Scared is not nearly an accurate description, but terrified just may fit.
Yep. That fits pretty darn good...
I read the vampire comics and the vampire books. Anybody who has ever seen the movie " The Lost Boys" and remember the Frogg brothers will have a pretty accurate picture of me, as a kid.
Even in the summer, sleeping on the second floor with no fan or air conditioning, I slept with a sheet or blanket. My mom would come in sometimes at night, shake me awake and pull off the sweat drenched sheet that was inevitably wrapped around my throat.
I watched every movie with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing made. The house I grew up in, the house I live in now, is surrounded by graveyards. Six cemeteries within less than a mile...
We went thru them often, at night. One time my friends and I brought an old stethoscope with us and layed on one of the two rectangular shaped tombs that had been present forever and then put the stethoscope on the cover, and listened. I heard a heartbeat! After screaming and using all my willpower to control my bowels, I had my friends listen, also. They heard it, too...
None of us stopped to think it was picking up our own heartbeats, because our chests were on the granite slab...
So at 10:00 p.m. on a warm summer night, three kids ran screaming down the hill that leads to my house, past one more cemetery, on the way.
Cemetery road is the name of the street, leading to my house...
I don't know exactly where I picked up this fixation and obsession. I do know that not much else made me afraid, as a kid.
My father came to America from Poland about sixty five years ago, and when I was young, he and my uncles had our family history researched and obtained our historic coat of arms.
Any guesses what it said?
Dweller of the graveyard.
Seriously. You cannot make this stuff up...
My brother Karl, the middle brother who was afraid of nothing, told everyone that we came from a long line of vampire hunters. Its true we had relatives, many,many generations past, that lived in the vacinity of The Carpathian Mountains, but i have absolutely no clue what their hobbies were. All i can say is "Not me"...
I had a big wooden cross on a long leather necklace, hanging on a nail i pounded into the plaster walls lath, by the side of my bed. It was never more than an arms reach away...
I woke up many nights screaming, arm outstretched and cross in my hand...
The scary nights were the ones I awoke screaming, not clutching that cross.
I remembered those nights most, as I tried to go to sleep, nights later, terrified if they came, I would be to slow...
Crazy thoughts in a crazy kids mind...
I still like vampire movies. Usually I don't wake up with sheets wrapped around my neck, anymore. The problem is the new ones rely on way too many special effects and entirely to much gore.
I think what fascinated me most as a child, was that the battle between good and evil seemed so close to even.
Not that evil had anywhere near the power of good, because it never did.
Remember the battle in Salems Lot between Barlow and the Priest? Barlow asked the priest to set down the crucifix and face him with his faith of God to the vampires faith in evil. The priest refused and the crucifix lost its power. The power was the faith that the priest had in it.
As he prepared to feed, Barlow told the priest that if he had set down the crucifix when he was originally asked, that he would have won...
He would have won.
Vampires may not be real, but the lessons taught in their myths often are.
Satan has no power against Jesus. That battle was won before creation, as time holds no relevance to an all Powerful God. Jesus is, was and always has been and always will be...
So Satan was defeated from the beginning, by Jesus's substitutionary death, as time is not part of the equation, and God is not hindered by it...
Any evil cannot stand against the Blood of Jesus, if it's protection is faithfully claimed.
All it takes is one person with perfect faith and no battle exists. Evil is banished.
End of story...
So what it comes down to is that we are all just a little too much like the Priest in Stephen Kings story.
Being imperfect , our faith has limits.
I suppose that is probably how it is supposed to be, because that is exactly how it is...
I will never have perfect faith because God only has one perfect Son...
and it ain't me...
and It ain't you...
An imperfect faith highlights my need for Gods infusion of it, in me.
Because it never really is my faith, it is His, lent or given, in His perfect plan.
I'm glad there is no such thing as vampires.
That is an understatement. A very big understatement...
One of my favorite quotes is that of a five year old boy being asked if he believes in vampires. " No" he replies. " But I'm afraid of them anyway..."
Me, I believe in Satan and I believe in evil.
I know Jesus has defeated them. I have faith in that.
Enough to stand across from Satan?
I do it every day.
Every Christian does.
My results vary....
How about yours?
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