The WILDwood Retreat

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1. Long post ahead. 

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If I speak in the tongues of men and angels but have not love, I am merely a resounding gong or a clanging symbol… 

1 Corinthians 13:1

It was supposed to be a retreat about hearing God. I expected most people to be hesitant about the more spiritual aspects. I thought the greatest struggle we would face was the fear that “God will speak to everyone but me”. 

Instead, the Winter’s house became a spiritual hospital. Intense spiritual battles were fought and won this week. Long-standing emotional wounds were healed. God spoke—oh, did He speak!—and lives changed. 

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It was clear from the beginning that God had some amazing things in store for this retreat. During my road trip He was speaking to me about the sessions, giving me words to teach and ideas for activities. At my cousin’s he gave me an experience that turned into one of the retreat’s most impactful stories. The Pyles reminded me of truths about the spiritual realm. At one point He was speaking so clearly and so much that I asked Him to remember everything for me since I was driving and couldn’t write anything down at that moment. 

As the retreat drew nearer, however, God began to reveal to me that He had other things in mind besides learning to listen in prayer. 

It started when my co-leader Jess mentioned that her sister was having strange experiences. Natalie could predict the next card in a deck—to the point where no one wanted to play cards with her anymore. When their youngest sister Katie brought home a candy wrapper that had been touched by someone who was being bullied, Natalie could touch it and know immediately who, what, and how… without Katie telling her anything.

“It’s the gift of prophecy,” Jess told me, “but it’s scaring her. She’s been meaning to call you and ask about it.” 

I frowned. Some of the things Jess described could have been the gift of prophecy, but not the candy wrapper, and definitely not the card deck. “When she comes to the retreat we’ll sit down and pray,” I said. “The first thing we’ll do is ask the Holy Spirit whether this is from Him, or something else.” 

For the next few weeks the conversation continued to bother me. It’s a divining spirit, I seemed to hear, but wasn’t sure. One morning, it was bothering me so much that I sat down to formally pray about Natalie. In the middle of the prayer, I saw a vivid image in my mind: 

I was standing on the steps of the Winter’s house with the door at my back, except it wasn’t me, it was a figure of fire with only an outline to show that it had a human shape. Even though there were no features, I knew that the figure was me, and that the fire was the Holy Spirit inside of me. 

In front of me, a few steps down, stood Natalie. I could see her features clearly, but overlaid over her body was a massive black figure, easily twice as tall. It was staring at me with malice in its eyes. 

The Holy Spirit addressed the demon directly. I see you, he said. I couldn’t see any mouth on the fire-figure-that-was-also-me, but I knew He was speaking. And not only do I see you, but she [meaning me] sees you. 

Behind the tall black figure there was suddenly a smaller, hunched figure that was sniveling and whimpering in fear. I knew immediately that I was seeing the real attitude of the demon. The tall black figure was a just a front meant to frighten me; in reality, the demon was terrified. 

It will try to sneak inside, the Holy Spirit told me after. It wants to cause chaos. You must not let it enter. It must not be permitted to cross the threshold of that house. If it does, it will bring other demons with it and they will wreak havoc on the retreat.  

Okay, was my response, but how am I supposed to do that? I can’t say that everyone but Natalie can come inside. I don’t want to embarrass her by pulling her aside before everyone, and I don’t want to have to explain that she’s channeling a demon, either. She’s going to think I’m crazy.

Leave the details and the timing up to me, the Holy Spirit said, but that spirit must not enter the house. 

I still wasn’t comfortable with the idea of sitting with Natalie on the steps while everyone else was inside sitting around and waiting for us to be done. Besides, there are no chairs in the front yard. Maybe we could go around to the backyard; that would be easier than sitting on the steps, and more comfortable. 

Not even the backyard. It must not enter the house. 

By this point I was… well, not annoyed, per se, but definitely impressed with intensity. This was the third time the Holy Spirit had said not to let it inside. I get it, I said, imagining myself staring the Holy Spirit directly in the eyes, just like I would with my mother if she’s been repeating herself and I need her to understand that I’ve heard her. It must not get into the house.

I’ll take care of the details, Sarah. You just be ready. 

