A heart to heart (sort of) :)

So I've got something to share with you guys; a sort of step I've decided to take. Don't worry, it's nothing crazy, but it's important none the less. How 'bout I start at the very beginning? Ahem.

A little over eighteen years ago, a lovely little girl was born, and the world was forever chang--okay, okay, not the very beginning *chuckle*

Okay. Serious now.

So a little over a year ago, I felt that God was telling me that it was time to clean house; mainly, it was time to get rid of the dozens of books revolving around the occult that were chilling on my bookshelf (along with movies that I would watch). Now, when I say "books revolving around the occult", I'm not referring to books with titles like "10 Steps to Becoming the Perfect Wiccan" or anything like that. No, no, no. These were just your "average" young adult books of today: vampires, witches, and werewolves, oh my. And having worked at a bookstore for a little while, each and every young adult book that caught my eye ended up at home on my bookshelf (after being bought, of course). But before I even started working at that bookstore, I had felt God whispering to me about a particular book that I'd become quite obsessed with in my preteen years; can you guess what it was? Ah, yes, the lovely Twilight. That book was the beginning of my "love" for young adult books that were based around the supernatural.

But this post wasn't meant to be the story of the books...that's just the basis. But alas, the end result of being told to get rid of those books was a snazzy little bonfire. In fact, I promise to put up another post soon, explaining that whole situation in full detail; because I know that not everyone is automatically going to say "that's awesome!", and that there are plenty of people who react to that with "wait, what???". I've even had people get outright angry at me for it...but oh well, later for that, friends. ;)

So, skipping ahead in that story: getting rid of those books was honestly a new beginning in my relationship with Jesus. Maybe 2 or 3 weeks earlier, God had it in His plan for me to be reading the book Crazy Love at the same time that our pastor was giving a series of sermons about Jesus' love. In all honesty, those sermons have been the most powerful that I've ever heard, and they had such an impact on me. The combination of reading that amazing book, hearing those beautiful sermons, and getting rid of the items that had so been hindering me led me down a path to a new kind of relationship with Jesus, one that I never would've expected.

With this new relationship, it would be an understatement to say that I became ultra-sensitive to the forms of entertainment around me (I'm unsure how else to phrase it). If my parents were watching CSI, or some other show that had people being murdered left and right, I had to leave the room. If my mother was watching a spook movie, I had to leave the room. At one point, my older brother brought home a horror movie for my mom to watch, and I ended up spazzing out and crying...it was pretty much a mess. I'm about 98% sure that my family thought I was judging them with my reactions, but in all reality, it wasn't them that I was judging; it was the material playing out on the television in front of them. I was completely, totally disgusted by it. It made me sick to my stomach. It felt like a slap in the face to my Jesus, and I couldn't stand to be around it, I couldn't stand to know that my family was watching it; I could no longer understand why they would want to watch it.

Well, that was me for a few months, before summer came and I lost my routine of reading my Bible and praying every single day...and eventually I started to drift; which is crazy to think about, for me: it was like I had been on a spiritual mountaintop, and as soon as I stopped praying and reading my Bible, I just started to gradually slide down the side of that mountain, until I could hardly remember what it was like to be on top. And for the past few months, while I've been slowly working my way back up, I realize that I've lost quite a significant amount of my sensitivity. As you, my readers, know, I've been watching quite a bit of Criminal Minds lately: a show that made me feel sick a year ago. And of course, I've had the little whispers of "I shouldn't be watching this, it's not good", but I've ignored it, and just gone on watching like, three episodes a day. And then one day, I'm perusing Plugged In (awesome site, btw), and come across their review for Criminal Minds, and the way they describe it just made me feel absolutely...terrible. The review ended with "If families hope to see this swelling of graphic violence and gore decline anytime soon, we will have to do more than just avert our eyes. We need to contact the networks responsible, and tell advertisers that we'll be spending our dollars elsewhere." Ouch. And here I am, recording 5 or 6 episodes a day on my DVR. If that's not a shout from God, as compared to His earlier whispers, I don't know what is.

Thankfully, at this point, Criminal Minds is the only show of its kind that I've really been watching lately; granted, my mother will sometimes watch true crime shows on, and if I'm downstairs I'll watch them with her...Well, no more. For either. Neither does any good for me, especially considering that after beginning to watch stuff like this again, I'm practically terrified to even be downstairs at night, and if I'm out by myself, I'll run to the car and lock the doors as fast as I can. Yeah, I wasn't that spooked by everything before.

Simply the fact that this stuff suddenly doesn't bother me like it used to should be setting off red flags in my head. And for the past few days, it has. So this morning, I deleted all of the Criminal Minds episodes off of my DVR, un-season passed it, and I'm now going back to watching a whole ton of Gilmore Girls and Disney movies. Which are both much more encouraging ;)

Such an amazing verse, and guide for what to spend our thoughts on, eh? :)

PS: if you made it through this whole ginormous post, thank you! And I'm proud of you ;D