Chapter 4

Suszana's Story

I overslept the next morning, jet-lag finally being allowed to take its toll. I can't remember what I dreamed. I know I woke once in the night and turned on the light again. I spotted a Bible in a red cover and a book of poetry by Sebastian Klonowicz, a 16th century Lubliner, which I hadn't noticed when I arrived. It was still pitch black outside so I turned over and went straight back to sleep.

It was dead quiet out in the Lublin countryside. Not a sound disturbed the night. No rumble of traffic as in Kansas City. The silence was uncanny at first but I grew to appreciate it. There is nothing like complete silence to focus your thoughts, and I had a lot of thinking to do while I was at Raj.

I grew to love Lublin and wondered why Stan had selected it to live in.

"Hard to say, really. I could give you many cultural reasons," he once told me. "The people here remember the nazi oppression as clearly as if it were yesterday. Perhaps you have heard of Majdanek - it was an extermination camp, located in a suburb of Lublin. People know what it is to be oppressed and are perhaps a little more tolerant because of it. Yet the narrow-mindedness of Catholicism permeates the whole country wherever you go. The Reformation never really sank roots down in our country.

"I like Lublin also because we're close to the border with the Ukraine and White Russia (Belarus) and because it was here that we signed the treaty of Union with Lithuania. This was where the provisional government was set up in 1944. There are Ukrainian nationals and White Russians in the countryside adding some Eastern Orthodoxy to our religious cocktail. Where there's a mixture people they tend to be a little more open minded and tolerant. But I'm under no illusion. We are about as safe here as anywhere else."

"What if life got tough - what if you were persecuted for your plural way of life - where would you go then?" I once asked him.

"This is not a permanent home, Hélène. As you can see, we're already outgrowing the house. This is not one of the firstborn communities that will come into being when the troubles start. We already have an evacuation plan with one or two possible places to move to - one in Scandinavia and one in the Bavarian Alps."

I got excited. "Oooh, how lovely! I've always adored the mountains. Has work started on these places yet?"

"Yes and no. But we have other places in our sights too."

He seemed reluctant to say more so I didn't press him. I knew that these cities of refuge were highly secret, designed as arks of safety for the seven year tribulation period. I knew Stan was in Scandinavia a lot, in Sweden and Norway, meeting up with other patriarchal communities.

"Lublin is a crossroads of the East," he continued. "It serves as a kind of transit point for other patriarchs and their families from Russia and the East generally visiting our headquarters in Scandinavia. It suits our needs perfectly, for now..."

By the time I got up late into the morning the family was already busy at work. After showering and changing I wandered into the kitchen where Isabel and Suszana were at work preparing for the mid-day meal. They showed me where to get some breakfast.

Isabel and Suszana seemed to have something special between them. In many respects they were unlike the others. And yet looking at them you would think they were as different as chalk and cheese. Their friendship went back before they met Stan but there was also a shared shame.

At one time they had been bitter enemies when Suszana left Stan and Isabel occupied the vacant spot in his life. Then it had been Isabel's turn to leave though of the two she had returned first. I didn't like to probe too deeply and neither seemed too keen to talk about the past at first.

They had started anew upon their reconciliation with Stan and wanted the past with all its painful memories left buried. But I did know that Suszana had got sucked into a satanic cult and had really been dragged low into the dirt. It explained why she was always the more serious of the wives.

Isabel was the same, but for different reasons. She had turned to Catholicism upon leaving Stan but had found little spiritual nourishment there. She was also shy by disposition unlike the more outward-going Suszana. Isabel had very much lived in Suszana's shadow both before and during Suszana's first marriage to Stan. Her first marriage to Stan had enabled her to overcome much of her early shyness, and discover life, but the realities and challenges of pioneering plural marriage with no community support had been too much for her. It took three absences from home to cross some more hurdles to prepare her for a happier life.

