Visions of What, Exactly?

It's been 3 days and I'm ready for this week to come to an end. The bulk of my time has been spent on Daughter, although in between there we had Empire come out to price out carpeting most of our house (approx. $6,000! Not gonna happen.) and a carpenter I know came over to check out all the locks we need to change. I also managed to finally get those rockets on Son's wall. He saw it and was thrilled. He expected a galaxy on the walls but I explained that would happen via bed linens, wall lamps, and other accents. He's happy and I'm just glad that part is done.

I'm tired. Not just because of the house and the time it's taking to get things done but Daughter has suddenly started having some form of night terrors and it is draining.

She's always been the stong one of our 2 children and that may sound odd of a 3-year-old but that girl puts up with just about anything and puts you in your place as well. She plays with her brother, we listen for conflict and try not to interfere too much. They watch TV together and imagine together and generally do what brothers and sisters should.

But we don't know what she watched Saturday night. We thought maybe they watched something on Cartoon Network. I blocked that channel once but blocking that one seemed to block ALL the cartoon channels and I didn't want that but eventually clever Son figured out the pin number anyway - because I didn't even try to be clever mom. We watched and listened and kept going. (But oh, yes, I did figure out how to block that one channel and the pin number now is one Son won't guess.)

Sunday morning about 5 a.m., Daughter sat up in bed and spoke out about something coming down from the ceiling and something crawling out of daddy's ear. Excuse me? I sat up for that one because I knew that couldn't be but then she let out the most blood curdling scream I've ever heard - I've NEVER heard her scream like this. I jumped up and turned on the light to see what she saw. But nothing was there. I tossed the covers and Mr. T. looked over in confusion. He pulled back the sheets as Daughter continued to retreat from something only she could see. We searched the ceiling in vain as she concentrated on something there. We thought she might still be asleep but she responded to everything we said. She jumped in my arms but I couldn't move fast enough to get out into the hallway as she insisted. Mr. T. and I could only exchange confused glances.


Daughter looked to the ceiling and looked anxiously around her. Whatever it was she was seeing, they were everywhere and she could not contain herself. Eventually she ran to her Nana's room where the light was on because she was up getting ready to go to the early morning service at her church. Daughter stayed there and Mr. T and I laid back down listening to her descriptions and shaking our heads. It wasn't long before the screams came again. Whatever it was, she was seeing it in the dark AND in the light. This is not normal. She was awake. I was sure of it because she laughed and played as she calmed down during the two hours we went through this. Sometimes another scream came at the end of a laugh as her eyes caught sight of something yet again. She ran back to me and tried to hide from whatver she saw. "Turn on the light! Turn on the light now!" she insisted. Mr. T. was drifting in and out (the man slept through most of my 28 hours of labor pains. I'm not surprised he'd manage to sleep with this going on). I turned on the touch lamp on the lowest setting, turned on the TV and let Daughter cling to my arm as she instructed me to, "Kill it! Kill it!" A waving of my hands was all it took but I couldn't stop or else they'd get close again.

Two hours later Daughter was able to fall asleep. The next day, she remembered what happened but was more joking about it. Sunday night she got through the night and we thought maybe it was a fluke. 2 o'clock this morning, she did it again. Screaming she looked under the sheets she shares with us and hid under them, refusing to come out even as I tried to assure her I had turned on the light and the TV as she was telling me to do. I told her she'd get really hot under there. "Mommy's here. Come on out."

"No!"

I looked at her. I talked to her. She was awake. She grew more agitated and eventually was overcome by all the creatures surrounding her. "Let's get out of here! Let's get out of this room!"

"OK, OK. It's OK."

I went to the living room as she screamed all the way and climbed all over me. Mr. T followed us, not knowing what to do. "It's OK, mommy's here. This is what mommies and daddies do. We protect you. You are going to be OK."

"Kill them! Kill them!"

I hugged her close and trried to pace the floor.

"Stop it! Stop walking!"

"OK." I sat and felt her curl up in a ball. I supressed my own welling sorrow for her pain and offered her the best weapon I have - my faith.

"Daughter, do you know who God is?" She goes to Youth Church with her brother so I was curious to see what she would say now.

"Jesus," she said with a shaky voice, looking around, shrinking from the images in her head.

"Yep. God created this world and everything in it that is good is His. This bad stuff you see, that's not what He wants for you. Listen to me, Daughter. Say what I say."

I explained to her that God has not given her the spirit of fear but of power, love and a sound mind. WE said it again and again. I told her that God gave her her mommy and daddy to be physical manifestations of His love for her and to give her protection that she could see and feel.

"But do you know what else is here that you can't see?"

"No," she whimpered, tears falling in huge drops.

"Angels! Lots of them for someone like you. You KNOW how busy YOU are! You have so many out there watching your every step to do God's will and protect you. God is bigger than what you see, Daughter. Let's ask Him to take it away."

We spent the next two hours asking God to take it away, waving our hands and fanning away the spiders she was seeing. We determined from Son that these things were indeed something they had both seen on the Discovery Kids channel. We pointed to those creatures as she yelled at them, "You are stupid! God protects me!"

"That's right, Daughter! You are a strong girl and you have such a strong imagination and something is stuck in your head right now but they are NOT real. God is. Use that powerful imagination for the good. We won't let it overpower you."

"Leave me alone," she demanded of the things,though in between her bouts of strength, she'd recoil and insist I kill them. "You're icy!' she yelled.

I laughed.

"That's right baby. You tell them."

After two and half hours, a few songs, lots of threats to her visions of what I couldn't see, and continuous handwaving against this invisible foe, Daughter began to relax again. I let her watch a happy cartoon, some Barney too as she fell asleep in my arms and didn't protest as I carried her back down the dark hallway to our bed.

She was hot this morning. I took her to the doctor and it seems all the illness that had plagued her off and on for the last month had culminated into congestion on one side of her face and an ear infection as well - despite the tubes we had put in a few years ago. The doctor agreed that illness would disrupt her sleep and possibly bring on these hallucinations. She's been coughing for a month now and has been so restless. As I looked into the definition of night terrors, I figured she was just one very tired baby.

She's resting now and has been for hours. It's getting dark and I have faith in the medicine of man, medicine that God gave us the ability to create. She'll get back to herself, I'm sure of it. I hate that she's going through this but we had 2 hours just talking about who God is to her. Daughter and I fought the fight together with our spiritual weapons. I didn't think satan was moving in, mind you, but it's never too early to learn how to fight the battles you know you can't win alone. I'm glad I got the chance to share this with her. Hopefully when she is old, she won't depart from it.