A zombie just bit you. What are you going to do about it?

THE EXTENT OF MY ZOMBIE KNOWLEDGE

I can hardly believe that I’ve sat through three “Walking Dead” episodes, but I have. So like, okay, I think that the acting is pretty good, and that it’s a pretty quality-made show. But reflecting back upon those three episodes I’ve seen, I honestly can’t tell the difference between any of them. Nothing about any one of them stands out from the other two. All I remember is that each one went kind of like this:

Oh hi, we’re all hanging out at the secluded house in the countryside that’s the only safe place left in this rampant zombie apocalypse…

Oh hi, oh wait, there’s still something we really, really need in order to survive, but that something is back at the town, and the town is simply crawling with walkers, and I don’t know if we stand a chance, but we’ve just GOT to get that something that’s back at the town… We will just have to sacrifice… Do you have a gun? I have a gun.

Oh hi, there’s the forest that separates our safehouse from the town. The forest is the only way there… There may also be walkers in there… But in the name of Survival, by George!

{Tip-toeing through the woods... And then…} GAAAAHHHHHHH HELP MEEEEE!!!!! A WALKER IS TRYING TO EEEEAAAT MEEEE!!!!!!!

{BANG!} Okay, zombie’s dead. All is well. Let’s keep moving towards the town. Oh look, here we are, and there’s the building wherein our means for prolonged survival lies. Oh wait, GAAAAHHH there’s more zombies! All over this gosh darn place! HOW DO WE GET PAST THEM!?!?

And then somehow they just keep getting past the swarms of walkers, and keep making it back to the safehouse in safety. I don’t remember much of anything else that was happening in those episodes. There’s drama. Love triangles, of course. And a little kid went missing maybe, and the adults discovered that the kid had meandered into the woods, and I think they saved the kid from another wandering zombie… Surprise.

So yes, I’ve watched three episodes of “Walking Dead.” (Probably about two years ago or so. Have never watched another episode since, and I don’t particularly plan to resume anytime soon.)

I still don’t know very much about zombies. All I know is that folklore describes them as undead maneaters, and if I’m not mistaken, whomever they bite into becomes yet another cannibalistic zombie, and that’s how the zombie population grows. I don’t know, that’s just what I’ve been hearing all my life.

GITTIN’ BIT

As far as I’m aware, zombies aren’t real, in any known terrestrial place. There are no “walkers,” “runners,” or “stalkers” roaming around for the sole purpose of feeding on human flesh. But…there are imperfect citizens of Planet Earth everywhere. This nearly-numberless number of citizens includes me, you, and everybody. We’re imperfect because, well, we tend to “bite” others and ourselves in a different, more figurative way than the mythological biters do.

What do I mean by “bite”? I shall explain with a story, but please allow me to preface it with the statement that I will not be asking for any amount of sympathy here; for the type of “bite” I’m about to talk about is the type of bite that everyone gets. These bites happen to all. My only intent is to paint out my sincere thoughts to you:

Once upon a recent time, in a land not far away, a person came up to me and said-&-did something deliberately-&-directly at me which I’m sure wasn’t intended to be hurtful, but it was just so swift and sharp and unexpected that it stung quite a lot. It caused a wound to form in my spiritual and emotional flesh, and it kind of was just gaping open for a while. Not for a super long while, but just barely long enough for me to take notice that a trace of a grudge was possibly starting to take shape. I didn’t want one take shape and make a home in me. Grudges are Grodo Baggins.

I was trying to make the best of my situation. My methods of battling a potential grudge evolution included me testing out a little experiment on myself. You see, oftentimes, if ever some adversity is bothering me or getting on my nerves or whatever . . . well . . . okay, I’m a woman, right? Women gots ta talk with each other about stuff! J Talking out problems is generally a very healthy thing for the soul. But for this particular situation at-hand? I thought I’d try something different – just to see what would happen.

I kept it all in my own heart and in my own mind. A short timespan passed and I found myself sitting in church on a Sunday. I was still feeling sort of shaken; nevertheless, I was really glad to be there. For me, church is commonly a place that has a lot of comfort and edification to offer – it’s just the nature of the building and the spirit that resides therein. This time, especially, due to this weird, rare-ish condition I was in, I found the environment to be exceptionally soothing and uplifting.