I grabbed my phone and texted some close friends the details of the vision. Please pray, I wrote. Pray that God hides the reality of what’s coming from this demon. Pray that Natalie sees it for what it is. And pray that the timing all works out!

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Day 1

Natalie didn’t show up at the beginning of the retreat. Actually, only four girls did: Casey, Beth, Arielle, and Victoria. I thought Jess and Natalie weren’t going to come at all, until Jess texted me right as we were starting dinner. 

I knew I had to keep an eye out: we were eating outside and they couldn’t come around the back before I had a chance to get to Natalie. Thankfully, I had an advance guard in the form of Pepper, the Winter’s dog, who barks at every approaching car. I quickly headed out the front door and sent Jess and a friend they’d brought, Rebec, around back while Natalie and I headed to the steps. 

Once there, I explained that Jess had told me about her ‘abilities’ and that I wanted to talk to her about them in private before we joined the others. I listened as she explained, asking questions here and there about how she had felt (uneasy or peaceful, etc.), then explained that I believed the power to come from a demon and not from the Holy Spirit. I explained that there are three different levels of our being: spirit, soul, and body, and demons can affect us at all levels. 

On the deepest level, in our spirits, demonic activity is called possession. This is when a demon literally takes over a person so that they are no longer in control of their own body. This is not possible for someone who already has the Holy Spirit. 

On the highest level, our bodies, demonic activity is called influence. This might be temptation, dark thoughts, or impulses that we can dismiss or clearly recognize as outside of us. 

It’s the one in the middle—the one at the soul level—that most people miss. I explained to Natalie that sometimes demons gain deeper access to our mind, will or emotions when we choose to believe the lies they are telling us. Believing the lie is equivalent to signing a contract (so to speak) with the demon, giving it permission to remain and harass us. At this point the voice doesn’t seem to be outside us any longer, but rather inside. We often mistake these thoughts for our own, and perhaps have feelings of hopelessness or defeat. I’ll never stop thinking this, we might think. Once this thought pattern starts, I can’t stop; or, My brain is sick. 

–> I’ve mentioned in a previous blog post about my own experiences with this kind of demonic activity, called oppression. You can check it out here. 

Once I’d finished explaining, I asked Natalie if she was willing to be free of the demon. She was, so we began the process of asking the Holy Spirit to reveal when and where she had made the agreement, as well as how to dissolve it. This process always involves confessing something—usually the lie we’ve believed, though sometimes it’s another sin. Sometimes it involves forgiving someone else. In Natalie’s case, it came down to feeling special. She had believed the lie that she needed the demon’s power to be special to her friends and family; that she wasn’t special without it. She confessed that before the Lord, and we asked Him to show her how He sees her as special. 

This may seem like a routine activity or a bland event, but I assure you, it wasn’t. Natalie had used up about four separate tissues crying and was feeling pretty terrified since up until now we hadn’t been able to make the demon go away. The reality of what she’d been living with was pressing on her. Having been through this process before, I knew the tears meant we’d finally landed on the core issue. As soon as we asked God to show her how special she was, I felt prompted to pull out my journal, showing her everything I had written and the vision the Holy Spirit had given me. 

Right there in my journal it was plain for her to see: My plan is to deliver my daughter, I had written, in the Holy Spirit’s color. I will have her back! 

Realizing that God had planned deliverance for this moment; that she was special enough for Him to speak extensively and specifically about how to help her, she was easily able to trust his protection and give up her hold on the magic. She confessed, received His forgiveness, cast out the demon by the authority of Jesus, and walked into the house a changed woman, fully restored and healed, to the glory of God!

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What an amazing, incredible God we have! He had accomplished his purpose, bringing fulfillment to the vision he’d given me. He’d freed his daughter from the control of a spirit that desired her destruction. He had worked out the timing perfectly so I could pull her aside without embarrassing her, and the private conversation also gave her the freedom to tell her story in her own time.

That night during worship I praised him for his power, wisdom and goodness, then continued with the retreat, excited to see the ways that He would speak. Now that we’d dealt with the spiritual threats, I thought, we could get down to the real reason we’d come: learning to hear God.

