Tag: African Diaspora Religiosity

My friend Melissa has been doing a 30 days of Thanks journey in which  she shares her reflections on her life.  It is with her permission that I have created this blog post.  This is the final installment of her 30-day journey, and with it she reveals new levels of vulnerability.  Her writing is powerful.  Be prepared to cry, laugh, be confused, get frustrated, and be caught up in deep hopefulness.  And, of course, she gives suggestions on where to direct your financial activism.   All that follows is Melissa. 

Follow along as you listen to Melissa read Day 30.  You are invited to post your comments and contact Melissa through the contact form at the end of this reading (at the end of the page). 

Day 30: Revelation (Knowledge of God)

It’s a long, real good, going-to-make-you-late-for-everything, reflection. Consider yourself warned.

Happy Thirtieth (And Final) Day of Thanks!

I am so thankful for revelation and knowledge that comes from God. It is truth. It’s accurate. It’s specific. It’s precise. It’s irrefutable and always brings clarity. It has been the guiding light for each stage of Delilah’s healing.

Disclaimer: This reflection is a little different (and much longer) and may be slightly difficult for some of you to understand because there will be spiritual nuances, biblical references, and foundational concepts that you may not know that concern the ministry of deliverance.  I am also admitting here that I’m a “Jesus Freak,” love to read and understand the Word of God (the Bible), and sometimes a little weird (even in my loveable-ness) by most people’s standards. And since I came to grip with my difference, peculiarity, and set apart-ness at such a young age, now it doesn’t bother me so much when others discover some of the God given qualities that give me my uniqueness too. There may also be times in this piece where my frustrations with God and/or the church (Body of Christ or People of God) as they are expressed will shock you. Hopefully, you will understand that their expression is not to cause you to judge or form erroneous opinions of God or His church, but they are just the emotions, frustrations, questions that form outwardly as one walks through a dark hour, desperately waiting for the joy of the morning to come.

From the time I was three years old, I remember God speaking to me. His method of speaking to me at that time would almost always be either through His audible voice or through my dreams. But, as I have matured in my walk with Christ, his method of speaking through His audible voice has evolved to speaking through his words as I read my Bible. God still regularly speaks to me about current or future situations, events or people and guides me through my dreams and in my prayer or meditation time.  It is through my very communion and communication with God that I have been led to parent, heal, and deliver Delilah Christina.

Part I

As I mentioned earlier, God spoke to me about the coming of my daughter, Delilah Christina, every two months through my dreams almost one year before her birth. As she was in my womb, God began to speak to me about who she was and her purpose in the earth. Thus, I have been very aware of how I raise her and the influences I allow in her life. When Delilah was about two years old, he showed me a dream of her on a stage as a young adult in a packed out stadium. As she opened her mouth to speak and sing, the range and depth of her voice was so piercing and similar to that of the late Darryl Coley (if you don’t know who he is, you betta ask somebody! He was a singer who has a killer voice and range.) that the ground under the stadium and all of Hell begin to shake and crumble. I won’t get into the full details and interpretation of the dream but just know that Delilah will slay the kingdom of darkness as she sings and worships God. 

I woke up from that dream so excited and full of hope and expectation about Delilah’s future. I had no idea that this dream would be one bread crumb among many that God would use to maintain my faith as He took us through the step-by-step dark season in the journey of her life.  I had no idea that two years later, she would become completely mute and that we would have to spend the next twelve years of her life fighting for her to learn language and to speak. I was so angry at God, especially in the moments when no matter how hard we worked, she still didn’t say a word. I yelled, “why would you show me a dream of her speaking and singing and then give me a baby that couldn’t speak? Is this some kind of cruel joke?” When I finally got my emotions in check, I realized two things. One was that I needed to use music to get her to speak. The second was that if God showed me Delilah as her older self speaking and singing, then it had to come to pass and eventually she would do just that.  I had to keep fighting for and standing on the vision that God had prophetically shown me.

A few years after battling her lack of voice, somehow, it felt like we walked a few steps out of the darkness only to be kicked back ten steps further into it. Before Delilah turned eight years old, she started having her menstrual-induced seizures. Because of my medical background, I was able to come to some conclusions about her condition, but needed some follow-up labs to confirm my suspicions. I went to Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx, which is supposed to be a world renowned pediatric hospital, and encountered some of the worst pediatric neurologists and horrific patient care and treatment I had ever seen in my life. I thought I was going to kill one neurologist when, without explaining or giving me a diagnosis for what my child had and without even looking at me, she started writing out a prescription to drug Delilah beyond any vegetative state I had known and sent me home to do follow up in six months. The next neurologists told me that they could not perform simple blood test to determine the root cause of her seizures, but could only do an MRI or EEG from his department. I quipped, “so you prefer to spend $2000 for imaging test that will not tell you anything about the root cause of her condition to stop it and have me running in circles for my child not to get better rather than take a $20 blood test that could reveal everything that is wrong with her?” I gladly let him know that he would not be paying for his Mercedes Benz and kid’s college tuition at the expense of keeping my child sick and left. (SMH!) I never wanted to go back to that Hospital ever again.

I looked for weeks to find an herbalist, Paakobena Korankyi, who helped to heal my sister of Rheumatoid Arthritis many years ago but, after exhaustive searching on media platforms and near the location of his old shop, came up with nothing. Delilah’s seizures, which looked like every seizure type, were coming in two hour clusters every night for whole days at a time, steadily getting worst and nothing was helping. I remember the first time that I saw Delilah almost lifeless in my arms turning blue was in the middle of Hurricane Sandy, when hardly any ambulances were being dispatched and no help was in sight. I took her emergency medicine and administered it to her, while crying and screaming for God to help her.  As she was in her post-ictal state, I was crying uncontrollably as Lilah sat in my arms and I felt so helpless to her.  Any mother knows the feeling of how you rise up like a bear or a lion to defend and protect your cubs. I was angry. I started yelling at God and asked, “Where are you? I don’t care about your glory! Why are you letting her suffer like this? How could you let her suffer like this? Can’t you see I need help? Help Me!” Every tear that I had was poured out over Lilah’s face and body that I had soaked the t-shirt that she had on. I cried so hard that night, I cried myself to sleep with her in my arms.