There is a certain mystery in suffering and if you've never been in it yourself it's hard to empathise and find fellowship in it. Over the past two years I have grown closer to Suszana and Isabel but through a very different route to the others.

People are so complex. You think you know them and then, suddenly, something unexpected pops out of their past like a jack-in-the-box and you find yourself re-evaluating them again. Suszana, as I have said, had been involved in the occult and had acquired a deep knowledge of it through study and practice. Discovering that everything she had learned was garbage in comparison to a knowledge of Jesus Christ had left her feeling empty. And she discovered it in a most unusual way.

Her father had, of course, been a Catholic but her Turkish mother had been Muslim. Her mother had made a nominal conversion to Catholicism just to please her husband. Suszana's upbringing had been Catholic but in the environment of secular Protestant Denmark it had never really taken root. She had secretly joined the Jehovah's Witness cult about the same time as Isabel and it was there that they became friends. Her knowledge of Christ had been distorted by the Watchtower's Arianism and she had never been born again. It was perhaps the fact that Isabel had first converted to the Lutheran Church and had experienced the new birth before becoming a Witness that made her journey so much less painful.

Suszana knew nothing of this. Her attraction to the Witnesses had chiefly been because of their high moral standards but when later, whilst married to Stan monogamously, she came across the charismatic movement, she had lusted after something more dynamic and exciting.

Whilst in a radical charismatic meeting, she had a supernatural experience, falling over onto the floor and saw a vision that lasted many hours. Because it had been supernatural she had automatically assumed it was from God. She was told in the vision to marry the group's leader and leave Stan.

I was astonished that she could have been fooled by such a perversion of Biblical truth.

"You don't understand," she told me. "If you're not born again you are blind. You can't see the truth even when it's staring you right in the face. The devil tricks you with convincing lies and you believe them. You can't see the truth so you simply grab whatever seems to be the most alive. I was blind.

"But I had an excuse. Stan had confessed his belief in plural marriage and I had told him, No, Never! I used my hatred of polygamy as justification to believe that divorce was right - I even saw his belief in polygamy as a sign that he was a heretic. Well, you know how our corrupt heart justifies whatever it wants. I really believed I was in God's will.

"It was all so wonderful in the beginning. I really felt I was free. I was in love with my guru and looked up to him as a kind of god. He even claimed to be Christ reincarnated. My pride just went wild - I thought that I was the most privileged person in the world to be married to Christ. My vanity went off the deep end. I wanted to be a queen, I loved the adoration his followers showered on me though I also sensed the intense jealosy of some of them.

"Then I discovered that he had several mistresses. In fact, he could take whichever women he wanted to from the group and they agreed without question because of who they believed him to be. I was devastated. I thought I was going to be his, and his alone. He dumped them as soon as he tired of them and went in search of younger victims.

"Then I got sucked up into the politics of the group. Ray - that was his name - had problems with some of the male leaders who wanted more power and authority. He tried to find ways to appease them or risk having the group fragment which would have meant a loss of revenue with which he financed our luxurious standard of living."

"So you had a lot of money, then?" I asked.

"Yes, we lived like millionnaires. I had anything and everything I wanted. I was in love with Ray and learned to accept his other women in the end, though reluctantly. As his official wife and his queen my vanity was sufficently gorged to appease my hurt and jealosy at what he was doing with the other women."

"So in a way you were forced into plural marriage...."

"Oh no, I wouldn't call it plural marriage. Not at all! Not Christian plural marriage, not the polygyny we live here at Raj. Not even remotely. I'm not sure you could even call it perverse polygamy because there were no covenants and no fidelity - it was really monogamy plus mistresses. And it was adultery because some of these women were already married."

"Didn't their husbands mind?"

I felt disgusted.

