So that rather-weird-not-all-there-crazy lives on in Pokemon. So when I heard they were making a new Pokemon game, I started to get excited. And when you mix crazy and excited, you get psychotic. And the closer it came to the games’ release, the more psychotic I got.
I had pre-ordered the games, understandably, and asked to have them over-night expressed. That meant that the moment I received the delivery email, I would be less than a night away from having the new Pokemon games.
Excitement was rolling inside me like a giant meatball on a pile of spaghetti. It was covered in crazy and unstoppable.
Now, at first, I just checked my email once a day looking for The Email. Then I started checking twice a day. Then every few hours. I got to the point where I was refreshing almost every minute. I’m serious. I would be in the shower and have my phone refreshing for information. I was going crazy. And it only kept getting worse. I started rationalizing new reasons to check for that email.
I’m telling you all this so that you can understand what happened next.
I was sitting peacefully, and I hear God’s voice.
"Don’t play Pokemon when it comes…”
I froze as cold as those people in the movies who get frozen solid.
“What?” I asked God as innocently as I could, like maybe he’d retract that last statement.
"Not when it comes…”
Pokemon was coming in a week.
The God of the Universe had just told me not to play it yet.
God didn’t give me a why. He didn’t even sort of answer.
I just heard murmured, “not yet… not yet…”
Let me tell you. My pscho-cosis was about as stable as a meatball at this point.
For the next few days, I did my best to reason with God. I told him how I’d try to be self-controlled, and I would glorify him with it in some way, and it would be good and fun, and good and fun comes from Him, right?
I was at a loss as to what to do. I was as crazy as an antelope but not so crazy I would disobey the God of the Universe, who loved me and I loved. But I knew once that package came, I couldn’t just throw it in a shelf somewhere and leave it be.
I grumpily came to God and reminded him I’d spent money on this thing, and if I’d bought but just stuffed it on the shelf, it wouldn’t do anybody good! So I might as well give it to someone who could use it!
That was when God reminded me. I had a friend who didn’t have a Gameboy of her own so she couldn’t play Pokemon! But here I had two Gameboys, and a Pokemon game I shouldn’t be playing!
I relented at that point. Oh no, I wasn’t happy or content, but if God was going to do something like that, I would go with him. I figured I’d tell my friend the next day and went to sleep.
When I woke up, I immediately checked my email (I may have relented a bit, but I was still crazy).
And there was not one, but two delivery emails. I had accidentally ordered two Pokemon games!
I understood! God had told me not to play the game when it got here… because there were two games coming! I think the whole reason we’d gone through that was so that he could help me give the game to my friend!
Now, this story gets better. As I played Pokemon, I felt this horrible nagging. Like God was disappointed in me for playing. Like there was something wrong with me playing. Like I didn’t get it and was messing things up by playing.
The nagging taunted me. The more I played, the worse it got. I didn’t know what to do! I would literally curl up in the couch, as if trying to hide from God and the nagging in my pit! I wanted to play! There wasn’t anything wrong with me! I wanted to play!
I started getting angry at God. Still mashing buttons, I would sit there and grumpily mumble at God. “There’s nothing wrong with Pokemon! You said I could play!” I thought maybe I just needed to beef up my self-control and quit playing Pokemon. But what was I supposed to do? I’d purposely gotten rid of all my work so I could just sit on my couch and play Pokemon that week. I didn’t have anything else to do!
I decided maybe reading my Bible would fix the problem. So I got on my bed and read my Bible.
It wasn’t too long before I set it down and realized something.
In my imagination, I came to God.
“What is it, my Child?”
I sighed and my lip fluttered.
“I still feel like there’s something wrong with playing Pokemon. Grown-ups aren’t supposed to play Pokemon. Pretty ladies aren’t supposed to play Pokemon. I know the people around me are mature enough to not judge me for playing Pokemon anymore, so I think… I think I keep condemning myself. I do not think there is anything wrong with Pokemon. In many ways, it’s been really good for me as I’ve grown up, and I like it. But used to, people didn’t like it. They did judge me for it. And I belived, and still believe, there is something wrong inside me for wanting to play. So when you told me not to play, I took it as if you were saying they’d been right all along. It was wrong. I was wrong. You’d just been letting me pitter-patter along in my sin till now. I am sorry for listening to the lies, instead of what you were saying. God, if you do want me to stop playing Pokemon, please, please, please help me take it away!”
God had been so patient listening to my monologue. But when I asked him that, he lifted up the Bible in my hands and showed me the Gameboy on the shelf. He showed that I already had taken it away when I needed to! It was over there, on that shelf!
I teared up at that, I was so amazed that God could give a psychotic self-control!
It was after that that God did something I had never heard of before. He lifted my face up to his so I was looking up at him. He moved a Pokemon hat to his forehead and put it on.
“Let’s go be Pokemon Masters.”
I lit up in excitement! What sort of God would do something like that? What sort of God would do something so dear and silly as to be a Pokemon Master with me?
