Resisting Satan's Voice

By Lacy Stern

Have you or anyone in your family every been bullied? Harassed by people around you? In this book you will learn about a woman who experienced such things for years. The lessons she learned will help and encourage you.

Resisting Satan's Voice is Lacy Stern's true story of her challenging and awakening journey from 1955

• Language: English
• Publisher: Love is Patient Publishing
• Release date: Jan 27, 2021
• ISBN: 9781734801330

Lacy Stern

Lacy Stern, now in her senior years, experienced many ups and downs as she was growing up. Her extreme shyness made every challenge more difficult. In her adult life she was even bullied in the marketplace. Both she and her son, Sam, were harassed in her neighborhood and community. Now her heart's desire is to share her story with others-both the harassment and what she learned through it all.

Book preview

Introduction

Satan’s Voice is the true story of my challenging and awakening journey from 1955 to 2018 as I stood with my son, Sam, on the side of minority children in a harsh community.

My trauma began in childhood, which led me to search for truth and freedom of heart and mind as I grew into adulthood. Eventually I learned of God’s great love and grace and His power to defend, help, and guide. I learned how to recognize Satan’s voice in my thoughts and how that voice of evil had maneuvered its way into my life from a young age. I learned God is our foremost help and greatest power in defeating Satan and his voice. In Christ, I found God’s peace and the tools of His Word that help us resist Satan’s voice and his traps and help us live in peace; in freedom of heart and mind; and in joy, contentment, and harmony with ourselves and others.

This book also addresses Satan’s voice inside the minds of those who want to harm others. Some people come to realize Satan’s evil influences within them, but others do not and continue to spread his voice to others, including children.

Satan’s Voice is meant to be a source of encouragement to people to help them seriously consider whom they have chosen as leaders and gods of their lives and how we each can be so easily led into darkness, even those of us with the best intentions and efforts to live good lives.

I refer to some members of Sam’s and my community as the gang and share examples of the stories of injustices and evil the gang perpetrated against us. The main reason I wrote this book was with the hope that readers will learn and experience God’s goodness, love, and grace, and how starkly wonderful and freeing His character and plan are in comparison with the darkness and destruction Satan is diligently and persistently eager to lead us toward and imprison us in. With the help of Jesus, you can change someone’s rage into love. You too can be changed in any area of your heart and life where you have not yet opened yourself to receive the goodness, love, and grace God intends for you.

The names of people in this story have been changed because the focus of this book is on the evil Sam and I experienced rather than on the people Satan used to hurt us. I believe giving a name to evil makes it easier to make excuses for those who do evil and easier to find fault in the victims.

My story also emphasizes that shyness is not a hostility or negativity toward others, nor is the choice to be selective in choosing whom not to socialize with. Choosing to have only a few people in your life is not wrong—it’s a preference. Cooperating with police in an investigation is not wrong—it’s a preference. Yet how many times do we see that cooperating with the police is met by the judgements of people and used by many as justification to attack? My hope is that this book will prompt readers to stop and think before judging, to cease reacting to circumstances and the choices of others before gathering all the facts, and to seek God’s guidance and His ways, choosing His love and grace in all things with all people.

Lacy

Part I:

Young Lives

1960–1980

Chapter 1

A Troubled Marriage

Having fun is what we prefer,

Not aware of your anger.

As we grew, we could not foresee

Problems in us; we could not break free.

I repeatedly heard as a child, Do as I say, not as I do. But I knew children follow what their parents do, not always what they say.

In 1960, I was five years old. My sisters Janice and Tracy were ten and eight; my brother, Ted, and my baby sister, Judy, were both toddlers, ages two and one. Our mom and dad’s friends would come to our house and play cards at the kitchen table and have adult drinks that we children weren’t allowed to drink. The backs of the playing cards were naughty pictures of women that we weren’t supposed to see, but we did.

Sometimes my mom and dad would dress up and leave the house for the night, and a neighbor would come over and take care of us children. And there were times when my parents would talk loudly to each other, but at that young age I didn’t pay much attention because I couldn’t understand from a distance what they were saying. Not until I was an adult did I realize my parents’ marriage had major problems from the start. My mom had left my dad while she was pregnant with me. But because she hadn’t had a job or other source of income and couldn’t find anywhere to live, she’d ultimately had no choice but to return to Dad. Then two more children were born into our family.

