Originally shared August 3, 2008

I love television that makes you think. Well, I love TV period – it’s nearly always on if I am at home. I like the noise of it, even if I’m not paying attention to what is on. But when it makes me think, that’s even better.

Oddly enough, it was a horror show called Fear Itself that got me going this week. Last week I was getting ready to turn off the TV and go to sleep when I got caught up in the show. There was family waiting for their father/brother/husband (he was different things to different people, lest anyone think this was some TV version of “I am my own grandpa”) to come home because he had been lost in the mountains for 10 days. He did return looking frostbitten, emaciated, and extremely creepy. Yeah, that’s all it took. I needed to know how this story was going to end.

Long story short, the man was possessed by an evil spirit that caused him to crave human flesh. Ick. Serious ick. Grady got nastier looking as the show went on (fueling my thoughts of the nightmares sure to come later that night) and the whole thing has stuck in my head for several days now.

Me being me, the extreme over-analyzer of all things, I started thinking about the show and storyline and breaking it down. I wanted to find something more in it other than me losing an hour of precious sleep over some flesh-eating creepy guy.

At one point Grady was telling his wife how cold and tired and hungry he had been trapped in the cave with his friend and that the wind was blowing and a voice telling him to “let me in. All you have to do is eat.” (Like, eat his friend in case you still aren’t following me. Double ick.) Grady was so full of anger and hate – for a couple of plot points that weren’t always clear (and really, think about how anger can cloud your perception of things) – that it was easy for him to succumb to the voice.

I got to thinking about how this man let his anger and hostility and frustration build up inside him. Build so much that it was just waiting there, under the surface, and when he heard that voice saying “just do it”, he was helpless to keep the evil out because the hatred was so strong.

I thought about that more after Pastor Clay’s sermon on self control today. It all tied in there with how this character could not control what was inside him whether it be his emotions or the evil that took him over. He had let things fester for so long that he really had already opened the door to what was happening to him.

I don’t know about y’all, but it’s certainly very hard for this mere mortal to control a lot of what goes on inside me. I have my own personal demons that I fight all the time. I win some and I lose some of those fights, but I try to keep fighting regardless. Sometimes I think it boils down to not lettings things fester inside of us and listening to the RIGHT voices and opening the doors for those and not the wrong ones, like poor Grady did.

For the record, he met his demise, but not before taking a few people out with him. I’d like to think he didn’t know what he was doing and couldn’t be held responsible for his actions because he wasn’t himself anymore. But Grady did make a choice. He opened the wrong door.

Here’s to hoping we all open the right ones this week!