When I woke up the next morning, God’s audible voice, which I hadn’t heard in such a long time, told me to get up and search my computer for Paakobena again. I got up and there he was. His Facebook page with all of his information was there. I searched for him for weeks and in one moment at the instruction of God had encountered him.  I called Paakobena and told him who I was, what I needed, and asked him how soon he could come. When I told him that I had even went to where his old shop was looking for him, he told me that he now focused on home visits and got rid of the shop several years ago. He said he would come to my home the next day. He came and told me all the things that I would need to do and buy to start Delilah on her journey to healing. That very night and the next day I exhausted almost all the resources that I had at that moment to order everything that she needed and made sure there was enough supply. We stayed on Paakobena’s regimen for quite some time and through prayer, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, begin to add supplements and vitamins as necessary.  She had reached a place of stability in most of her endocrine organs, especially her thyroid, and her seizures at menstrual cycle time started decreasing.

One night, God gave me another dream, showing me a vivid image of a doctor’s name on a brown wooden hospital door and then a book with a brown cover that had the title ketogenic diet in white letters on it and told me that he wanted me to put Delilah on the diet. I had never heard of a ketogenic diet before neither did I know that it was a successful treatment method being used for refractory seizures. The next day, I found the book online, ordered it and express shipped it to my house. I also started researching ketogenic diet centers and it turned out that there was one in the Bronx at Montefiore hospital. (Go figure!) The doctor’s name that I saw on the door in my dream was the neurologist at Montefiore who ran the ketogenic center. Very spoiled by the accessibility of doctors at all levels in Cuba, I called her office several times to see if I could have a consult with her to ask her questions about the diet. She told her receptionist to tell me that she wouldn’t talk to me since Delilah wasn’t her patient. 

Since the last neurologist that Delilah saw at Montefiore scheduled for her to be admitted to run a sleep EEG, we had (and what I decided would be) our final visit to Montefiore to complete this test. On the same day that Delilah was admitted, the neurologist who ran the ketogenic diet center was on call. She was the biggest witch (I want to change the w for a b, although I never like to refer to a woman by that.) and so nasty. When she saw me, she literally said to me “you and your daughter being here is a big waste of my time! You need to put her on meds because I am not administering the keto diet to her.” (Yes, those were her exact words to me.)

I had to kindly let her know that she didn’t know who I was and that she needed to leave out of the hospital room and come back in, acting as if she knew that I was not only my daughter’s parent and advocate but someone who would write the CEO and board of the hospital, the NYS Department of Health and JHACO to report her and make sure that she didn’t have a job or a license when I was finished. (Why do some people always have to make you go there?) She was shocked as hell that I wasn’t who she thought I was. (It really messed her up when I made her address me as Dr. Barber.) I gave Montefiore three chances and their neurologists struck out every time. (I’m not that person who says “never” but I will say that hell will probably have to freeze over before I opt to ever take Delilah back there.)

At that time, I contacted John Hopkins, the main ketogenic center in the US, and their waiting list was years long.  Lilah was on her regimen of alternative medicine and I knew that I was not putting her on the pharmaceutical medicines that they were trying to prescribe because I knew what they were and I saw first-hand the effects that it had on her classroom peers, who were also autistic and in a vegetative state for most of their academic day. (Ask yourself this question. Would you give a child street narcotics? If you wouldn’t give them street narcotics, why is okay for a doctor to legally prescribe those same narcotics to them? I don’t care what anybody says, that crap destroys children’s brains way more than it helps most times. There can be safer medicines and more effective ways to help children than turning them into vegetables and damaging their body organs and giving them all of these other side effects in the process. The political will is not there to do it because people care about money and profit more than they care about lives!)

I researched everything I could about the diet, although there was not nearly as much information as there is today. I started buying all of the materials that the book told me that I would need to start preparing for the monitoring aspect of the diet. But, I still had to find a doctor (neurologist)/nutritionist team to prescribe the diet. I could have basically done everything myself, which I did anyway, but I wanted Lilah’s journey to be legitimately recognized, since everyone told me that they wouldn’t help us and that I couldn’t treat her solely through diet. (I knew what God told me so I set out to be obedient and prove them wrong.) I also needed someone to be accountable for ordering and monitoring all her labs.  It took four years to get a neurologist, outside of Montefiore, who could/would administer the diet.

We ended up at NYU Langone and seeing Dr. Judith Bluvstein, a pediatric neurologist there.  Initially, she was not very encouraging.  When I told her that I wanted to put Lilah on the ketogenic diet and that I didn’t want her on pharmaceutical medicine.  She said, “well, maybe you need humble yourself and put her on the medicines.” (Yes, her exact words were for me to humble myself.) And when she saw the Melissa death stare that burns fire through your soul and warns you that the wrath of me is coming for you and then heard me reply, “I’m going to give you a few seconds to clean that up,” she knew that it was not the best course of action to stay in that vein of the conversation. She then set out to discourage me. “Well, the diet is really expensive.” My reply, “I didn’t ask you how expensive it was. Who are you to assume what I can afford?” “Well, many of my patients have not stuck to the diet because it is very restrictive.” My reply, “my daughter is not your other patients. I’m here to put her on the ketogenic diet.”  We did that song and dance for a few more minutes until she realized all her efforts were futile. (I understand that in her ignorance, she didn’t know me well. I don’t back down from fights when I am on a mission to preserve, help, and protect my gift from God (Delilah). She didn’t know that she couldn’t stop me but I played her game for a little while to let her think she would get somewhere before I completely shut her down.) “Can you put her on the ketogenic diet or do I have to go find another neurologist?” Her answer was, “Okay. We can put her on the diet, if that’s what you want. I’ll schedule an appointment with the nutritionist.” They still gave me the run around for another two months. When I scheduled an appointment with another nutritionist in their system, who I didn’t realize was not specialized in the diet, she basically called them and asked why they had not given Delilah an appointment yet. They told her they did but I showed her proof that there had been no follow-up or anything scheduled in her patient portal, after calling several times. The ketogenic nutritionist scheduled her appointment that day.

Fortunately, because I was so well versed in the diet by the time I got to the nutritionist, I noticed all of the flaws in the delivery of care, the lack of patient education, and all of the reasons why Dr. Bluvstein’s patients never stuck to the diet.  The initial method in which John Hopkins used to start patients on the ketogenic diet would always be key in the success of the patient. They admitted the patient and their families to the hospitals for three days.  While they induced ketosis for the patient, they gave families workshops and educational sessions, teaching them to cook for the patient and how to maintain the state of ketosis. I was given two thick handouts and left to figure out everything on my own. (I’m sure this was their other mechanism to discourage me or any other patient from using the ketogenic treatment method because most doctor’s pay and incentives come from their collaborations with pharmaceutical companies.)

