Twisted reality, hopeless insanity.
I told you I was okay but I was lying.
I was dancing with the devil, out of control.
Almost made it to Heaven. It was closer than you know.
Playing with the enemy, gambling with my soul
It’s so hard to say no, when you’re dancing with the devil.
These are lyrics from Demi Lovato’s new song called Dancing With The Devil. In this she kinda gives a glimpse into what her life was like in 2018 before and right after her overdose. At one point, she said if she would've been found 5-10 minutes later, she would’ve been dead. That’s crazy to think. But the song got me thinking because I feel like I can relate to it in some way.
I have never done drugs or drank alcohol. But I have dealt with self harm, an eating disorder, and multiple suicide attempts. I was definitely “dancing with the devil” during this time. The suicide attempts happened before I became a follower of Jesus. The self harm I battled with multiple years after, hopefully completely ending in 2019. My eating disorder has been the most recent thing. Did you know that eating disorders are the mental health disorder that has the highest mortality rate? With how much I was struggling, I was definitely following a really bad path.
There are many times in my life that I have told people that I was okay when I was very far from it. There were times in my life that I probably should have reached out for help but didn’t because I didn’t want to burden anyone and thought that there was no point in getting better.
Dancing with the devil can be interpreted multiple ways. One being sin just in general. One can be doing things that could easily lead to death. One could be actively worshipping the enemy. These are all ways that I feel like we can be “dancing with the devil”.
If we talk about sin, the devil wants you to sin. He wants to be able to go to God and say “ha that little follower of yours messed up. They aren’t truly your follower. They are just pretending. They are really mine.” But Jesus! Jesus is our advocate. He goes to God every time that we mess up and tell God something like “Hey they’re mine. They are covered in my blood. They are mine. Please forgive them. I will be back tomorrow to do the same.” Sin is anything in our lives that would not honor or please God. Things like lying, cheating, stealing, cursing, gossiping, etc. are things that would go into this category.
If we talk about just doing things that could lead to death I think we’d be talking about everything. But I specifically mean the things we purposely do that could cause harm or death, even if not intended to cause death. Things like drugs, self harm, eating disorders, suicide attempts, excessive alchol drinking, driving recklessly, etc. is what I think of in this category. I think it is super easy to do something and forget that there are consequences for your actions. I think a lot of people go through life without thinking about the consequences of what's to come if they continue doing dangerous things. This one is easily dancing with the devil because you are actively playing with death, which is never a good thing to do.
I fall into this category. Even though I wasn't truly a follower of Christ during some of this, I was dancing with the devil. 3 sucide attempts, 7 years of self harm, 8 years of an eating disorder coming and going, these things are things that could have caused really bad repercussions and could have even led to death. This is a path I advise people to not go down or to get help if they are struggling. Your life is worth so much more than a life full of pain and heartache.
I don’t even have to begin talking about worshiping the devil and how that’s dancing with him. I feel like that’s pretty self explanatory.
These things are not great. We should be striving to stay away from doing these things with our lives. We should be trying to live as sinlessly as we can. We should be striving to imitate Christ with our lives.
I get how tempting it can be to do some of the stuff I have mentioned. I know how easy it is to fall into those habits and how hard it is to get out of them. But it is possible.
We all know our limits, but one day we may go further than you limits and there may be no coming back from it.
If you are trying to actively get away from these habits and don’t know where to start, reach out to someone. Reach out to a friend, a counselor, a trusted person. Just reach out.
Hope is real. Change is possible.
Hold onto hope and stay strong.
Madison Rae <3
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