Surely, I am not alone, I know I mustn’t be. Surely someone else out there has loved a monster too. You know what I am talking about, the type of person that you love with more abandon more than you could ever offer up again and find your heart so out of energy to love and live that you might as well have loved a parasite because at least then when the parasite was done with you, you would be dead. Not half alive like when love with a monster fails. We all know the monster that years later you wake up in the dead of night thinking of because they showed up in yet another normal dream, and your dreaming self didn’t know but your real self knows that even their very appearance in a dream is enough to throw off your whole day and probably week if we are being honest. Well, even if I am alone, the truth stands. I loved a monster who hurt and broke me, but not enough to kill me. Only enough to cripple me in fear and guilt every time I think of him. I loved a monster and the worst part is, he loved me back.

Wait. He loved me back. You read it. I read it. Neither of us questioned it. And it is out of the question if I loved him, it is only the why that is misunderstood. Can a monster love? Do they? Do monsters love with every fiber of their being and walk away unscathed? Do they love long enough to kill and find their next target? Surely not. It cannot be.

God is love. Jesus is love. The cross was love. Destruction has not a single characteristic of love. I believe in love. Both the romantic and passionate and intimate types of love come from the Lord. They always have and always will. God allows love because he created it. The same way the one who created the patent, controls who has it.

No, it couldn’t possibly work that way. God would not let me love a being who sought only to ruin me. God would not let him near me, after all I am a beloved child…he is at his best a monster. You might as well give him scales and fangs and a tale that destroys all. But he doesn’t take the image of a monster in his pictures or in my dreams. Only in my memories. Yet, I stand perplexed because I know we loved each other at some distant point in time, I remember it like a yellow sunflower in a dull, foggy morning bike ride. It was there.

Are you with me reader? Only one of the two concepts can exist. He was and is a monster and the love was fake. Or the love was as real as the table I am sitting at and..he..is..not..and..never..was..a..monster. What kind of disillusioned girl turns a loved one into a monster just to reason with the goodbye and parting? Not I. But, this morning I think the Lord spoke a sweet message to my heart and I am here to tell you how I feel like I loved a monster yet still believe love is governed by God. I loved a man. He was imperfect. He did hurt me, I will not deny that. The relationship was toxic and that my reader is what you identified with as the monster. Whether it was you that you pictured with scales or another person.

We all have the monsters under our bed. It may be a man, a woman, a parent, a sibling, a person you once trusted or the self that you cannot escape. We see them in our dreams, we remember them at times and we feel the guilt and overpowering shame every single gosh darn time because we cannot figure out why we loved them to begin with or why we became them. You see, I believe that what God was telling me as I tried to shower and rinse off the dream of the monster is that he was not ever a monster and I cannot rinse off with any amount of scrubbing my dove soap on my tired body the person that I am or the people that I once loved. What I can do, is open my eyes and believe that which Jesus said. I can believe that when Paul says this battle and struggle “is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms”. It must be. Truly.

The monster that woke me up at night and that has haunted me for years is not the man… it is not the act.. it is the enemy. I did not love a monster. I allowed the enemy to use us both in a scheme that is far darker and more harmful than any human could have plotted. The real monster my friend is that evil is real. It is present. And if we are not on guard, it will use and abuse any person no matter the age, gender, income or intelligence. Talk about equality, he equally destroys and kills every thing he touches.

My heart hopes that this will speak to the deepest parts of you, and that you will not turn a cold heart to my words. I know the image of your monster haunts you, but you must realize it could have happened to anyone at anytime. You must awaken yourself to understand that people are not monsters but they are always one of two things. A tool used by the good Father to love and bring compassion to those that we meet or a tool that he enemy used to destroy the love the Father brings. I find this to be freeing. A freedom that makes the eagle in the sky look like he is confined to borders and habitats. A freedom that makes all things pale in comparison: the monster I have feared seeing or thinking of due to a crippling terror is not a monster at all, he is a child of God that fell into the wrong hands. Yet, like the story will always end, God reigns good on top of it all.