We started the diet. I educated all of the academic and recreational staff members who worked with Delilah about it and had them buy in to maintaining her on her diet and giving her only the foods that were cooked and sent with her, since her diet was a nutriceutical, a treatment, like medicine, to reduce her seizures. Within months, Delilah shed about 60 pounds and we eradicated the drastic water weight gain during her menses, her seizures clusters reduced drastically (I could finally get at least a 4-5 hour night’s sleep when she had her period), and the duration of her seizures reduced by half. We also saw the duration of her menstrual cycles lengthen. They went from 14 to 18 day cycles to 21-24 day cycles.  The same doctor who told me to humble myself stands in amazement at the miracle. She said, “I can’t believe how amazing she looks and how you have maintained this!” I sarcastically remarked, “So, you don’t think I should humble myself anymore?” (I was not going to let her get away with it!)”  I told her, “Perhaps, the next person who comes to you who looks like me and is just as determined as I am will get better assistance from you next time.”  Through Dr. Bluvstein, we were referred to an endocrinologist in the NYU Langone system and ended up with one of the best pediatric endocrinologist on the planet, Dr. Jason Klein, who we got to by “accident.” (If you remember Day 22 nothing is an accident, it’s God’s way of getting you to His perfect destiny for you.) We were supposed to see another endocrinologist who was triple booked with clients that day. Dr. Klein did the necessary blood testing that I was asking the neurologist in Montefiore to do and confirmed the diagnosis (I was not at all crazy!) of Delilah’s hormonal imbalance, which was the cause of her catamenial seizures. He asked if I was willing to try oral contraceptives to see if it would help to balance her hormones. We tried Yaz. (I thought that medicine was a medicine directly from hell! Delilah had her period for 4-5 days each week for a whole month. She was angry, irritable, and combative.) Hell to the no! We were not taking that medicine any more.

I called Dr. Klein and told him that we tried it and we were not doing it any more. When he heard the affects of the medicine he quickly agreed. He was a really great, young doctor who listened and was definitely not tainted by the system yet. He was such a breath of fresh air.  Dr. Klein said that every time he saw me that I reminded him of his mother (she was health professional who did alternative medicine) and thus, it made him heed to the information and education that I was giving him when I walked in his office. After two years of being with him, Delilah got so well he said, “I’m releasing her as a patient because you have done everything to get her to the perfect bill of health as far as my expertise goes.”  (I was so happy!) It was through Dr. Klein that we were then referred to Delilah’s pediatric gynecologist to handle her hormones to control her seizures.  Dr. Cardamone is one of 14 pediatric gynecologist in the state of NY. (If any of you are thinking of doing OB/GYN, there is a desperate need for more pediatric ones. Please consider this specialty.)  Dr. Cardomone agreed to see Delilah.  I called her Manhattan office to set up an appointment only to discover that the office didn’t take Delilah’s insurance. (My heart dropped!) I emailed her to ask how much a consultation would be, asked if she could do a sliding scale fee for me or let me volunteer to work off the debt in for her office (I was desperate and I asked about every possible option I could.)  She said that she had just started to work at Sunset Park in Brooklyn earlier in that month and that she knew for sure that they took Delilah’s insurance. If it wasn’t too far for me to travel there, she would definitely see me at that office. If that wasn’t convenient, she presented me the names of two other colleagues that were relatively much closer to the Bronx.  When I looked up those doctor’s patient reviews they had 3 stars and Dr.Cardamone had 5 stars across the board in all her reviews. (You know where I was going, right?) We trekked to Sunset Park for her treatment.  Since it was discovered that Delilah had significant estrogen dominance, and little progesterone receptors, we decided to try the Depo-Provera shot to see if it would help to counteract the estrogen in her body.  Delilah is a really interesting case.  The Depo has lots of progesterone in it so it works enough to stop her periods, but doesn’t have the full dosing capacity to stop the pre-menstrual symptomology of her cycles nor does it completely stop her seizures. But, it has reduced them significantly.  Because Delilah’s body quickly metabolizes the Depo medication, it only last seven weeks, instead of its twelve-week coverage. (Go figure!)

After almost four years of being on her diet, some of Paakobena’s regimen, and treatment from a book that I was given when we lived in the shelter, she has been basically stable and has never had to be on an epileptic pharmaceutical drug. Her doctors have to always prescribe emergency medicine (Midazolam given intranasally) to give to her school and nurse but, thank God, she has never had to use it. She still has one or two (rarely three) brief seizures during the week of her menstrual cycle.

From 10-15 seizures down to 1-2 seizures; from 230 pounds to a consistent 155 pounds for four years; from basal temperatures of 92 degrees and lethargy to consistent basal temperatures at 97.7 or 98 degrees; from absolutely no sleep during menstrual cycles to at least 5 hours of sleep per day, with no epileptic drugs. This is definitely what success sounds and looks like and God gets all the credit for it.  It was by His revelation that we got to each step in Delilah’s process. I’m also thanking God for the strength, endurance, and consistency that He has given me to press forward to see the fruition and the blessing of this healing process.

But, my faith and hope is not for this level of healing (partial healing). It never was! It’s for complete healing—No seizures, No autism, No hormonal or menstrual irregularities, No muteness. I want everything completely healed and whole, with nothing missing, and complete restoration of ALL the years that were lost! (It has been 12 long years of suffering that we have endured!) And just like the woman with the issue of blood for twelve years, who exhausted all of her resources, went to many doctors and healers and still was not whole, we are at that place, crawling to get to the hem of Jesus’ garment to obtain mercy and healing, because I want Delilah to be whole.  I also want complete healing because that is exactly what God told me (and many other people) that he was going to do for Delilah. And I am confident, according to the word of God, “that he who began a good work in [us] will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 1:6) God doesn’t do partial work and His word never goes forth void; God does everything to completion and His word accomplishes ALL that it has set out to do.

I know what I am saying may confuse some of you because you can only perceive Delilah’s situation and health through your own lens and experience and by the reality of what you see. You may not believe that there is healing for autism or epilepsy because your mind’s perception can’t grasp it or maybe because you have a relative with the same medical condition(s) who is an adult and has never received healing for the same conditions. And that’s okay. I only ask that you stay connected so that when God completely heals Delilah, you see that healing of ALL diseases and conditions, as are all other things, possible through Jesus Christ.