"They were taught that in giving their wives to Ray that they gained good karma for themselves. It was to their benefit. And even though they quite often rebelled inside, they were brainwashed enough to accept this explanation. But Ray's perverse ideas about improving karma backfired. The other group leaders - the ones jostling for more power - argued that they could improve their karma by having sex with Ray's wife - me. And that if Ray was getting the benefit of other men's wives, it was only logical that they - the group leaders - should get a share of his too..."

"So it all degenerated into a kind of organised orgy!" I said in horror.

"Yes. I refused when Ray said I had to have sex with the group leaders but he grew violent and threatened me. It was then I realised that he didn't really love me at all. He wanted me because I was a good channeller and could get contact with high-ranking demons. Ayway, in the end he forced me..."

"Poor you!" I cried inside. What a nightmare. And what a contrast with what Stan was doing.

"What did you do?"

"I ran away. Went to America to try and disappear because I knew Ray would follow me. His reputation would be in shreds if his queen abandoned him. He lost over half his following as a result and had to concede more power to the group leaders. I don't know what happened to him and I don't want to. Anyway, I was penniless and to cut a long story short found myself economically dependent on other men, some of whom were quite nice to me but all of whom had a price for their "kindess". You know what I mean."

I knew.

"Finally, I found a nice man called Steve who really cared for me and who gave me the emotional and economic security I so badly needed. We had a daughter together."

"And your other daughter - was that Ray's?" I asked.

"Yes. It was Ray's. Steve accepted her which made things a lot easier..."

"But what of Stan?" I asked. "Didn't you think of going back to him?"

"How could I? I knew he was a polygamist and I was still a committed monogamist. I had found a man who was a monogamist and that seemed to be the solution."

"So how did you come back to Stan?"

"Well, outwardly I was happy. Steve had a good job, we were comfortably off, and the girls had a stable home. Steve was a caring man, much older than me, and with a divorce behind him. His kids were grown up. We lived in Florida in a perfect climate. But I missed my elder children, the ones Stan had custody over...."

"Yes, how did Stan get them?"

"When I joined the "Heaven's Way" cult he took me to court in Copenhagen and got custody. I didn't stand a chance, living the kind of immoral life I was then. Stan had a friend who posed as a member of the group to get inside information and he used that for his court case. Of course he won. After that I hated him."

"Ah, now I understand...".

I had wondered about the eldest two. They seemed very distant from their mother and gravitated mostly to Isabel and Kryztina who had mothered them in Suszana's absence.

"That's another reason you didn't want to go back to Stan...."

"Yes. That's true. I hated him and his wives for taking my babies from me. But I was actually glad they were safe. I shudder to think what would have happened to them had Ray got his hands on them when they grew up. He was an utter pervert with few moral scruples."

She paused a while, the pain evident in her eyes.

"So, how did you come back to Stan?"

She paused. "Do you believe in telepathy, Hélène?"

"Well, yes, I suppose so, but itn't that something occultic?"

"Yes, it is. Because of my involvement in the occult and especially because of the channelling I did - that's a kind of mediumship - I acquired the power of telepathy. I could read people's minds and communicate with them."

I stiffened, afraid she could read my mind too. She picked up my reaction.

Suszana laughed. "Don't worry, I can't do it now! Stan took care of that one and I was none too pleased about it! You see, I missed my elder kids so much that I tried to telepathically communicate with them. I didn't know at the time that Stan had forseen I would do so and had called down the blood of Christ on to them for their protection. I was very frustrated. Later, after I returned to Poland, I tried to contact Stan..."

"But I thought you were happy in Florida?"

"I grew homesick. I missed Kraków, my family and my friends whom I used to visit from Denmark when I was older. I persuaded Steve to immigrate. He wasn't too keen but he loved me enough to do whatever would make me happy. Kraków had hardly changed though all my friends were a lot older and had moved on. I had wanted to pick up the threads of my life again but discovered that too much water had gone under the bridge. It was great seeing my brother and sister again, and some of my close friends. But inside I was still empty. I didn't know what to do. So, quite spontaneously, I started thinking about Stan, and there he was...

