Written by Joy Fanguy, Clinical Associate
In the spring of 2008, I sat in a small kitchen inside a children’s home that ran out of an abandoned hospital in the tiny town of Garca, Brazil. As I chatted with the mother of the home, she shared with me that sometimes the children came to the home in the middle of the night kicking and screaming, and that she had to hold them tight until the Enemy no longer had control over them. She told me that you could literally feel the evil exiting their bodies. Knowing that I had shared my story of my fall into addiction at a local juvenile prison there in Brazil, she asked me a daring question: “When you were using drugs late at night, did you ever feel like you were not alone in the room? Like the Enemy was just there waiting for you?”
“The enemy comes only to steal and kill and destroy.” John 10:10
Wow. Yes, I did. I had never told anyone that. It always seemed like something was out there lurking in the dark, just waiting to snatch me from God. I stayed terrified of nighttime for a long time. Nights at The Next Door for these frightened and vulnerable women are not much different. You see, there’s just something about the darkness that makes everything scarier and leads us to believe that everything seems more hopeless. Under the cover of darkness, the Enemy comes out to play. Sometimes nights can drag us deeper and deeper down as we wait for the sunrise. This especially seems to apply to those desperately trying to escape the Enemy…like the ladies here at The Next Door.
“When I sit in darkness, the Lord will be a light to me.” Micah 7:8
It is such a great gift to be able to be here at The Next Door during the night. We get to take what we have gone through ourselves and turn that darkness into hope. We get to soothe these precious women when the nightmares come and when they don’t feel safe from themselves. We get to remind them that the Enemy has already been defeated. We get to assure them that morning will always come and that everything will seem clearer in the light of day. Because it always does. And when morning comes, we don’t have to fight our battles in the darkness. God tells us that joy always comes in the morning. I have never found a single reason to doubt that. My hope is that these women will come to believe the same during their time with us. The darkness tells lies, but the Light…the Light saves us.
“Sorrow may last for the night, but joy comes in the morning.” Psalm 30:5