I was a very shy child, visibly so around my aunts, uncles, and cousins. I was especially shy around people who were not family. There were no conversations with my parents to help me grow comfortable with speaking and thereby grow out of my shyness. There were no picture books to teach me about animals, nature, vehicles, buildings, people’s employment, or anything else about everyday life, and no books to prepare my siblings and me for school.

Mom sometimes talked about her own childhood. The adults had trusted the older children with the younger ones, so that’s how my mom parented. When Janice and Tracy went outside to play, Mom expected them to take me. Mom didn’t supervise our activities because she had to take care of her younger two, Ted and baby Judy.

Our house was in the city, tucked tightly side by side with the other houses on the oblong block. An alley forged through the middle of the block where the residents accessed their garages. The alley was never as busy as the street out front and got a little busier only in the evenings as neighbors came home from work, but occasionally a car drove through the alley in the daytime.

The driveway to our house hugged a small hill, perfect for little girls to have fun sledding in the winter. Janice and Tracy must have forgotten to look out for cars one afternoon when it was my turn to sled. As I flew down the hill, my sled curved a little to the right and sent me between the two front tires of a passing car. The shaken driver immediately stopped and rushed from her car to see if I had been injured. My sisters watched in fear as the woman fell to her knees, grabbed my sled, and pulled me from beneath her vehicle. When I was found alive and uninjured, they let out breaths in relief. The driver told us we ought to be more careful and that she was very thankful I had not been hurt. The woman went on her way and we continued to have our fun; Mom was none the wiser.

In the summer months, Tracy and Janice rode their bikes. Tracy thought it would be fun to give me a ride. She first propped me on the bicycle seat but determined the space was then too crowded for her to pedal, so she lifted me onto the handlebars and tried her best to ride down the sidewalk. It wasn’t easy for Tracy to manage because the ride was so wobbly. We’d start and stop, and with each try we managed to get a little farther down the sidewalk. Over time Tracy became experienced at giving me a ride. From our house in the middle of the block, she made it to the last house on the block, a corner property lined with a row of bushes.

One day when we reached the bushes, Tracy told me she wanted to continue around the corner. It was a tricky turn with me sitting on the handlebars, and Tracy must have been nervous because the bike became so wobbly that we fell over into the bushes. A thorn stabbed my finger and blood soon trickled down my hand. I immediately blamed Tracy for the injury and insisted she had let me fall into the bushes on purpose. As we walked home, Tracy explained she had not meant to fall into the bushes, that it was an accident.

When we walked into our house and Mom saw my injury, she started drilling us with questions about what had happened. Then she cleaned my wound and covered it with a Band-Aid to stop the bleeding. When Dad came home and examined the wound, he took me to our family doctor.

Although Mom trusted Janice and Tracy to take care of me, she set limits for them. For example, Tracy wasn’t allowed to cross the street with me, and we had to stay within the block we lived on. No more corners. Eventually though, Janice and Tracy developed friendships around the block and took me with them to their friends’ houses.

In one home, we viewed pornographic magazines not hidden by the owner. Later in life, I learned that seeing adult material as a child could be emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually damaging. With such images seared into my mind, I was more vulnerable to Satan’s evil influences. I didn’t know at the time that I could rebuke Satan in the name of Jesus, stopping his powers that were at work in my life.

  

When I turned six, Mom allowed me to travel alone on the block to play with my two friends—boys who were my age as there were no little girls near my age. By the time we were eight, my two friends and I had found many kids from around the block to play with—croquet, kickball, tag, Simon Says, and other games.

When I was seven, I noticed my parents had stopped playing cards with friends and my mom no longer dressed up to leave for the night with my dad. He now went out alone. When they spoke to each other loudly, I still tried to ignore it, but when I was in the kitchen with them, I couldn’t help but hear what they were saying. Mom talked angrily to Dad about another child, as though the child were his. I wondered, What child? I didn’t know of another child; I knew only of myself and my siblings, Janice, Tracy, Ted, and Judy. Why is Mom saying these things? I thought she must be making up stories, then wondered why she would do that. But I didn’t ask questions. There were no conversations between my parents and me.

