Zombies 101

My nephew, Z,  is addicted to video games.  He’s limited to a couple hours a day on the iPad, but during his techno time, forget about distracting him with anything else.  Wanna go swimming? Nope.  Wanna go skydiving?  Nope.  Wanna learn how to rope a bull?  Nope.  Give the kid his video game.

One day we’re riding in the backseat of his mother’s urban assault vehicle, and he’s playing this game that has these caricatures of monster things scooting around the screen as he maneuvers the controls.  Z’s giggling as he sends the monsters into little shack-like icons then back out and around again.  I can decipher nothing else, but the kid is simply cracking himself up. I’m dying to know what’s so funny.

“Z, what are you playing?”

Mind you, he doesn’t look up from the iPad.  “It’s zombies.”

“Oh, uhm, well.”  What does one say to that?  Zombies???? So, instead I reconsider the picture on the screen and decided I am over the moon that the zombies look Herman Munster.  HE’S FIVE!!!!.

I’m a cool aunt – no, really.  I can handle the zombie 5 -year old conversation.  I try again.  “So, what are the little buildings the zombies are going into?”

Still looking at the iPad, “Outhouses.  They go to the bathroom there.”   Of course.  Little boys (big boys, too)  can’t resist that bathroom humor.

So, the coolness factor is slipping here because, I’m sorry, but reason is knocking on the door of this conversation.  I know, I know – it’s a conversation about zombies, reason doesn’t belong,  but please! “Z, if zombies are dead, why do they need to go to the bathroom?”

Eyes steadily affixed on the hand-held screen.  “Zombies eat brains.  You eat brains you got to go to the bathroom.”  His voice is oh-so patient.  Like, duh, Auntie Rachael.

He’s got me there.  You eat, you go to the bath-  Wait!  I’m missing out on a key aspect of this whole conversation.  Time to clear something up.  “Uhm, Z, Little Dude, you do know that zombies aren’t real, right?”  My voice has become VERY adult-serious.

Well, that’s when I knew all my coolness factor was gone.  He whipped his precious little head toward me, stared at me with his gold eyes and said with just the right amount of scorn to let me know how completely ridiculous my question had been, “Uh, Ye-a-ah.”  Three complete syllable. Then very deliberately he turned back to his game and made his zombies eat brains and go to the bathroom.  I think I might have insulted the little guy.

So, sitting next to my Little Dude I almost missed the most basic question for the obfuscations that blocked my view, and I think about how often that happens in my life.  With Z, we were talking about pure phantasmal horrible, awful, terrible, nasty (Did I make my feelings clear about this?) monsters.  But what about the real terrors in our lives?

When circumstances feel overwhelming, do I return to the most basic questions: what do I believe about God?  What do I believe about how He loves me, how He works in my life and His promises?

Tozer said, “What I believe about God is the most important thing about me.”  That belief becomes the foundation for everything else.  It will determine how I interact with the crazy-eyed cable guy, the scary glowering multiple gang-signed tattooed guy in front of me at the supermarket, the grouchy MVD woman who is the only person waiting on 50 people at 4:00 on Friday when my car tags are expired, and  I  HAVE ALREADY PAID ON-LINE, AND THE SYSTEM CAN”T SEEM TO FIND IT!!!!  That belief determines how (if) I forgive myself when I fail at being who I think I should be, what I think I should be – again. That belief becomes the foundation from which I can extend grace because I have been offered it myself, upon which I can build relationships of love because I have been loved, the only reason I can believe that my life has a purpose and a reason to find joy even in moments of intense physical or emotional agony.

Z understood that zombies are not real; what about my monsters both real and imagined?  Do I know at my core –  my very being, that the only thing that has any true significance is that my Creator loves me beyond all reason, forgives me all things, has a purpose for each and every thing that happens in this life?  If I do, then I should be unshakeable when my “zombies” come knocking.