Little did I know that this wasn’t the only deliverance—nor the most intense—that we would experience that week. 

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Day 2

Day 2 started inauspiciously. Morning session ran late, spilling over to after lunch. By the time I’d finished my one-on-one with Casey, we only had about an hour of free time before evening session. I wondered if a 3-hour quiet time was really the best idea when we’d already spent about an hour praying that morning, but I’d already texted our virtual attendees the time. 

Trust it, Sarah. Trust me. 

Before our quiet time, I talked about methods of communication, emphasizing that miraculous encounters are the equivalent of spiritual yelling, just like caps lock is the equivalent of written yelling. But God doesn’t want to have a constant yelling conversation with us; in fact, most of the ways he speaks are quiet and often dismissed as our own thoughts or impressions. During our talk, I asked our two virtual attendees, siblings Mila and Judah, who are Chinese-Taiwanese-American, to share if there were any differences in communication in their family due to their asian heritage. When they had nothing to share, I shared about some of my experiences traveling in Asia and other places in the world, mentioning how communication looks different by culture.

At the end I led everyone through a scriptural meditation practice, showing them how I had meditated with the Cherry family in China (check out that story here!). At this point, Mila had become visibly upset. Their mics were muted, but I could see Judah talking to her. Eventually they left the call, walking out of view of the camera. Since no one could see what was happening except me, I finished up the session, dismissed my in-person attendees to their quiet time, then texted Judah, making sure everything was okay. 

Actually, we wanted to talk to you about that, he said. Mila and I have determined that she experienced spiritual attack. Can we call you? 

I was pretty exhausted, but there was no other time. Sure, I shot back. 

In a few moments I was FaceTiming with Mila, who explained that she’d been the victim of Asian-heritage racism for most of her life. After I mentioned China, she had turned to Judah and asked him if he’d ever experienced racism. When he’d said no, she’d immediately started crying, at which point they’d left the call. 

I listened, asking questions to try and figure out if I had said anything in the discussion about communication and culture (besides the word ‘China’) that had triggered her reaction. I know I’m privileged, and sometimes say things that are insensitive without realizing. I told her that my heart’s desire was definitely not to demean her, and asked her to tell me if there was anything I could say differently. 

As we talked, it became clear to all of us that mentioning differences in culture had resurrected an old wound. 

“Sometimes, when we get still in his presence, old wounds surface,” I told Mila. “This wasn’t an attack. This is a deep wound. And I think the Holy Spirit has something to say about it. If you’re willing, I’d like to ask him to heal you.” 

She nodded. 

“It’s going to involve going back into some memories that could be painful,” I warned. “But I know that God loves you and wants to heal those things. Sometimes we have to go through the pain in order to come out on the other side. 

“I also need you to know that it won’t all be fixed right now. Racism is a big thing, and it’s systemic in our culture. But I think that we can start the process now for God to carry on in His time.” 

She was willing, so we began to pray, asking the Holy Spirit to reveal where she’d first felt those moments of racism. The face of her best friend immediately came to mind.

I asked her if it was a memory. When she responded that it was just her friend’s face, I was at a loss. I was exhausted and felt completely blocked from hearing the Lord. So I started praying. 

“You can jump in at any point, Judah,” I said on a whim. 

“Do you want to be her?” he said quietly. 

His question stunned me. We both sat in silence waiting for Mila’s answer. She was confused at first, but as Judah kept asking her more questions—prompted by the Holy Spirit in a way that hadn’t been available to me—we eventually discovered that Mila felt like she didn’t belong with her friends as a result of the racist things that had been said to and around her. Asking the Holy Spirit about where those feelings had come from, we realized they had started as a result of two neighborhood boys whose racist comments had slowly cut Mila over the years. 

After she’d finished, I told her to ask Jesus what he had to say about what had happened. Mila prayed my question aloud. 

An answer popped into my mind almost as soon as Judah spoke. “They’re disrespecting My beautiful creation,” he said.

All three of us started crying. Judah’s words matched word for word with the rhema in my mind. 

We asked Jesus to show us how to help Mila heal. 