"I don't follow," I said, puzzled. "You mean he appeared in your room?"

"No, no, in my mind. I had opened a telepathic bridge and we could see and talk to one another. Hard to explain, really, but it's just as though the person is there before you."

I didn't understand but allowed her to continue.

"He was there and he was lovely. I felt his love for me. I felt like a child. I felt helpless but safe. I just wanted to be with him. At first he was not aware that we were in telepathic communication and thought that he was just dreaming. But as time wore on he became aware."

"You mean, this lasted a long time?"

"About two hours. He had been asleep and I was awake. Then he awoke, went and sat down in a chair, and started talking to me. I felt that he missed me - that he had always loved me - and I just wanted to stay in contact. I was content to just listen to his thoughts. But then he became aware that there was a telepathic bridge. He was alarmed, I sensed his alarm, and I didn't want the channel to be closed.

"'You cannot communicate with me in this fashion, Suszana', he said to me, 'because it is contrary to the Law of Yahweh'.

"I was frightened. I just wanted to keep the line open and started telling him about my life because I knew he was concerned and cared. I could talk to him in a way I couldn't talk to Steve. He listened intently, as I hoped he would, wanting to know what had happened to me.

"'Suszana, my love, we cannot keep this channel open because it is being mediated by demons and I am opening myself up to trouble if I continue. I want to help you but you will have to do it the Lord's way.'

"I didn't say anything. I was frightened he would go.

"'Listen to me, Suszana. There is only one way. You have to renounce the occult and all the powers you have acquired, including this telepathic link. You must accept Yah'shua the Messiah - Jesus the Christ - as your only Lord and Saviour, and start your life completely anew. You must throw out all your occult books and scriptures. You must accept the Bible as the only Word of God.'

"I then heard him praying to the Lord. I started talking to him again. 'I believe in the Bible but not in the same way as you do,' I said.

"'I know,' he replied, 'and you still believe in most of the things you were taught in the Danish cult.'

"He was now reading my mind - he could see everything. I couldn't hide.

"'I can only help you if you are willing to renounce your old life,' he continued. 'You are also living in adultery with Steve because you are my wife.'

"My thoughts began to race around - I didn't want to sleep with Stan as his wife. He heard my thoughts.

"'Suszana, I wouldn't want to sleep with you either but for different reasons...because you are defiled and impure. You're whole life has to change before I would even consider having sex with you again.'

"I didn't like that. I wanted to call the shots. He started reading my mind as to my beliefs and then said:

"'I cannot communicate with you in this way any longer because I am defiling myself. This will be the last time we talk this way.'

"There was a pause. I started to panic.

"'In the Name of Yah'shua the Messiah,' he said, 'I call upon the blood of Christ and sever this telepathic channel so that it can never be used again. From now on, the only mode of supernatural communication between us that I will accept will be through the Ruach haQodesh...the Holy Spirit'.

"My heart sank. But worse was to come.

"'In the Name of Yah'shua haMashiach, Jesus Christ, I bind the demons that are controlling Suszana and giving her the power of telepathic communication and consign them to the lake of fire or to whatever place Yah'shua shall send them.' Then there was complete silence."

"Wow!" I said. "That's amazing. What happened next?"

"Nothing. Nothing at all. I tried to communicate with Stan but the line was, as it were, completely dead. I then realised that he possessed a power that was greater than my own. I was shocked because I had always thought, since meeting Ray, that the gods of Christianity were weak and ineffective. I thought that their doctrines were all wrong. Then I started to feel a deep guilt - a really deep guilt for what I had done to Stan earlier..."

"In leaving him?" I asked.

"No, in asking my spirit guides, who I later learned were demons, to punish him for taking my children away from me. I literally put a curse on him. It was the only revenge I knew. He suffered terribly from a heart condition after that."

"But....surely Christ would have protected him from that??" I cried.