I sat there among the congregation, kind of hoping that church would doctor me up. I tried to be as reverent as can be. I tried to keep my mind on Jesus and Heavenly Father, instead of on what was bugging me. Then something happened that, to me, seemed to be a small yet concrete miracle. There came a very specific nanosecond during the meeting that altered me. It was a tiny change, but a noticeable one. What I’d compare it to is the scene where you’re standing outside on a cloudy day, and your skin feels the cold and itty-bitty initial droplet which you know has just arrived from the sky. A tiny yet noticeable change, and it feels quite nice.

What was the change felt in church? Do you have the clue that leads you to believe that I suddenly felt a lot more at peace with the bothersome thing? Because that’s exactly right. Calmness commenced its kindly kicking of shakenness in the pants in the gentle yet effective way that it does.

ZOMBIES THAT ACTUALLY HAVE AGENCY

Before I write any more, I want to clarify something that may need clarification, which is: even though the possible-bitterness-that-was-possibly-growing-like-moldy-moss-on-my-heart was instantaneously transfigured into serenity, during that one miraculous nanosecond in church, it doesn’t mean that my wound wasn’t there anymore. The incident that had happened still had happened.

But let me tell you about another event that took place in that nanosecond in church: a Venn diagram, which abruptly exploded in my brain . . . about . . . zombies. HELLO, I hadn’t extensively thought about zombies since I watched those “Walking Dead” episodes two years ago! WHY would the guardian dam of my mind suddenly involuntarily burst as to permit zombie imaginings to enter NOW? In CHURCH, of all places!? But, it was what it was. I decided to run with it.

Here’s kind of what the mental Venn diagram looked like:

When you get a bump, bruise, scrape, dog bite, bee sting, broken bone, concussion, or paper cut, it’s a pain that is nonfictional and there. Typically you cannot pull an “I Dream of Jeannie” Jeannie and straightaway blink it away. The same goes for the instance when somebody hurts your feelings. It’s okay for your feelings to still feel hurt even when you’re wishing that they’d quit feeling hurt. It’s a pain that is just there.

One natural reaction, whenever someone does hurt your feelings, is to do something to defend yourself. And sometimes the defense ends up being impulsively hostile. Your reflex may be to “fight back” by jabbing with an unkind word or two or three, or to go forward in gossiping about that person to other folks you know. My train of thought includes the following psychological theory:

One reason why people sometimes automatically respond defensively to incoming emotional jabs is because, for some reason, they think a fast-turnaround reciprocated jab will somehow help deplete whatever painful jab they got.

But my train of thought also includes the notion that this is how a zombie would handle getting its feelings hurt, should it ever, for any strange reason, have any other feelings besides feeling the neeeeed for feeeeed. And – let’s be brutally honest here – who of us would ever actually strongly desire to live the life (or the unlife) of a zombie? We weren’t born to be that! We were born to be strong, bright, beautiful, kind, and good! (And to utilize the Oxford comma!)

Interestingly enough, my “outstanding nanosecond” in church also comprised of a number of high-speed reflections of my (and your) Savior, Jesus Christ, who is the perfect epitome of goodness and greatness. I found it funny and strange how just a brief second or two could be so quickly filled with not one, but several memories of wonderful stories that I know about Him.

I thought about the little “secrets o’ life” that He exemplified in His mortality – of how not to act like a zombie would, when faced with adversity. I know that there were a lot of people who loved Him, but there also were plenty of people who didn’t love Him, and persecuted Him. There were people who willingly held active roles in the plan to scourge and crucify Him.

There was that one time, when He was being seized in the heat of what must have been an intensely critical moment – a moment in which I think any other person would’ve been far too stressed, scared, and agitated to even begin thinking about looking for ways to lovingly serve someone else – and He saw that the literal, actual ear of a member of His adversary’s team had been sliced clean off by a sword, and He took the time to show compassion to the soldier whose ear it was, and heal him. How impressive that is. I love to think of how precious of a moment that probably was, for the soldier and for Jesus.

My hope, from this point in my life and onward, is that I will always strive to choose to do what my Savior would do, and not what a zombie would do, whenever such a choice is to be made.

Whenever my feelings get hurt, I want to stay positive, kind, and perceptive to the amazing love that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ truly do have for me. Whenever I realize that I have hurt someone else’s feelings, I want to be able to have the courage and strength to seek forgiveness, and I want to be able to use Christ’s atonement to improve. When the time comes to forgive, I want to follow the Exemplar’s example. Whenever my heart becomes troubled, I want to have faith.

(………and it came to pass that this has turned out to be a pretty…um…elongated piece of documentation. J But I wanted to write it out, and I want to keep it on-hand if ever there comes a time when I’d do well to look back and read it.)

(If you have achieved the accomplishment of reading this entire thing, congratulations to you!)