Part II

Thus far, I have only mentioned the physical nature of these twelve years of darkness.  But, one should know that manifested sickness (ie. cancer, lupus, epilepsy, autism) almost always has a spiritual cause or root.  And the spiritual aspect of this journey has been even more fatiguing and full of much more despair. I have tried to hold on to every ounce of my faith, even in the midst of no or little shimmering lights of hope. I manage to do it, although this journey has been very hard (especially since I am one person fighting a significant share of this spiritual battle by myself).

Here is where I begin to talk about the spiritual nature of Delilah’s sickness and my observation about today’s church.  I will try to explain everything in the simplest way that I can but, as I said it will be a little difficult for some of you because some of you may not believe in God; you may not believe that there is a devil, who is the prince of this world, and a cadre of his demon spirits that inflict suffering and oppress people (even God’s children) when there is an opening for them to do so. You may not even believe in a heaven or hell or an afterlife. I hope that this helps you to believe that it is all real.

The bible is such a living word and through its study and my dreams, God has revealed so many things to me about the spiritual (demonic) nature of autism and epilepsy that I did not know before.  I gained so much knowledge about double-mindedness and schizophrenia in the spiritual/biblical context. I realize now that, although I was praying and fasting for Delilah’s healing, I was somewhat praying amiss because I didn’t understand the depth of how strongholds worked and some of the roots that allowed them to persist. I knew what a “legion” spirit was, cognitively, but I had no idea that a “legion” was operating in and oppressing my daughter until God told me so.  (Legion means “many.”  A legion spirit is one that usually has a cadre of at least 1000 demon spirits that work and are grouped together to oppress a person.)  From the time, she was diagnosed with autism, I saw different spirits manifest at different times. And it seemed like the moment I prayed against, binding and casting out one spirit, another one would appear. This happened one after another. So, just when I thought I could get a breather from dealing with the last spirit, I couldn’t rest because another spirit would appear.  We have been dealing with twelve years of not stop invasion of these spirits. We are currently dealing with the two legion spirits of rejection and rebellion.

(For those who may not understand, I’ll give an example. When Delilah was first diagnosed with autism, she had a suicide spirit that was oppressing her. It would always cause her to try to run into a huge street with oncoming traffic to get hit. Since I wore sneakers all the time and had a background in track, most times I would catch her before she got to end of the sidewalk.  One time I left her with a caregiver to make an errand, the young lady called me twenty minutes later terrified telling me that I had to come back to get Delilah because she could and would not stay the rest of her shift. Delilah, almost five years old, laid in the middle of the crowded, heavy traffic laden street on Burnside and Morris Ave, with oncoming traffic.  Luckily, my friend Raul, who knew and spoiled Lilah, saw her and the home health aide and helped.  It took four really strong men to pick her (a 4 year old) up from the concrete ground and get her out of the middle of the street.  One time she tried that on the Grand Concourse on our way home from church. When I got home, I began to pray and cast that spirit out of her. I was so fatigued and fed up with it and having to chase after her. It left. Shortly after (may be two days), we started dealing with a spirit of insomnia. And after insomnia, we were dealing with the next spirit.)

Most of my spiritual journey with Delilah’s condition has been filled with lots of reading my bible, constant prayer (in the late to midmorning hours), praise and worship, studying books on the ministry of deliverance and fasting to break the grip of the many spirits that have attacked her life. Through the leading and guidance of the Holy Spirit, I’ve read several books in the last three years that explain how demons (and demons through people) operate, the tiers of the kingdom of darkness, and how to get free from demonic oppression. (Talk to me offline if you want to know what those resources are.)  I recommend these books wholeheartedly for those of you who want to learn more about deliverance but I have to warn you that it is a great deal to stomach them.

The other part of my spiritual journey has been filled with frustration, heartache, and disgust.  Each time that I lived outside of the US, I saw the Christian church operating in a power that the Bible conveys. There were signs, miracles and wonders; I saw people be healed supernaturally through prayer and by faith. I saw the church operating in a power that should be a natural occurrence for us. The ministers taught the word of God, and the church members were unified in a way in which God could and would command a blessing. There were actually prayer services and “shut-ins” that would give the kingdom of darkness huge knuckle sandwiches. (Shut-ins are when we spend the night in the church to have all night prayer services.)  And everything that wasn’t of God got shut down real quick.

I call most American churches, the watered down gospel (and most times would rather stay home and watch an online-streamed service of one of my favorite churches that is not in NYC than be in a church building). Many are full of ministers/pastors/apostles who don’t teach the unadulterated word of God and lack faith; they have Christians and people who are sick and dying, with the nastiest attitudes I have ever seen and attacked by demonic influence, and lack the power of the Holy Spirit.  When you read the Bible and believe what it says about our identity in Christ and how we are supposed to behave and you are a member or visiting a church that doesn’t reflect anything that you are reading in the Bible, it can be very frustrating (I’m sure devastating for those who are new Christians).  Some of you would sit in horror at knowing how badly many people who professed to be Christians treated my daughter in a church building (SMH!). The solace I have is that God was watching. And even when they tried to isolate us or make Delilah feel like she didn’t belong, I stayed right there! (How dare anybody tell me that my daughter can’t be in her Father’s house! You must be crazy! Especially when she can dance circles around of us when she gets to praising and worshipping God!) As I stayed, many of the naysayers had to watch as God transformed her.

Several years ago, years after Delilah started suffering from her seizures; God began to reveal another level of knowledge and understanding about Delilah’s medical conditions that a lab test or a doctor’s visit would never reveal.  God began to show me a series of dreams that would be followed by interpretations of those dreams to get Delilah and me closer to working toward her deliverance and the complete obliteration from her sicknesses.

