Don’t be Haunted

I almost always like to confess the things I do that make me feel guilty. Guilt is a tough emotion for me and I have found that the only time I can be released of its chains is by confession…but some things-some weird things to most people-are harder for me to confess than others and for whatever reason, admitting to my accounts of the last two days is going to be a doozy for me…so I ask for no judgement in what’s to follow…here it goes…

I watched (I binged watched) the new Netflix Horror series “The Haunting of Hill House”. Some might think that’s a silly confession but for people like me, believers in the Word of God, we know better. We know that any evil…even fake evil…is a flat out invitation for darkness to inch its way into your life…in fact, throughout my life, I have had to systematically work at closing many windows and doors I unknowingly opened that allowed the enemy in… I had to kick out the darkness and shut the demons out many times. So, why then, did I choose to watch this very scary show by myself the last two days? I can’t really answer that…maybe it was Satan, maybe it was the never ending rain, or maybe it was my subconscious in the mood for a challenge-would this be able to actually scare me?

I guess if I’m being completely honest here, more than the need to admit to what I have done, what I have seen, I’m really needing to write this out because I have so many feelings I have to navigate now after watching this show and writing is my best emotional navigating tool. I watched the season finale last night in my bathtub (cringe to all I have to admit in this)…I was in my tub, hiding from my family in my dark bathroom of bubbles and I was totally sobbing. Sobbing. Why in the world was I crying watching this scary as hell show? Ill get to that in a minute but let me just paint the picture here for y’all…the tears were so uncontrollable that Justin walked in and caught me red handed…at that point, he was concerned and asking me what I was possibly watching that would make me so sad and I could not even admit to him what was happening because I was so stupid emotional…which then, the picture of it all, of me trying to hide this from him and being busted because I’m CRYING (what?!?!) made me start doing that laughing/crying ensemble thing that woman do when they’re emotionally drunk and cant tell which way is up…so I’m sitting there in my bathtub sobbing/laughing…basically hysterical and the only thing I could get out was “whats wrong with me?” And we both just busted out laughing even more. 

Here’s the deal…that movie was really dark, and really scary but the whole thing was essentially about family and the unbreakable bond of love…and by the end of this series, all the scary ghosts no longer hold the power of fear over you…by the last episode, I almost felt gullible for being scared all along…I realized, like the characters did, that we give so much power to fear…we let it control our lives and most of the horrors we face are just the walls we have created because we are too scared to face the ghosts of our past. In the spiritual context, the show is all wrong about death and after life and all that jazz but what it does have right is showing the full bondage effect of past trauma and how it can have all the power in your life and why it’s scarier if you ignore it than if you just face it and deal with it. 

Like my reasonings for not usually watching scary movies, I realized that The Haunting of Hill House is the symbolic home to the horrors and heartaches we all face in life and for some sad souls, they never are really ready to say goodbye to those ghosts of the past…they grow callous and hard and the only comfort they can find is in the misery…their pain is their comfort and they build themselves a home for it all. I believe I have always had a sensitivity to other peoples pain because I’m a spiritual “feeler”…I can sometimes know a person for 5 minutes and can feel so much of their burdens they carry by minute 2. Without sounding too insane, I believe I have been aware of others “ghosts” since I was really young and in a way, its made me a better person but its also been a very heavy burden to bare. This stupid scary tv series wrapped up with everyone facing their pasts and it ended up being such a beautiful picture to me because its a reminder that so much of what you see in other people is a result of sealed windows and dead bolted doors…all just scared little kids inside. People in silent pain break my heart, even fake ones apparently, so this scary movie did quite the number on me. When I turned the lights off last night, I wasn’t frozen in fear waiting for a ghost to come through the wall…I sat in the dark and thanked God I had Him, that I knew truth, that I have the knowledge and power to laugh at the devil and his demons have zero power over me. After watching a very frightening tv series for the past two days, I went to bed in the pitch black dark of the night with total peace and tranquillity knowing that Jesus bought my escape from the house of horrors…He went in there for me. 

Others will watch this show and might not see it the way I did, but the ending was so profound (and maybe a little on the corny side) but that’s ok…because those of us who can see past the fear will undoubtedly see that it ends with a much more powerful message of hope and healing than I would have ever expected. Bottom line, its better to face the haunted house than to go on pretending that the scary stories aren’t real because the truth is, you cant really escape the ghosts of your past, they will follow you to the death if you let them, so why not just find your courage and face your fears.