This afternoon marks exactly three weeks. It was Saturday, Mother’s Day in Mexico and three days before my 34th birthday. They tell me that we went for a ride down the beach on the quad, a typical Saturday evening. Apparently I was taking a video of the sunset, the crashing waves, the pink sand. And then, I fell. The phone went one direction (the video is kinda crazy), myself the other, rolling like a marble across a tile floor towards the rising tide. The kids screamed, they turned around. David picked me up, I fainted. They brought me back and hauled up to the back of the quad, squished between the two oldest and slumped against David’s back so I wouldn’t fall again. Of course it was the day of the rodeo in town, so we drove through half the population on our way home. Our van has been in the shop for a month, so David dropped us off, quickly found a taxi to take us to the city where I was analyzed and tested and prodded. Of course it was all taking quite some time, sitting around waiting for results and doctors. And that’s when I just kept repeating over and over like the broken machine that I was, “It’s obviously a concussion, I can just tell you that.” Therefore it became a proverb among the sons of Alves, hilariously enough.

Of course, I don’t remember any of that. Saturday afternoon, evening and night are simply gone, erased like a path in the sea. At some point early Sunday morning, about 4 or 5, I woke up in immense, immobilizing pain, wearing p.j’s and a chunky sweater and sand in my ears and hair. I mumbled for David out of my post concussion hazy dream world and got the whole, semi coherent (to me) story.

Thankfully there were no broken bones and while it did take almost two weeks for the pain to go away and to feel like myself again, and even though my skeletal system is still not all right, in all it could have been much, much worse.

Which of course begs the question….why? Why did this happen? We were driving slowly, the kids were just fine, we do this all the time, there was absolutely no reason why I should have fallen.

It was later on Sunday morning when I woke up again that it came to me when checking my messages. I came across I message I don’t even remember writing. It was to a female begging for help, rescue from the bondage of witchcraft and demons. Is it any wonder that less than an hour later I was face flat on the beach, concussed and in a swoon? Should we be shocked that satan would send his demons to wrench an enemy who had dared to breach his territory to their death? Should we be in wonder that angels wrapped my fall in their arms and kept my neck from breaking and bones from shattering?

Sunday night, the fury of the underworld had not been assuaged against me and assaulted my dreams with horrifying, demonic, scream-worthy scenes.

This is why we must memorize verses. We must know the promises. We must have hymns of praise and songs of deliverance ready and overflowing our hearts to withstand those fiery darts for when they accost us in the black, in our pain, in our most vulnerable moments. We must know our God, know and believe and cling to His incredible, marvelous sovereignty. As Martin Luther said, the devil is God’s devil. Job 1 makes that abundantly clear. Satan too is under submission to the glorious God of Heaven. And he hates it. How often we forget the danger in this battle for souls! The gospel is not a corporate business 5 step plan to success. It is war.