One night, God showed me a dream. In the dream my daughter and my little brother were kneeling around an open bonfire in the middle of a ritual. Although they were kneeling, their upper bodies were upright and their hands were stretched upward and tied to a wooden pole.  I heard and saw drums being played and shortly after I saw this dark spirit horizontally sweeping towards them until it entered into their bodies.  I don’t know exactly how I knew the dark spirit in the dream was the spirit of epilepsy but I knew that it was. It turns out that both Delilah and my little brother have epilepsy and they both got it around the same exact age. (Interestingly enough, I had bad seizures at the age of 3 or 4 years old. After one of my seizures, my pastor, Elder Ricks, prayed for me. I felt power shoot into my body and after that day I was completely healed.) The interpretation of the dream revealed a great deal to me about how the spirit was introduced, where it came from, and who introduced it into Delilah’s life. Not only did I pray and fast heavily for healing for Delilah and my brother and against that spirit, I begin to pray cleansing prayers for my bloodline and break generational covenants and curses that were made in my ancestry.  I also became even more watchful and careful about with whom Delilah got to spend time.

The revelations continued to come.  One night, I had a dream about two cats, one black one and one white one. In the dream I was in spiritual warfare with the cats and I told them that they had to go.  Since they kept nodding their head that they weren’t leaving, I intensified my warfare and the black cat completely disappeared.  The white one still wouldn’t leave. I told it, “You are going to leave!” I intensified my warfare against the white cat and it left. But, it didn’t completely poof-into- thin- air disappear like the black cat. (In the spiritual realm, cats signify witchcraft or witches/warlocks.  Each cat dealt in a different type of witchcraft—one in black (dark) magic/witchcraft and the other in white magic/witchcraft.)  When I woke up, I asked God for the interpretation of that dream.  Several days later, I met a young lady who I didn’t know.  We started talking and somehow it came up that I had lived in Cuba for six years.  She asked me what I thought about Santeria. I was a little taken aback by her question but I told her that I thought it was witchcraft, that its evil was real and that many people used it for demonic purposes. She told me that before she could speak what she was about to say, she had to preface its context and make sure that I understood what she was going to say.  She began to tell me things she could not have known about one of my experiences in Cuba. 

The lady said, “She [meaning Delilah] is going to come out of that! Two young ladies were doing witchcraft on you while you were in Cuba.  Because they didn’t realize or understand who you are in God and how powerful you are in Him, they kept intensifying the witchcraft they were doing on you and were completely surprised each time that nothing worked. But, because you were way to powerful for it, their witchcraft bounced from you to your daughter.  Since you are raising her [Delilah] to carry your mantle, she is starting to get too strong for the witchcraft they did and it is going to break off of her life.”   The lady didn’t know it but she had given me the interpretation of my dream. Spiritually, Lilah’s medical conditions were not only the result of generational curses and covenants in my family, but the result of witchcraft also. (I may not get into this later but, you should also know that the spiritual root of her menstrual and reproductive issues is the result of her father’s open rejection of her.) What she was saying was spot on. While I was in medical school, two girls (Sophia and Mirtha) were using Santeria to try to hex me and God revealed their actions.  At the time, God told me to be in a mode of heavy fasting and prayer and I obeyed–that is what covered/shielded me from the danger of what they were doing.  After the fourth or fifth time of dealing with the two girl’s crazy, one day I got back to my dorm and commented to both of them, “My God is so much greater than that mess that you are doing! You better be real careful at who you are playing with and what you are doing. I’m not playing that game with either of you and I send back the fire of God to boomerang back everything that you sent to me.”  Shortly after our encounter, Sophia got kicked out of school.  When she arrived home a few days later, she had a head on collision with a truck and died instantaneously. (She was the black cat in my dream that poofed into thin air.) 

Mirtha either left the school or got kicked out a few weeks later.  (For those of you who did not read Day 29) Before she left, she tried to instigate a fight with me. She started screaming at the top of her lungs, which gathered a real crowd.  At that point, I was so fatigued and weary of their assaults, i drew a line on the floor and I told her that if she came passed it she was going to breath her last breath. That was the first time I felt hate, rage, and the spirit of murder run it’s course through my body and I’m sure that everyone around us could see the violence in my eyes. Everyone who stood around us, including school staff, were so scared for Mirtha, because as calm as I was in my speech and demeanor, they could see how serious I was.  In all Mirtha’s screaming expletives and vulgarities they were trying to talk her down from her demise.  I stood there still but ready to attack if she moved into my space. I also told her friends real calmly, “if she’s your friend, you may want to come get her, because I meant what I said!” After several minutes a young lady named Nadege grabbed her and escorted her from the bathroom.

Mirtha was the white cat in my dream.  I have no idea where she is and if she is still doing the same activity she was doing over 16 years ago.  What I do know is that I have forgiven her and have released her to the judgement of God. I hope that she has repented for all that she has done because if not, God will avenge what she has done to my baby.

It was now clear more than ever that I had to intensify my prayer against the witchcraft that was done towards me that bounced to Delilah and really get deliverance for her. As I intensified my prayers (spiritual warfare), one day God spoke to me and said that this was the season of Delilah’s healing and deliverance. (I was excited! It was news that had been long awaited.) Since God had told me to leave my previous church, I was waiting for Him to show me where he wanted us to be next. I was gathering a list of churches and making plans to visit them at the beginning of the month of March 2017.  I was on a phone call with a friend and began to tell her what I was looking for in my next church and she told me to research a specific church.  She told me that I should watch the apostle’s YouTube videos to see if it was a church I could see myself attending.  Several days later, I put the apostle’s name in the YouTube search and several videos appeared.  As I watched the video, there were a few things that the apostle said which really spoke to my spirit, and I said, “God if this is where you want us to be, show him my and Delilah’s face and let him know that we are coming for deliverance!” I fleeced God and said that if he did four specific things (I never give God easy fleeces; I give him the impossible), the final thing being a random woman walking up to me in the street to say specific things to me, would be the sign that the following Sunday would be the day that Delilah and I were supposed to go to the church. I told God that if we were supposed to be at that church, when we got there the pastor would pray in the three specific areas for Delilah—he would pray to heal her biologically, he would break the generational curses that were the root causes of her sickness, and then he would pray against the witchcraft.   Lo and behold the lady walked up to me on February 25^th and said the exact words, the way they were supposed to be said, and we ended up visiting the church the last Sunday in February instead of March.

