call on him and his power of light and good and love to push away the dark powers when they are oozing in on us. When they are clouding our thoughts, twisting our words, coating us with stinky horrors.

So, I'd be really grateful to have no more nightmares, but day or night the reality is that if I start to trust, really trust that I can call on God to remove dark powers from my life—to be my ghostbuster on speed dial—then I don't have to freak out so much. Maybe I can stop freaking out at all.