I Know I'm No Angel

it's been years, yet i think it will a while before i forget this.  i had a boyfriend and he had a couple of friends who were always in trouble.  we were in our early twenties - at that point in life where the expectation that we behave like adults was growing - but it seemed that they had not received the memo.  until one day, when we met up with them and they shared with us the various epiphanies they had recently had.  the nutshell was that they had found a church and a pastor who had convinced them to change their evil ways and would we celebrate with them by attending a prayer group with them?  well, i am always up to give support to those who have decided to try to be better and so we were all - sure, we have no plans for saturday that couldn't be put off. 

friday came along and we all went to this man's house for an evening of prayer and fellowship.  it was pretty standard and came with the bonus of bumping into an old high school friend i had not seen in years.  all went along in a pretty unremarkable way (and by that i mean i don't remember a single thing we discussed but i would hazard that it had to do with the bible) until the final prayer before the end of the night.  we stood up and held hands as the pastor began to pray.  i have found that, generally, closing my eyes during prayer is like giving my mind licence to do what it wants.  so, i kept my eyes open and worked to focus on the prayer, and this is what i was doing when it happened.

a woman standing opposite me in the circle of held hands fell forward, stiff as a tree.  it was like slow motion and yet i could not react.  by the time my brain had realised that she was hitting the floor, well, she was already face down on the floor.  then she rolled over and started writhing on the ground, hissing and appeared to start foaming at the mouth.  had we been, say, walking on the street or hanging out at work, i am sure that the first reaction probably would have been that she was having some kind of seizure.  however, the reaction of the pastor was to start shouting  orders to the devil to leave the young woman's body.  as he spoke, others in the room stepped towards the woman and some knelt to touch her as they repeated the pastor's exhortations.  not me.

i had flashbacks of the bible stories i learnt in my youth and the one that lodged itself in my mind was that of jesus casting evil spirits out of someone.  i remembered that when this had happened, the evil spirits had not simply vaporised and disappeared.  no siree bob.  they, instead, needed some place to go and, lucky for those witnessing the event, there were some hapless pigs hanging out nearby and that is where the evil spirits found their new home.  so, there i was, witnessing this scene and i thought to myself - hmmm... now, if this group manages to oust the evil spirits residing in this young lady, they need go someplace?  where will that be?  everyone else here may be fully confident about their resistance to evil and ability to fend off the spirits but me? not so much.  and i really don't want to have to deal with what could happen were to i to be possessed - that lady's drop to the ground did not look fun at all.

so... i stepped back.  and then i took another step back, just to be safe.  you know, i'm not saying that i believed that the woman was being possessed; i'm just saying i wasn't taking any chances.