The Sunday we were supposed to go to the church, everything that could possibly go wrong went wrong.  The electricity and the internet went out in my house so I couldn’t look up the address to the church. My phone wouldn’t even work. When I was finally able to look up the directions to the church, the computer gave me the wrong directions.  While I was sitting on the bus heading to the church, the Holy Spirit told me to look up the directions again. When I realized, we were on the wrong bus, I got off and we had to walk over 30 minutes to get to the right bus.  When we got on the right bus, it was so late, I started to turn around and go back home because I thought church would be over.  I told the devil, “we are still going because I know you want us to turn back.  You wouldn’t have thrown us this many impediments if there weren’t a blessing on the other side of this.”  When we finally got to the church, the pastor had just started to preach. (We weren’t late at all that day! Imagine if we had turned around). After he preached, the pastor asked for everyone to come up to the front for prayer. When he got to me and Delilah. The pastor said “Do I know you?” I replied “No.” In front of the entire congregation, he said “You sure I don’t know you? From Facebook? I have seen you and her face before. The Holy Spirit showed me your [meaning Delilah and my] face and said that you were coming for deliverance.”  I told him, “no you haven’t met us before but that is the exact prayer I prayed when I was watching your YouTube video.”  He began to pray for Lilah. He prayed for her biological healing and to break the generational curses off of her life and walked away.  In my mind, I told God, “this must not be where you want us to be because he didn’t pray for the third thing!” The pastor walked back over to her and said, “and I break the spirit of witchcraft off of her life!” I started to tear up because God answered my fleece– there was no way that the pastor would have known to pray specifically for those three things unless by the Holy Spirit, because I never told anyone else and I never met him before. The pastor asked to speak with me after the church service.

After the service, I explained to him about me praying that God would show him our faces while I was watching the Youtube video. I also talked about the fleece and how he prayed for all three things.  I told him about our previous church experience, about Delilah and that we had come for deliverance. He said that his church had just finished a round of deliverance sessions and was taking a break and that they were going to start back up in March. He said that he wouldn’t pass me to another of his ministers, but that he would do Delilah’s deliverance session himself.  I asked him if it was okay to visit his church until they started the sessions again and he said that it was fine. Little did I know that I would spend more than a year in the church with the pastor playing mind games with me about doing a deliverance session.  After a few weeks, I asked if he was going to do the deliverance session, although he said that he was going to still do it, he completely changed his tune.  The pastor told me that he did a deliverance session with an autistic boy that didn’t go well. He said, “I can’t afford to get anything wrong since the circle of pastors that I am around now wouldn’t allow for my name to be tarnished;” and mentioned how he was speaking at Manpower that summer. (SMH! Since when was the opinions or accolades of men, greater than being on assignment, being obedient to God, or just completing a task you committed to do?) The pastor said “he” couldn’t afford to get anything wrong. (Wait a minute!  But, I’m pretty sure that my bible says that God is the healer. Men do not heal or deliver anybody; they are vessels that are used by God to do that work.) His conversations reeked with fear, a lack of faith, and, once again, pride. I went home and prayed for him, about his response (most people forget that the bible says that we will be judged for the idle words that come out of our mouths), and for the whys of it all. I said God, “why would you send us here if he lacks faith for her healing and deliverance and has all this pride and fear? (All a deadly combination to prevent healing and/or deliverance.) Didn’t you say this was the season for Delilah’s healing and deliverance?”

My new mission was to continually pray for this pastor and that the fear and the lack of faith be removed from Him. My job was not judge him, because we all have flaws, but I was very concerned that he had a large following of Christian folk with those deep issues affecting his character. Each encounter I had with him, asking if he was now ready to do the deliverance session, got worse. There was way more fear. He mentioned another case of an autistic deliverance that he tried to do that went wrong too.  I realized that he was having these “son of scheva” moments with all these autism cases because he was not adequately prepared in knowing what he was dealing with as well as not spending enough time in communication with God to be led by the Holy Spirit on what to do for the level of deliverance needed for these children. I asked him if he had done some research about autism and he said no. I suggested that it would be helpful to research autism but he said he wasn’t going to do that. Later, he tried to convince me that Delilah’s condition was purely biological and that there was no need for her to have deliverance (Didn’t he pray about the generational covenants and witchcraft on our first encounter? Somehow, now she didn’t need deliverance from those things or in those areas of her life.)  Then, just as most people do, he started using defense mechanisms to project and say that I was trying to manipulate him into doing a deliverance session.  He avoided me for weeks at a time. Each time, it provoked me to go home and pray more about the situation, asking God to guard my heart, and pray for the pastor too.

One week, after asking about the deliverance session for Delilah, the pastor got up before the entire congregation and said that the church was shifting and not going to do deliverance sessions like that anymore. (I had to chuckle at that announcement because I knew it was for me. Suddenly, after our conversation about a Delilah, the church, which was known as a deliverance ministry, wasn’t going to be doing deliverance any more. He is usually a pastor who talks to people after service. That Sunday, he bolted from the pulpit and went straight to his office.) Although I was shaking my head in amazement, I felt bad that he had cowered with such fear and shame at failure. (I later told him that he had to realize that it wasn’t him who did or would do the work.) The second to last time I met with him, I asked him if he would be willing to pray for guidance from the Holy Spirit on how to proceed in doing a deliverance session for children with autism and suggested again that he read a little more about autism.  He told me that he still wasn’t going to do either. His exact words were, “I ain’t doin’ it!” I knew that Delilah and I were leaving that church but I felt sad that the children with autism in his church who remained would not have the opportunity to receive what God says is the children’s bread– healing and deliverance– because the pastor didn’t see it necessary to make time to study and discovered the tools to break that condition off of their lives.

I had to eat some serious humble pie throughout that whole experience and kept my mouth shut, because not only was I more than disgusted by his manipulation and his spirit of pride, I was actually really embarrassed for him. At times he was lying in my face when he talked to me and thought I did not know it.  One of the main reasons that I was pressing for him to do the deliverance session for Delilah is because, as he was trying to impress me in our first encounter, he said that he would do it. A pastor (or any person for that matter) ought to be a person of his/her word. And when he realized that he couldn’t do it or didn’t want to do it, he should have been honest enough to outright say that and he didn’t.  The excuses came, he did a great deal of projecting, and then I became the problem and the manipulator.  He made some blanket, erroneous statements about autism and other medical conditions not even realizing that he was talking to a doctor. (Because I’m really quiet, unassuming, and never use a bullhorn to announce my assignment or anointing in the kingdom of God or my title and accolades of the world, many people make huge assumptions about my credentials, my level of discernment and my relationship with God.)  This pastor always assumed that I would be so impressed with his title, his book deal, his being able to speak in front of large crowds, not realizing that I did, lived, and had all those things already, on a regular basis outside of the church, and didn’t care about them like that at all. While I am very happy that he has accomplished all of those things, those things were not greater than God, and he having those things didn’t mean that he could forgot about being led by the Holy Spirit.