"He couldn't. You see, Stan had a weakness: me. He loved me so much that he refused to renounce our marriage vows. He thought that if he did that he would lose me forever. I had committed adultery and he had every right to divorce me but he wouldn't. That was his undoing. You see, so long as those vows were in place, it gave me a direct channel to him. It fooled him for years. What he didn't understand was that renouncing his marriage vows didn't mean that I ceased to belong to him. Even Yahweh divorced Judah and Israel for playing the harlot, but they still belonged to Him. Stan was blinded by his love for me and this was his fatal flaw. I was able to really damage his ministry and health through that, though I didn't know how much at the time."

I was shocked. This was all so other-worldly to me. Here I was encountering what Paul meant by struggling with unseen powers for real. Suddenly Paul's words took on flesh and blood and I was frightened.

"Well, praise the Lord, Stan eventually saw his error thanks to Kasia who has a prophetic gift and he reluctantly renounced his vows to me. The moment he did this the connection between us, which was a channel for demons from me to him, was broken, and he started to recover, and his ministry started to increase again."

"All because of you...", I gasped.

Suszana lowered her eyes in shame. "Yes," she whispered.

"Well, you're together again. What happened?"

I could hardly wait to hear the rest of the story.

"Things started going wrong between me and Steve. He felt an alien in Poland, couldn't get a job, and saw that we were slowly drifting apart. He wanted to go home to the States but I wouldn't. He started taking vacations to Florida more and more regularly.

"And then one day he didn't return. He said that he had found another woman and wanted a divorce. He missed his daughter, though, but knew he would never get custody. I was alone again in Kraków with my two girls. I had been in contact with my eldest daughter sporadically - but she wasn't as interested in having contact with me as I had hoped. My son never wrote to me. Nothing had gone the way I had wanted it to. Stan had waited patiently for fifteen years for me, interceeding on my behalf. Destiny was coming full circle for me and I couldn't escape it. The Lord and Satan were both at my heels - I had no peace. I was getting older and tired. I just gave in.

"So one day I packed a bag and as bold as brass arrived here at Raj. I wasn't completely defeated, though, and I would have one last try to get my own way. It was Satan's last hold on me.

"I arrived at the house and demanded to see my two eldest children. I was angry - really angry. All the hate and bitterness in my soul suddenly welled up within me as I stood outside the house.

"Stan came to the door. 'What can I do for you, Suszana?' Stan had said softly. I demanded my children."

"'I'll go and see if they'll see you,' he replied and went off. Five minutes later he reappeared and said that they did not want to see me. They were looking at me from an upstairs window and had got frightened by the evil powers that had started to manifest in me.

"I started to rage and rant, calling Stan every despicable thing I could think of. I felt the spirit of murder well up in me and I would have killed him had I had a weapon at hand. Stan knew that I was beyond reason and just stood silently.

"Suddenly, he raised his right hand, and with a fiery look in his eyes, shouted: In the Name of Yah'shua the Messiah, I command you to be silent!'

"My tongue went stiff, as though suddenly deep-frozen. I tried to speak but nothing would come out of my mouth.

"'Ye legions of hell, I command you, in the Name of Yah'shua and by the power of His blood, to come out of her!'

"I shrieked at the top of my voice and collapsed onto my suitcase on the ground. The next thing I knew I was in the living room lying on the sofa wrapped in a rug and shivvering with cold. I was sweating profusely. Stan looked over me, a look of seriousness in his eyes.

"'Suszana', he said, 'I cannot prevent the demons I just threw out of you from coming back and taking control of you again unless you renounce your life in the occult and your adultery, and accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour. You have been made free only for a very short time by the grace of Yahweh. You have to choose now or else you will be possessed again and will have to return to Kraków, possibly even more under demonic bondage than you were before.'

"Stan's wives were all in intercessory prayer for me. I sensed that I would not long have a clear mind like I did at that moment. I felt clean, my thoughts were pure and whole, and I could see the bondage I was in. All that remained was my pride.

