Hey friend. Hope you're well. Interesting journal. I am curious as to why your family thought roller derby was forbidden to watch. ❤️ I can see how wrestling can be considered violent (despite the violence being staged, but fun to watch anyways) as well as occasional demonic imagery (Mark "The Undertaker" Calaway prior to his being saved being an example). I mean no disrespect, by the way. 😊 I'm simply asking in earnest.

I understand. Back in the day, roller derby was all fabricated, just as wrestling was and is, and being a kid back then, I had no idea it was faked. I would've believed everything I saw was real. Plus, I had a bad habit of repeating things, and there was always a chance people were spewing profanity all over the place. Plus, Mom and Dad didn't want me imitating the behaviors of those people.

If you want examples of the fake roller derby I am taking about, go to YouTube and type in the search bar RollerGames, or RollerJam.

Having said that, it pleases me to hear that even these people are giving their lives to Jesus Christ and improving for the better. I knew Shawn Michaels (the Heartbreak Kid) had given his life to Jesus, and if Wikipedia is telling the truth, Hulk Hogan was a believer as well. I just didn't know Undertaker was also on that list until you mentioned it.

Does that help?

That definitely does. It's awesome when people give their life to Christ, and I'm glad to have told you the Undertaker did. And funny enough to say, foul language didn't cross my mind. Unfortunately, that's my "pet sin". I don't mean to say bad language. It just pops out when frustrated despite me trying to turn away from it.

Your parents sound like good parents, I must say. ❤️

They are indeed; I am grateful to God every day that I have the mother and father that He gave me. As for the bad language, nobody's perfect; even I have said some of those words sometimes without paying attention to what came out of my mouth, as well as use the full phrase abbreviated OMG. (I even said OMG over the drive-thru speaker once when I worked fast food, but as it turns out, nobody noticed; everybody was concentrating on the two teenagers on the other end, who kept asking me the same questions over and over just to test my patience, because to them, it was comedy gold. Eventually the man in the car behind them got out of his car and started yelling at them, and even told them to give him their phone number so he could call their parents to report them. And they did, and he did. In the end, all they ordered was a large soft drink.) Some of my co-workers at all the jobs I've had struggle with the same thing you do; though they are firm believers in Jesus Christ and practice and meditate on His word, sometimes the swearing still happens.

I don't think it helps that in the case of the pro wrestling in the 90s, the WWF (now WWE) was doing so many things that the historians of wrestling now call "the Attitude Era" (with a heavy emphasis on graphic violence and adult-oriented content, so naturally the Undertaker was an appropriate character for that). Its chief competitor, WCW (World Championship Wrestling), wasn't any better, really. Then you had ECW (Extreme Championship Wrestling), which was hardcore wrestling; that's the worst kind! (I only know these things because the program that aired right before RollerJam was ECW.)

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Long story short, the less overall people know about everything, the better off they are, and I had to learn some hard lessons about "garbage in, garbage out" (part of that being me giving into temptation and looking at some of this stuff in my adult years, although I will never watch ECW, for example; that's going too far) but ultimately, everything turned out for the better. God is so good!

God really is good. Today was a bit of a struggle and still is. I'm currently in recovery right now. I DMed you a bit more detail about it, my friend.

I appreciate that. I think the private notes is a better place to talk about things like that, actually. Sometimes, though, the journals like this one help me get stuff off my chest.