I gave him plenty of chances and waited patiently. I prayed and asked God for the release because I knew that I couldn’t stay in that church neither could I trust the pastor with carryingout something as important as a deliverance session for my daughter. (It felt like I was in a spiritual Montefiore hospital again.) His fear and lack of faith would have impeded the deliverance from occurring in the first place.  He avoided me for several more weeks. One Sunday, I asked him to meet with me one last time after service. When I mentioned that I was a little disappointed that we would never get the deliverance session that he said he would do (He then begin to act like he would do it right then and there if I still wanted him to do it. I wanted to call his bluff but since I was already really embarrassed for him I decided to leave it alone), I thanked him for letting us visit his church but let him know we were leaving. He said that he was disappointed because he thought we were going to become members of his church.  He also said that several of his members got to know us and were already attached.   I don’t know why he could think that I would be a member of his church after going through that whole year of mind games. He never did what he said he would do.  He told me that he wasn’t willing to study about autism or pray for guidance from the Holy Spirit about how to get deliverance for Delilah. If this was my baby’s season for healing and deliverance, I need to be in a church with like-minded folk who were serious about getting me to a place and teaching me the tools to get real deliverance for her. I don’t play games with church and I do go for it to be a social club.  The bible says that God healed and delivered people from ALL manner of sicknesses; it didn’t say he was exclusive to some. To me, it meant that there was healing for autism. And since God told me that He was going to completely heal Delilah we needed to get to that place.

I was invited to a church that was heavily into the deliverance ministry by another good friend. On my first visit, I saw many people being delivered there. After church, the pastor meets with all the new visitors and greets them.  There were about eight rows of new visitors.  The pastor prophesied for EVERY visitor except for me and Delilah. (SMH!) I thought to myself, here we go again.  We were completely ignored.  I was starting to see a theme and pattern, which really didn’t feel good to me.  Since I saw real deliverance taking place and demons being cast out of people,  I continued to visit the church because I knew that even if they didn’t decide to do a deliverance session for Delilah, I could at least learn some of the tools that I needed to get us closer to what God had spoken (complete healing).  Each week, I was learning to exercise my abilities in praying warfare prayers for deliverance and every day I was coming home using those tool when we got home to do self-deliverance and cast out some of the demons influencing Delilah.  One week the pastor at the new church, told me that he helped a mother who had a child with autism before.  He said that each week, God had him meet with the child and mother and he had to keep praying and chipping away at the fortress (stronghold) of demons that influenced the child until it completely broke.  (This was a long-term process and not something that happened instantaneously.)  He also asked me, “What did God say to you about autism?” When I began to tell him about what God had shared with me, he nodded his head as if I was correct. (I was on to something!)

What I noticed/realized from that encounter and what the pastor had said is that since Delilah’s healing was a long-term process, most pastors/ministries were not going to volunteer to take it on, even if they knew what to do. It would truly have to be a labor of love on their part.  How many people do you know who consistently walk out life with you? How many pastors do you know who actually walk out life with their parishioners? Was there really someone (a pastor) who would commit every day or every week to fasting and praying with me for deliverance for Delilah? The answer was no. (Not even this pastor who had told me that he’d done it before said that he would commit to help me.) I was on my own to do the work that I had already been doing.  Of course, some of that knowledge hurt but it was reality and no different than what I had already known from our twelve year journey.  So we press.

After all of the progress that we have made in Delilah’s healing, on October 6^th of this year, Delilah had a really bad seizure in her sleep like the one she had during hurricane Sandy.  I was woken up suddenly at 4 am that morning and decided to check on Delilah because I heard voices and New Age music playing in house (which is extremely and utterly impossible). When I got to her room, her body was completely blue and she was having a seizure. I worked quickly to try to get her breathing because I had no idea how long she was like that. She started breathing and came out of her seizure and immediately went to her post-ictal sleep phase.  I was shook because I slipped!  I got too comfortable! I was so unusually tired the night before that I didn’t stop her from going to her room to sleep.  (I usually make her sleep in my bed during her cycle time.)

 A second more and my baby would have been dead!

After the initial shock! I was livid!  I texted every intercessor who prayed and was up at that hour and told them I need them to pray with me immediately because I wanted and needed answers as to why my baby was on death’s doorstep that morning.  I told God through my uncontrollable tears in my prayer, “I need answers now! I need revelation now! Before this day is over, I want to know why we are still here! Why is my baby still suffering like this AGAIN? I need this to break now! I can’t live like this anymore!” Immediately, at that 4 o’clock hour people were texting back that they were praying. I kept praying. When Delilah woke up, she was slightly smiling at me, although her affected voice was still very low and raspy. (My baby was alive taking another breath.) We started using the gift of song to bring her to recovery mode. We started singing and praising God and a song, “Great are You Lord,” whose lyrics were so fitting for that very moment began to play.” It was God’s breath in her lungs so we pour[ed] out our praise.  I told her that the song would be the next song to learn on her piano. (She is currently learning to play it now so that she can perform it for her spring recital.) We sang for about an hour and then Lilah wanted to rest again.  As she rested, I went back to warfare praying.

Within a few hours time, a Youtube video by a pastor named Guillermo Maldonado, who I had never heard of, popped up on my phone. The title was “Breaking Strongholds and Deliverance from Bitterness.” Omg! That video was answered prayer. Glued to principles and knowledge that were coming from his teachings, I got my notebook and basically transcribed the video.  It outlined just about everything I needed to know about the “root” of bitterness (causes, what it was rooted in, how to break it, the characteristics and behaviors of a bitter person). When Pastor Maldonado began to talk about the three main causes of bitterness (abuse, profound loss of something, and encountering, continuous, overwhelming situations or circumstances), God revealed to me that how and when Delilah was affected by each of those causes. Delilah was in a verbal, emotional and psychologically abusive environment while I was away studying. I left her in the US while I was studying and she felt abandoned and rejected by the loss of her mother. There were plenty of continuous, overwhelming circumstances but one stood out. Although I had asked my mom not to give Delilah the flu vaccine when she was little, my mom let her get the vaccine. Delilah was allergic to something in it; it caused her tonsils and adenoids to swell significantly, cutting off her airway and air supply, she had to have surgery. My baby and I were dealing with bitterness. The video also shed light on the fact that we had to really forgive some people. God let me know that I had to order some of this pastor’s books immediately, which I did, and start studying them. Interestingly enough, a day or two later, as I was studying my notes from Pastor Maldonado’s teachings from the video, I went back to find the video from the link it came from and it was no longer there. The Youtube page said “this video is no longer available” and that it was taken down by the person who posted it. (No lie! See for yourself. https://youtu.be/ZQZW7oK0eaM) God is good!