"'This may be your last chance, Suszana,' he said with a note of eternity in his voice.

"He was deadly serious - I could see that he would accept no argument - just a decision.

"'Just know that we love you and want to take care of you.'

"No strings attached?" I asked. "You won't expect me to sleep with you?"

"'No strings. You do not have to sleep with me but you cannot sleep with anyone else again either. You must be my wife but it is up to you whether you live with me or not. It is up to you to choose.'

"That was all I needed to know. I just needed to be free. 'I'll do it,' I said.

"Stan led me through the Sinner's Prayer and then sent me to shower and to bed. I slept more peacefully that night than at any time before in my life. The next day Stan took me through deliverance as I confessed all my sins and involvement with the occult arts, renouncing them one by one. I had to return to Kraków to my daughters and to settle up my affairs there, selling my house and getting packed up. I moved into Raj a month later. Stan gave me the guest room you're in now."

"So you did live apart then, " I asked curiously.

"Yes, Stan kept his word. He never touched me. We both knew that if we were to have any sort of relationship again that we would have to start fresh. Though I loved him as a dear friend it took me a year to start feeling anything for him romantically or sexually. He gave me all the space I wanted. We were betrothed after thirteen months upon my returning home and were fully married last year. It's been a long rehabilitation but it's been worth it."

I felt happy for Suszana. "How would you say your relationship to Stan is today compared with your first marriage?"

She smiled. "Completely different. Now it's me who's head over heels in love and it's Stan who is growing in love for me. We hurt each other a lot and so the old "us" had to die. I've remarried a new Stan and he's remarried a new me. We're still newly weds, still growing. Though I was Stan's wife before all of the others, I feel the youngest because it's all so new. The Lord has given us a new lease of life. My girls are happy here, Stan accepts them completely, and I've slowly been able to build up a relationship with my eldest two - I had to start all over again with them too."

Suszana seemed to drift off in a distant gaze.

"It's been a long, long journey."

A tear appeared in her eye.

"There was a lot of pain. I never dreamed it would end up like this. I was convinced that Stan and I were finished permanently. But the Holy Spirit has given me a wholly new perspective on everything. We're so blind, so blind..."

She looked up at me, tears trickling down her cheeks, and smiled.

"I hope you marry Stan - I think you two'd really be happy together. We all like you."

I gulped. It was the first time this subject had been brought up. I didn't know what to say but I could see in her eyes that she didn't expect an answer, and I was glad. I just wasn't ready to confide my feelings yet. I'd only been there half a day and yet I was already being swallowed up into the intimacy and deep, deep love of this family.

Isabel put some cutlery away in a drawer. I had been so absorbed by Suszana's tale that I had forgotten her. She smiled at me. Suszana took her hand and they hugged and kissed.

"Isabel means everything to me," Suszana continued. "We were best friends when young and we're even better friends now because we're sister-wives."

Isabel began to cry. She was a sensitive one, easily hurt but also easily moved to tenderness. I could see that there was something special between them.

In the space of a few hours I felt that I had had more crammed into my selfish little heart than in a whole lifetime. There was such depth here that it left one dizzy with both joy and fear - joy because depth is a wonderful thing, but fear because I saw so much shallowness in myself. I wanted to go deeper - wanted to be able to receive and contain this love. I wanted everything I saw. But at the same time I didn't want the wrestle with my fallen nature that such love provoked. I knew a war for my soul was about to start and that I would have to wrestle with supernatural powers to overcome. I both shrank and rallied to the challenge. I wasn't going to pass this opportunity of a lifetime up. I would yield myself to the Lord and let Him lead me - but, oh, did it tax my faith in Him! I had to yield everything up to Him, both my loves and my fears. I felt vulnerable but, oh, so safe at the same time.

Was the spiritual struggle for perfection always filled with such contradictions?