Becoming Less

"Give up yourself, and you will find your real self....submit with every fiber of your being, and you will find eternal life." - CS Lewis

Growing up I was always a pretty weird kid. I don't say this to insult myself - it doesn't bother me at all, but I do know from a young age I had a very odd fascination with all things morbid. When I was just six years old I remember always asking my Grandmother to drive the way home that took us by the old cemetery, so I could ogle at the huge grave mounds that had been overgrown with weeds and broken headstones from decades of weather and natural misfortune. I can't say it was comforting staring into death this way, but I also can't say it wasn't.

The older I got, this sense of death and morbidity stayed with me. I would draw pictures of ghosts and grave yards (nothing sunny, like rainbows other children might think to draw) and write stories about detectives and murder. I can't remember any Halloween as a kid where I didn't want to dress up as something horrifying, or any year after where the the coming of October wasn't related to the excitement of the season of spooky. Scary costumes may have turned into scary movie marathon nights and listening to Halloween songs on repeat as I matured, but the love of dark things remained in my heart. It blended into my being and became one with my identity - I wholeheartedly accepted these things as more than just a personal preference. I believed they were bred into me. And in one way, they were.

With time this part of my nature weaved itself into every aspect of me - the shows I watched, the books I read, and the music I listened to. I could not part with my love of the darkness, even when I made my return to a relationship with the Lord. In my naivete I assumed he had just "made me this way" and there was nothing here that I needed to repent of. It was harmless, wasn't it? The secular music I listened to moved me, and made me more convinced of God and his existence simply because of its beauty. I could see Him in everything, in every way, and it didn't matter to me if any of the arts, be it literature or music - was actually dedicated to Him by their original creators. To me all things were created because of God. Harmless, right?

But as most of you who have experienced Jesus know, he never leaves you the way he found you. A verse that comes to mind with regards to this is in John 3:30 where John the Baptist states the following:

He must become greater; I must become less (NIV)

Another translation conveys it as:

He must increase; I must decrease (ESV)

At the time John was referring to his own ministry and the concern of his disciples that Jesus was "stealing the spotlight" from him. John responds in wisdom that this has always been his intention - to make clear the path for the Savior. Despite the fact that this passage is clearly attributed to something specific, what I love about God's Word is how it consistently can be found to have more than one meaning. From what John says here we can also glean something more important, something alluding to the work of the Holy Spirit in us as believers.

I have stated before that when I first returned to my faith I really thought I had it nailed down as to what God was going to start working on first in me. I know I'm sinful - so I know there's plenty of stuff there to work with. But I have often found myself surprised that the Lord never tackled first what I thought were the bigger issues - my swearing, my road rage, my impatience. He is more stealth than that, I have realized. Slowly, bit by bit, those parts of me that treasured the macabre, immersed in true crime podcasts and any serial killer documentary I could find, were beginning to die. I didn't notice it much when it first began, but just a few days ago (years after it began) it hit me like a ton of bricks...

All of that stuff no longer interests me. Some of it I find downright sickening. I realized this when I saw a brief trailer of a movie that was being advertised, something dark and sinister, and it peaked my curiosity enough to look it up. I found it and read the whole plot, and it made me sick. I immediately regretted the curiosity that led me there and instead began to ponder what had actually happened to me. Where had I gone? Clearly I don't mean physically but on some soul level, I had disappeared. Poof. I thought back to how often I actually listened to true crime podcasts and I realized it was hardly ever, as was the frequency of true crime documentaries and stories of absolute horror and gore. All of that had been replaced with Jesus, or literature and podcasts about Jesus, or if not just lighter content in general. As some small part of me screamed out that I was dying, this part longing after the badge of weirdness I had so long held onto like an honor, my own, my precious - it occurred to me that this was exactly what I had signed up for.

The times I had fallen to my knees pleading for Jesus to make me more like him - he answered. He dutifully, faithfully and lovingly answered. I had asked for this.

I'll be honest, there was a small portion of me that mourned this loss for just a moment. And I think it's okay to do that when you have associated yourself with something for the majority of your life. But make no mistake, it is a death. And dying to self is what we do, it is the very least we can do, so that we may glorify our Father and the one He sent to save us.

I can think back to the times where I would plan a playlist for road trips with my now dearly departed best friend, Stephanie, and she would say, "Okay but please don't put too much of your weird music on there!"

I can think of that and laugh. Maybe that part of me died when she did. Maybe the Lord, in his mercy, planned it that way. I couldn't tell you. But what I can say is that I haven't lost myself at all. It seems every day I am finding more and more of who I was intended to become.

I am by no means saying that any interest in what I have mentioned above is in itself inherently bad, but sometimes what it does to us isn't good. Our son has (at the household of his other parent) been watching things on YouTube that have been causing nightmares. My husband explained to him the other day that when he does that, all he does is "feed the monster". It occurred to me that for many years, all I did was feed my own monster.

Enter Jesus, who starved it, and that monster is dead. Can't say I'm thrilled by the process and what other monsters must be slayed, but there is no greater comfort than knowing that someone is going to battle on your behalf because they love you. That's not morbid. But it is magic.