Around that time, I noticed Dad didn’t always come home at the end of his workday. At first, he was absent once in a while; then his absences increased to a few times a week. When he came home late, he acted different and his breath smelled funny. When he’d enter late, he and Mom used angry voices, which grew louder over time. I often escaped the anger by going upstairs to the bedroom I shared with my two older sisters. Mom was becoming angry more often, more so when Dad wasn’t around.

Dad wanted all of us children to go to Sunday school and confirmation classes, and he wanted us to be confirmed by the church. As my siblings and I walked with our mom to church each Sunday, Mom didn’t speak nicely about our dad. But once we arrived at church, surrounded by others, Mom would put on a happy face. She’d talk, laugh, and seem to enjoy herself. When she was alone with us children, though, she’d say things in a mean way about Dad. Why do we have to go to church, and he doesn’t? Why do we have to do what he says? Who does he think he is, anyway? Even at my young age, I knew Dad worked on Saturday nights and didn’t come home until just before the rest of us got up in the morning. He had to sleep, and that’s why he didn’t always join us.

Instead of focusing on her children’s well-being, talking about what was happening in our lives, looking at nature and asking us to name the animals, trees, and flowers we’d see on our walks, and having fun together, Mom focused on her anger toward Dad. The walks were dreadful for me. In fact, Mom talked very badly to us children about our dad for the rest of her life, continually belittling him and saying only bad things about him.

I wish I had learned to pray when I was young and going to Sunday school, so I could have prayed for my angry mom and for myself. I would have asked Jesus to intervene in our lives because Mom’s angry words made me feel so uncomfortable. Mom and Dad had received marriage counseling from the pastor, but later as an adult looking back, I thought the pastor must not have taught them how to pray or how to ask for guidance from our heavenly Father.

  

During grade school, I came home each day for lunch, which would have been great if Mom had given me food choices or allowed me to make suggestions. And talking to me about anything would have helped me with my shyness. But Mom and Dad didn’t take the time to help me.

When I was ten years old, I would arrive home from school to find Mom drinking the same kinds of drinks she’d had when playing cards with her friends. I didn’t question her or even continue to think about it then, but as an adult, I recognized that Mom had been guided by Satan’s voice to drink. I suspected her drinking was to numb her feelings of hurt and anger and to feel peace, or maybe just to feel brave. I learned that alcohol only temporarily eases the pain, and its effects quickly fade and the negative feelings increase, drawing the hurting individual to drink more.

Anger not only caused Mom to develop a bad attitude about going to church but also diverted her from being a loving parent. I knew she had a right to be angry with Dad. However, I had also come to know that if my mom had given her emotions to God and asked Him for wisdom and guidance, she would have been freed from her anger and able to better concentrate on her children and her own life. I knew God would have guided Mom in what to do. As an adult, I imagined how nice it would have been if Mom had prayed every night for God to help her put her marriage back together and teach us children to pray for God’s help for our father.

Chapter 2

Good Days Turned Bad

You once got along.

Why couldn’t you keep it strong,

Even if we were the reason,

To show us we mattered each season?

There were also good things and happy times in my young life, like the family renting a cabin on a lake a couple of times in my younger years. Mom was a good cook and she’d also take time to fix all her girls’ hair. She’d buy fancy dresses for us for Easter and other s pecial occasions. Our parents also dressed Ted very nicely, which included new suits.

Mom took us children to the store once a week to buy us a treat. Once she even took me alone because I had been sleeping when she’d taken the other children. Mom and Dad also took all of us to a drive-in theater several times, with pillows and blankets so we could lie comfortably on the car to watch the movies. I was intrigued by the giant screen, the speaker that hung on the window of our car, and the building that sold popcorn, soda pop, and other treats.

When I was eight and joined the Girl Scouts, I volunteered Mom to help because I felt she would have a wonderfully fun time helping. She was a helper for two years.

I have fond memories of the fun my siblings and I had when we visited cousins and grandparents during holidays. And the work union Dad belonged to held a family get-together each summer at an amusement park.