One of the most sure places I’ve seen Satan launch attacks is at places of insecurity. If you’re already not so confident in some area of your life, be ready for Satan to make his attempts to slip in through the cracks in your defenses.
A good friend of mine is a smart woman, though she didn’t finish traditional high school. She obtained a GED and took some basic finance courses, but didn’t feel ready or even interested in incurring debt in order to pursue associates or bachelor’s degrees, seeing so may of her peers who did take the traditional route, suffering and complaining under the weight of heavy student loans.
And in fact, having even the high school equivalency has not been much of a help, in the lines of work she’s found herself in. Most of her interviewers either didn’t ask for, or didn’t need to see the record of her test scores, or even the diploma itself. So, while she lacks traditional higher education, she spends a lot of her free time reading about all sorts of subjects, and takes joy in exercising her writing skills. She has been educated well enough, evidently, to have helped her almost 5 year old learn the alphabet, colors, shapes, numbers, sight words, and addition, even with her lack of education.
But that higher education is expected of her, to be of value in this society, because what good can you possibly contribute if you aren’t willing to take on debt to pay for basic education? What use are you to the community when you choose to stay at home, teaching colors and numbers to toddlers, right?
If you haven’t already guessed by now, that the “good friend” in this story is actually me, this is the confirmation. I dropped out in the 9th grade, because I was being repeatedly disrespected by an art teacher whose class I wasn’t allowed to drop. The following summer, I got into some trouble and was required to go back to high school, until at least my 17th birthday. I stuck around in school until about 2 weeks after I turned of age, and then I left again. I worked on getting my GED the following autumn, but I was in an abusive relationship, and living alone with my partner, who would accuse me of cheating at the totally jumping Piedmont Tech campus, and I stopped going to classes. The next summer, a friend and I both re-enrolled in GED classes, and because of my dumb decisions to ditch class with her, I left again. But in the autumn of 2013, I finally fished and was awarded the high school equivalency diploma, after being fast tracked due to high test scores. I earned my GED only 5 months after I has been due to graduate high school, had I not dropped out. I am confident in my ability to do well in a tech or college setting, or even online at home, but I REFUSE to take on that debt. I refuse to rework my entire family’s life to make room for that debt, just so that I can be forced to put my kids in daycare, on order to pay off that debt. And it’s my right not to incur such debt.
But in this society a “lack” of education, means you are ignorant, regardless of whether you dropped out of honors courses in high school. It means nobody cares what you say, or do, or think, or feel, because they have a piece of paper stating they paid to know better than you. Doesn’t matter if you just wanted to be a writer or a filmmaker, if you didn’t jump from high school into nursing or criminal justice, then you’re utterly disposable. That’s what Satan tells me, very often. He strikes at something I am otherwise confident in, like my intellectual ability, and uses what I know of myself, and what I fear others think, and what others have directly TOLD ME, as a hole through which he can poke my actual heart and make me question my thoughts and feelings. Where I KNOW I am quite articulate, Satan is always sure to tack on the diminishing “for someone who didn’t finish high school.“
And Satan loves to break us down by using those we love to drive his attacks home sometimes, too. Where a simple disagreement may pop up, Satan sees a perfect opportunity to influence us to say things that can really hit places of deep insecurity in our loved ones. “See, that’s why you failed high school, you’re so obstinate, thoughtless, dense, stupid, etc”.
Honestly, as a woman who’s survived an abusive relationship, that is how I see Satan, as an abuser, one who will lie, and cheat, and steal, and blame ME for it. One who will speak to me like I am scum through people I don’t expect it from. One who truly wants to see me descend into anger, frustration, and insanity… ANYTHING, but watch me ascend in my relationship with God. One who uses my lack of education, and mental illnesses to make me attack myself, and encourage those I love to attack me in those areas.
But what I know to be truth is that God did not intend for me to have taken those steps, just because I see others taking them, or I’d have take them by now. I truly believed God never made me to follow a crowd or to even fit in with my peers, but to observe and to write and report what I observe, because I’ve seen and learned a lot outside of traditional settings. I am educated well enough to be a home educator, and I am more articulate than most of my family, who are all very artistic and bookish people to begin with. I could have had that diploma and a hand shake, and that walk across the stage, had I not been mentally ill, and unable to handle my personal issues at home being discussed openly in class by a certain teacher whose class I couldn’t drop, but I never placed value on those things, anyway. I know and stand firm in my rights and reasons not to incur debt to obtain further traditional education. But Satan can still land some pretty strong hits, when i’m not expecting it, leaving me feeling pretty hopeless.
Luckily, I have a great high priest, who’s been hurt and tested in the same ways I have. Jesus’ own family thought he was crazy when they heard he was teaching masses of people about the gospel, but that didn’t make him unqualified to teach. It meant that Satan used those Jesus loved in an attempt to diminish his confidence in his ability to do so.
Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. (Hebrews 4:14-16)
Just saying, don’t let Satan break you down, when you know good and well that he is a LIAR. And don’t lose hope, because Jesus is able to sympathize with our struggles and temptations, and yet he did not succumb to them! And it’s in JESUS name, I PRAY!
D’Laci Elizabeth Duckett
houseofducketts 