I am afraid of puppets.
Not the big, soft, fuzzy ones like the Muppets or the Avenue Q puppets or the more dollike ventriloquism dummies like Jeff Dunham's handiwork. I'm talking about Marionettes. The puppet scene from Sound of Music has always given me cold chills. In recent years, it has progressed to the point that I flinch away from the mere sight of a marionette. This last Halloween, I walked into a costume shop without paying attention where I was going (let this be a lesson to everyone, texting while doing anything else never pays off. It's evil. God doesn't like it.) and nearly ran smack into a six foot tall corpse marionette. The panic attack that ensued was of titanic proportions. Luckily, I think that particular chain of transient, here-today-gone-tomorrow, disposable Halloween store has trained technicians standing by with Ativan syringes and paper breathing bags ready to pounce.
Now, if it had been moving, I would have had to either leave the store, or avoid eye contact with that section somehow. As it was, the sight of the monstrosity was so hideous that I had to take a picture of it on my phone and send it to my Jen. 'Cause sometimes, the Nasty just has to be shared.
So it's not so much the appearance of the marionettes that is so frightening to me. It's the strings, the pulling motion, the fact that it's a dead thing being controlled by someone else. It looks like a corpse being animated by some sicko in a horror flick.
Now that you've got that little image running around in your head and may never be able to watch a puppet show again, let me explain why I'm writing this. While I was getting ready for work this morning I had the song "Boy on a String" by Jars of Clay rolling through my head. It was one of those mornings where I felt pulled in every direction, and the feeling continued for most of the day. As I looked in the mirror, putting on makeup, I noticed that I looked rather pale except for my blush, and I thought to myself, "Man. I even look like a marionette. I'm ready to go onstage and get yanked around by a dozen different strings."
We all have those days. I have them a lot less frequently than I used to, thank God. Some of us are worse about letting ourselves get manipulated. Some of us simply want to help and wind up running in a thousand different directions.
But there's a different, more sinister kind of manipulation that can happen in people's lives. Those strings can be tied around the world's fingers or around the cruel fingers of Satan, which are really one and the same, since he manages the joint until Last Call. He plays us expertly, tugging us in so many different directions we can't possibly stand or walk or run or do any of the things we were designed to do. Our joints ache from being twisted into ridiculous poses for his entertainment and there's not a thing we can do about it because we're dead. A dead thing can't fight. A dead thing can't resist. A dead thing just lies there until the string pulls it. A dead thing is at the puppeteer's mercy, or lack thereof.
Then Christ comes, and like the valley of dry bones we have life breathed into us. The strings are cut, and we spring to life. We jump, we dance, we walk, we LIVE.
But Satan is Satan, and always will be, and damned if he doesn't grab the ends of those strings again and start to pull.
Here's the thing: We're not dead any more. He might jerk us around a little. He might even cut our feet out from under us from time to time. But we're not some dead thing any more. We don't have to just lie there. But too often we do. Just because you're in an ocean doesn't make you a fish. Just because you're on the ground doesn't make you dead. GET UP! Fight! Christ came to give us life more abundant, and Satan is trying to take it from us at every turn, but our job is to FIGHT.
I know there's a recurring, broken record theme in this blog: "Don't forget you're free. Stop acting like you're still in captivity." But I get so frustrated with myself. So often I find myself living in the doghouse when I should be acting like a princess. And I get tired and lazy and I don't want to work at it any more.
The solution?
GET UP! FIGHT!
Also, B12 shots help.
"Look at the crowd bleeding with laughter
Over the way you entertain at beck and call
They don't see behind the lights
Or the painted background
They just like to see you fall
You don't really mind
And you're just wasting time
You don't feel anything
You're a boy on a string."
"Boy on a String", Jars of Clay