The next day when we went to church, the pastor (a prophet of God) revealed that yesterday’s attack came from Delilah’s father and asked if I knew how to send back the fire to him. (Oh it was on! The enemy and the kingdom of darkness and every person who they decided to use in their attempt to kill my baby was about to get a serious beat down in the spirit! I was and am ready for war, especially when it comes to my gift from God!

We began to pray and fast to destroy the roots of bitterness that allowed for the demonic influences to enter in and attack Delilah and my life. (Every day we have been getting free!) I didn’t know it at the time but when God asked me to share the Thirty Days of Thanks, I had no idea that he was using this journey as a mechanism and vehicle to purge me more and seal my freedom from some of that demonic influence. As we prayed and fasted, when we got to church service, where warfare for deliverance was taking place, the demons were coming out of Delilah and they grip was being broken off of her.  One Sunday as the pastor prayed for, he started praying over her ears and some of those demons started manifesting. The minister told me later that I had to continue to pray over her ears because the demons were trying to use voices to speak to her, which is why she covers her ears with her forefingers so much.   

The revelation was pouring in like a flood gate. A few weeks later another Youtube from a school of deliverance ministry popped up.  The lesson was “Deliverance from the schizophrenic pattern.” This was going to be the meat and/or hearty portion of my education.  God had revealed to me several years ago that autism was spiritually under the same umbrella as schizophrenia.  I started to study schizophrenia more to really understand all of what He met. In increments, God was revealing all of the books and information that I needed to read and study to understand more. I read the books “Pigs in the Parlor” and the author’s follow-up books ages ago and totally forgot all about that knowledge.  There I was watching the Youtube video and everything was coming back to me. The teachings in that video gave me the step-by-step manual of how to receive complete deliverance and healing for Delilah. (no lie! Step-by-step)

The presenter explained it in such a good way. He said when you think of a stronghold, imagine a pyramid structure. The ruling spirits are at the top (highest pinnacle) of the pyramid, while all the low-level demons, which are in rank (similar to an army) from smallest to greatest, make up the foundation. Since one cannot go directly to the head of the army (the ruling spirit), he has to first kill/destroy all of the lower-ranked demons and keep moving up the chain until you finally get to the top, the ruling spirit. Before you even start to attack and destroy the lower-ranking demons, you have to use the tools of binding and loosing, which God has given us as his children to stop the activity of demons. (So, just as you would bind the hands of a criminal by putting handcuffs on him to stop his activity and haul him off to jail. You have to bind, through your words in prayer, the ruling spirit so that its activity and how it operates can cease.) As you stop, nullify or bind the ruling spirits’ ability to operate, you can now attack the lower-ranking spirits without much hindrance.  Then, as you are attacking those spirits, you want to loose or release the sword of the Lord to execute judgment on that spirit to destroy it. (I hope I’m explaining this effectively through my words for you to understand.  If not, here is the video so that you can really dive in https://youtu.be/leQ4F8kyNe8 later.) Almost every night, when we get home, I have been using my step-by-step manual to break those low-ranking spirits and work my way up the chain to the ruling spirits. The three ruling spirits in the schizophrenic pattern are rejection, rebellion, and bitterness. And they each are legions with their cadres of demons.

I can’t even describe the anticipation in my mind and heart to know that we are right at the cusp of Delilah’s complete healing and deliverance and that very soon (sooner than I or you can think) she will be free, speaking (and will probably never shut up, my friend warns), with her whole mind and complete cognitive ability. She is going to be a genius! (As we have declared it verbally from the time she was little.) She will be fulfilling her task of slaying the kingdom of darkness with her voice and her words.  It’s going to be incredible! And I’m so happy that you will get to witness it so that you will know and understand just how great and amazing God really is. That day, the journey through these twelve years of darkness, will be well worth it. And I know that I will have achieved the “well done, my good and faithful servant” badge of honor from my father, which will mean more to me than anything in this life or the next.

If I ever needed any more confirmation that I was on the right track, it came yesterday. I wanted to play a song by Juanita Bynum as I was working. I put her name into the Youtube search filter and one of her sermons, “Don’t Quit! Your warfare is God’s process to promote you beyond your Imagination” (https://youtu.be/BgiZPAKFHj0), appeared. I felt led to play that video instead of the song. She was speaking my life’s story (really this whole twelve year journey). Have you ever had someone do that to you without even knowing you or what you been through?  I almost couldn’t stay in my seat. And to top it off, she declared a prophetic word that I’d see the turn around by Dec 31^stof this year (meaning in 19 days). Now you know that I was receiving and claiming that word over my life from the core of my being! I’ve been fighting too long for the vision and the word that God gave me for it not to come to pass! I’ll send you my report back on December 31^st.

This was an incredible thirty day journey. Thank you so much for taking it with me and sharing it with others. It was so freeing and provided the much needed healing and deliverance that I need in specific areas of my life. Based on the level of warfare and how much fighting I had to do to get these reflections to you on some days–keys on the laptop not working and having to switch back and forth from my laptop to phone; sometimes a sharp pain trying to attack my back as I would type; the shame factor of some of my reflections. You name it, it was happening—I know that some of you received the much needed blessings too, on those days of this journey.  I’d love to hear from you about how this journey has impacted you. I’d also like to know of the donations that you gave during your journey. As I said I want to do a report back and share our impacts on the many organizations and highlight the testimonies and victories received. Today I don’t feel so much led to highlight an organization for you, I’d like for you to find and highlight an organization to which you feel drawn and give to it (Yes. It can be one of the organizations that have been previously mentioned.) I’d also like you to reflect on your revelations and where they are leading you. What vision or word has God given you that you are fighting for? Make sure that you don’t give up! Your warfare is promoting you beyond your imagination.

Love Ya,

Have a Great Day of Thanks!

Contact Melissa Below