“I see the tree outside my house,” she said. “One time, when it was really bad, I remember asking my father if he would build me a treehouse. I kept imagining that it would have a rope ladder and I could climb up and pull the rope ladder up behind me and hide away from everything. They wouldn’t be able to hurt me up there. It would be my own tree house.” 

“So you wanted to escape,” I said. 

On screen, she leaned forward, hiding her face so I wouldn’t see the tears.

“It makes sense,” I said softly. “Of course you want to escape. But the key to healing is forgiving those boys.” Even as I said it, I wondered. How could I—a white person who’s never experienced racism—ask this of someone who’d been hurt in ways I could never imagine? 

You’re not asking her, Sarah. I am.

“I have forgiven them,” Mila protested. “I’m nice to them.” 

“Kindness is not forgiveness,” I said. “Usually, when we’re kind, it’s because we’ve suppressed our emotions about the situation and forced ourselves to be kind—to rise above. But God doesn’t want to us to suppress our emotions. He needs us to feel them with Him.”

“So how can I forgive them?” she said. 

“I want you to imagine that you’re standing at the base of the tree,” I said. “God, the Holy Spirit, and Jesus are standing around you. I want you to tell them how you feel—how much you don’t want to forgive those boys—and ask them to help you do it.” 

Mila spoke through her tears, telling God how hurt she was. At the end, she raised her head. “Okay,” she said, and I could see the peace on her face. “It’s done.” 

“Good job,” I told her. “That can’t have been easy. Now I want you to ask Jesus to show you how beautiful you are to him.” 

Mila closed her eyes, whispering the prayer. “I see myself standing in a field in a white dress,” she said. Opening her eyes, she looked at Judah. “Have you ever read Heaven is for Real?” When he shook his head, she closed her eyes again. “Well, it’s just like Colton said it was.” 

A chill went up my spine. The book Heaven is for Real is a nonfiction book about a little boy named Colton who goes to heaven during a catastrophic surgery. 

“Jesus is in a field playing with some children,” Mila continued. “There’s lots of animals here, even birds. Some people are feeding the birds. They’re offering me birdseed, so I take some. 

“Now Jesus is telling the children a story. He’s beckoning me over, but I’m not sure I want to go. The neighborhood boys who were saying those things are over there listening to the story.

“There’s someone else next to me. They take my bird seed, motioning me to go over. I do, and sit with the children. Jesus is telling a story… and it’s one I wrote a long time ago that wasn’t finished. He gets through all the parts I’ve written, then tells the children that they have to come back later to hear the end.

“I stay behind once they’re all gone. ‘Why did you tell that story?’ I ask him. ‘It’s incomplete and flawed and I never finished it.’

“He looks back at me and says, ‘I haven’t finished writing you yet.’”

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Day 3

At the beginning of Day 3 God interrupted our morning session through Victoria. In the middle of the talk she stopped me, telling us that she was trembling, anxious, and her stomach felt so sick that she was about to throw up.

“I think I’m about to have a panic attack,” she said.

We quickly realized this wasn’t just a momentary problem and hung up with Mila and Judah, promising to call them back once we’d helped Victoria feel better. After getting her some apples (she’d had coffee but hadn’t eaten yet that day), we started in—yet again, in my case—to ask the Holy Spirit what was going on.

Through prayer, we discovered that Victoria was suffering from an oppression of Fear and Anxiety. The memory that came to mind was when she was five years old and she’d fallen into a hot tub. She’d been afraid at first, she said, but then she’d just sat at the bottom of the pool looking up.

“I should have needed to breathe,” she said, “but I didn’t. It’s almost as if something told me it could keep me safe, and I allowed it because I was so afraid.”

This opened up a whole conversation about submitting to demons versus submitting to God. “You can’t live your life out of submission,” I told Victoria. “You will be submitted to something whether you like it or not. So submit to the thing that’s going to allow you to live in freedom, rather than bondage.”

She nodded, but the reality was harder to carry out. When you’ve been taught to grin and bear it, when your voice has been silenced, when you’ve learned through experience that submitting is better than resisting, the chains become a comfort. And they had become that for Victoria.

