I love me some "Paranormal State" on A&E.
My senior year of high school my Grandma & I rented "The Sixth Sense" & watched it in the basement of her duplex both of us wide eyed & suspense filled as we shared a small bowl of chocolate covered pretzels.
I remember her exclaiming, "He's been dead the whole time!" as the movie wound down to it's climactic finale & I thought I had never enjoyed a movie more!
Since then I've maintained a somewhat untraditional love for all things spooky. I know that born again Christians aren't to entertain any sort of fondness for such things but it isn't as though I fit into the mold for a 'traditional, born again Christian' anyway. lol.
I like being spooked! Which brings me back to "Paranormal State". Basically it's a half hour program that runs in a marathon block on Monday nights. My coworker, Shawana, introduced me to it when we worked together overnight a few months back. I've been a faithful fan ever since.
Many have been the Monday evenings where I've camped out on my loveseat in front of my big screen & watched Ryan (sidebar: see below - yummy!) exploring haunted locales in pursuit of ghosts, goblins, etc.
Basically what I've learned from watching multiple episodes is that scary entities like to make themselves visible for a brief moment & then vanish leaving you standing in a puddle of your own urine wondering what the heck you just saw & if your sanity is intact.
They open doors & slam 'em shut, leave handprints on windows, show up in black & white photographs & really, now that I think about it, do lots of things commonly done by Kate Winslet in "Titanic". Only it's scarier! Yes, even scarier than watching Rose have her portrait drawn.
...all that to say, if you let yourself camp out & watch several documented hours of the previously mentioned Ryan cart his hot little self all over the country chasing these ghosties, you're bound to find yourself in quite the paranoid frame of mind.
I speak from experience as it was only a month ago or so that I finished watching my Monday night block of the show & decided I needed to run to Walmart for some grocery replenishment before going to bed.
I grabbed my car keys, threw on my ball cap, & headed out.
No sooner had I swung the front door open then I heard the bushes to my right rustle noisily.
I jumped & let loose, I'm sure, of a few expletives as I tried to adjust my eyes in the dark & see what had caused the noise. I crossed the front step cautiously & did a few laps around the shrubbery off the front of my doorstep, first at a distance & progressively getting ever closer to it.
I saw nothing. I laughed at myself & chocked it up to having, maybe for once, engaged in too much haunted television.
I returned from my grocery shopping about an hour later & had forgotten about the rustling in the bushes as I unloaded the trunk of my car & gathered up an arm full of groceries. I walked up the sidewalk to my apartment & again a violent shaking in the bushes scared the soup out of me! I dropped the bags & ran leaving a spinning perforated two liter of Dr. Pepper hissing behind me.
What the heck is that??? I thought.
Now determined on channeling my inner 'Ryan' I stooped to retrieve a bottle of spray cheese from one of the nearby dropped bags of groceries. I popped off the cap, & positioned my index finger on the nozzle in preparation to protect myself from whatever refugee from the pit of hell might be lurking in the bush.
I reached out with my free hand and grabbed ahold of one of the center branches & shook the entire shrub viciously, trying to bring to mind any information I had picked up in my time at VBI regarding exorcism all those years back... pretty sure Pastor Sharon would be cool with me attempting to banish demons with aerosol cheese.
The bush responded with several angry shrieks & I hopped straight out of my flip flops shouting "Get behind me Satan!" & spraying the shrub in yellow stringy goo from top to bottom.
I ran around the corner of the building barefoot & eventually summmoned the courage to peek from my hiding place to see what had become of my surrendered foot wear.
I again focused my eyes in the dark & honed in on four little furry creatures licking cheese off my sandals with their little pink tongues.
Feeling suddenly very silly I traipsed over to them, still keeping my distance, & sighed in relief as I began picking up my formerly dropped groceries.
"I'm sorry, " I said, "You must have me confused with my former roommate, David. HE was the cat lover! Me, not so much."
The four little black kittens looked up at me with glowing gold eyes accusingly as they continued to polish off the rest of the spray cheese from the tops of my sandals.
Kinda grossed out by it I let them finish & then watched them run off at lightning speed when I approached to reclaim my shoes. The last thing I needed or wanted were four kittens! I went into my apartment hoping they'd returned to wherever they came from & that I wouldn't see them again or have to worry about taking care of them.
But the next night, when I set down my study materials intent on taking a break, & walked outside to see if I could catch any soldiers from the base out for an evening run, there they were again! ...dashing under the shrubbery as I made my presence known.
I couldn't help but notice they looked very thin & sort of sickly so, against my better judgment I went inside & opened up a can of tuna & dished it onto a paper plate.
I set it down outside & watched from behind my bedroom mini blinds as my little quadrant of demon kitties harnessed the boldness to all congregate on my front step & feast on what I'm sure was some much appreciated Star Kist.
It's funny but as the weeks went by & I kept prepping for my registry exam I found that my nightly trips out to my doorstep to feed the kitties was not only a welcome distraction but a reminder of what I'm on this planet to do... love.
Ever since failing my registry exam the first time last June I've given myself permission to feel down in the dumps rather often. I've felt stupid & at a stalemate... like I serve no purpose & like I have nothing to offer a future mate (which, in the aftermath of having *also* been dumped for someone else in '08 is a very scary thing to feel alongside the already present feelings of inadequacy).
Turns out when you're rejected by not just your peers in your chosen profession but also your boyfriend & your church it's easy to let yourself take on a stance of "Why bother to love"? When love & commitemnt to things routinely yields the result of rejection & hurt the human soul is apt to find it to be a less than worthwhile pastime.
...and as a Christian... when you find yourself unmotivated to love anymore... that's a reality scarier than any tale involving any demon ever crafted.
I think that little band of kitties was a recreation of the Genesis tale, for me, of when Abraham was visited by three angels in Genesis 18.
Abraham, it would seem, possessed the knowledge that first & foremost a dedication to one's God was to be manifested in love, generosity, & care taking. That professed love of God was void without practiced love to his fellowman.
...and not that the object of obeying the command to love is to receive a blessing but as we read, we see that's exactly the result that took place.
Abraham's generosity yielded verbal confirmation from God Himself that that which he had been promised seemingly for a lifetime would soon occur...
That his son, Isaac, would be born & the first in a great chain of descendants would be brought into the world.
Because of a simple act of love God bestowed a blessing that was the beginning of a much anticipated "Happily Ever After".
Perhaps I expect too much out of having taken thirty seconds to open a can of albacore for a band of hungry kittens...
...all I know is that about a week ago I got an email informing me that I had, indeed, passed my exam & that the credential I've spent literally HOURS & HUNDREDS of dollars pursuing over the last two years was now mine.
Laugh at my interpretation if you must but I remember penning these words in my blog this time last year, part confession of faith & part uncertain outcome I hoped to be true... "God intends to do right by me".
In the aftermath of this blessing I think I'm going to be trading in my Monday nights of "Paranormal" marathons in for trying to get involved with a Bible Study hosted by my recently discovered local MCC.
It's time to stop having to wait on a band of kittens show up on my doorstep before I have an opportunity to express love.
That I've actively chosen to omit myself from an environment where showing love for others is a regular part of my life is the real horror story.
"Paranormal" is defined as 'Something outside the ordinary that cannot logically be explained'.
God's been faithful to me even though I haven't felt it worthwhile to be faithful to Him...
If that ain't 'paranormal' I don't know what is.
