I didn't always hate it. I used to participate and as a new mom, really enjoyed dressing my baby boy as the cutest pumpkin ever. But as that boy got bigger, and we added a couple more to the quiver, the costumes in their sizes went from cute pumpkins to vampires and zombies and ghosts and such. We decided very early on that our kids could dress up, but never as anything "evil" or supernatural. They don't fight it too much, as they want to be super heroes or GI Joe anyway. But as the years have continued to pass, I have noticed more and more of what my children are actually exposed to at this time of the year, and it gets me pretty unhappy! I don't allow my kids to eat garbage, right? So why in the world would I allow them to put garbage in their minds??
I hate the thought of my little boys lying awake at night, imagining some demonic monster from a cartoon or their pal's halloween costume lurking in their closet. I know kids will be scared at times anyway, but I will do everything in my power to protect them from unnecessary exposure to things that will make it worse.
Last year, when Eric was gone, I finally came to a point where I had to decide to protect my own mind that way, too. Sleeping alone for a year through a dark, cold winter was not easy. There were many nights where some little noise had me up all night, shaking in fear. I realized that almost everything I imagined could be making that noise was something terrible from some horror movie I had seen. And so I decided that from then on, I was opting out of anything and everything horror or scary or occultish or graphically violent. And I asked God to renew my mind, and clean out the old images that kept me awake at night. Some of them were as old as accidental exposure to Freddy Krueger as a kid!
So anyway, a few minutes ago, I was scrolling through facebook and came across an ad for Paranormal Activity 4. You know, the series of movies about a demon stalking families and killing them? Yeah, that one. I know what it's about because I watched the first 2. Mistake! Talk about scary images to keep you up at night. The ad had the trailer right there so it just took one click to watch it. I thought about it. Just out of curiosity..."what will the stupid premise be this time? It won't bother me, it's been so long since I have seen anything scary, and I really feel like God has cleaned out a lot of the old junk that used to effect me. It's been a good long time since I've been up, afraid at night or had a disturbing image from a movie come to my mind. It will be fine to just watch this preview, right? Just to see...?..."
NOPE! I almost did it, and then I just had this overwhelming sense of "NOPE. PASS. UNNECESSARY, AND DON'T". Maybe it was prompting from the Holy Spirit, protecting me from putting more of that junk into my mind again. Even in just a small dose.
Maybe I sound oversensitive to some, but I don't care. I really think that our culture these days doesn't realize how accepting we have become of watching other people suffer in terrible ways as entertainment. Even if it is fake, it still looks real, and the image becomes a memory that is very hard to get rid of.
So now all my friends know why I suddenly started turning green and running away whenever talk of going to see some new, scary movie came up. Or, at least any of them who might read this... :)
And yeah, Halloween... Boooo!
Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable-if anything is excellent or praiseworthy-think about such things.
Philippians 4:8