For 3-hours we battled demonic oppressions, fighting in prayer as the Holy Spirit systematically uprooted lies, bringing Victoria through painful memories. During that time, God filled Arielle (who happened to be sitting next to her) with his Spirit, enabling her to feel what Victoria felt, see angels and demons around us, and get clear answers from the Lord that helped guide our prayers. Often we would stop and ask Arielle what she was seeing.

Finally, Arielle went completely white. “I’m staring at the devil,” she said. “It’s standing right there. Right in front of me.”

Victoria had her eyes closed. “I’m kneeling in a tomb,” she told us. “My hands are chained. There’s a demon standing on the other end, holding the chains like ropes.”

“Where is Jesus?” I asked.

“He’s standing between me and the demon,” Victoria said. “Between the chains. He’s got his hands on them. I know there’s power in his hands; I can feel it making the chains vibrate. But it won’t touch me.”

“You’ve got to submit to him,” I told her. “You’ve got to tell him that you’re okay with whatever he wants to do.”

Victoria’s eyes were puffy from crying. She’d leaned forward with her hands propped on her knees, held in the same position as I imagined she could see them in her mind’s eye. “I want to want to give it up,” she said. “But I like the chains. Why do I like the chains?”

“Do you know a dead child?”

We all turned to stare at Arielle. She was still white, but she looked less afraid than before.

“Which one?” Victoria said.

“I don’t know,” Arielle said, unsure. “I just see a little girl jumping up and down, right over there.” She pointed to her left.

This time it was Victoria’s turn to go white. “That’s my sister,” she said, then put her head down and cried some more.

Finally we got her to explain. Her brother had been a twin, but his twin hadn’t survived the birthing process. They’d named the little girl Devon.

Knowing her sister was watching was the push Victoria needed to finally submit to God’s power, allowing him to break the chains of fear and anxiety and bringing her life under his reign and rule. She yanked her hands up over her head, then gasped in pain. “My surgery hurts!”

“Where is it?” I asked. When she indicated a place just under her rib, I said, “Can I touch it?”

She nodded, so I put my hand over the wound and began to pray.

“It’s further away now,” Victoria said, breathing easier. “That’s helping.” Abruptly, she stood. “Sitting is too submissive. I have to stand in the strength of God and say no to this.” Finally, she was able to submit to Jesus rather than to the demons. “It’s gone,” she said finally.

Arielle confirmed that truth: the demon had gone. It had taken 3 hours, but Victoria was finally free.

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More happened than even these three stories. I don’t have the time to tell about how God healed long-standing wounds, revealed his will for people moving forward, convicted some of ways that they had tried to step into his place, and even restored family relationships.

Suffice to say: by the time the week was over, we were all completely exhausted. 

And yet He’s still working.

I thought this retreat was about hearing God. And it was… but it was also so much more. God had some work to accomplish, and He used this time to do it. I could never have imagined what was going to happen, nor what I would be asked to do, yet found myself equipped with supernatural strength, patience, and calm. I felt unprepared, but the Holy Spirit showed me that my experiences this year had prepared me perfectly. 

And who knows but that we had come home for such a time as this? 

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I mentioned in my last blog that it’s a Wildwood tradition is to memorize a verse—usually an entire chapter. Students who successfully memorize the verse are awarded a camp mug in a ceremony where the entire camp shouts “MUG LIFE” as the student balances precariously on a stump.

Another tradition is to give students a red HPI (Honesty, Purity, Integrity) bracelet as a mark of their completion of Wildwood. Not wanting them to miss out on either tradition, I ordered some fun woven bracelets and told them that if they said their memory verse, they could have a bracelet. 

The verse we picked was 1 Corinthians 13. Throughout the week we taught on different aspects of this chapter, emphasizing that God’s rhema must always agree with scripture, and since God is love, His rhema will always carry the characteristics of love. That is, it will be patient, kind, content (not envious), modest (not boastful), humble/meek (not proud), it will honor us and others, it will be calm and gentle (not easily angered), it will seek others’ good, it will delight in truth, and it will protect, trust, hope and persevere. 

Below I’ve included the first of the videos as proof they’ve said their verses. Hope you enjoy!

*All stories are shared with permission; names have been changed.