Stirrings and Confessings

I've become aware lately of a restlessness deep in my soul. It's not a dissatisfaction, per-se, but more of an awareness of just how little intentionality there is in my life these days--how incapable I am at concentrating on and committing to certain things or people. I have let myself become bombarded and inundated with frivolity, and I am starting to see what a slippery, dangerous slope I might be on. It's gotten worse and worse, and I know deep down I am being called to do something about it.

I am longing for depth--depth in relationships, in conversations, in my thinking, writing, and spirituality--yet I seem trapped on the surface. Certainly there are some relationships in my life that are way beyond the surface, but in many other areas of my life, I feel as if I have been content to splash around in the shallow end rather than bravely make my way towards deeper water. I find myself comfortable with being so entertained by the inane that when I do have the opportunity to go deeper I shrug it off, thinking "nah, that'll take too much brain power." (I'll read all the random pop culture blogs written by total strangers but when a good friend writes something thought provoking or spiritually stimulating I hit 'delete' and ignore it--too many big words to potentially process.) Since when did I become this person?

I have let myself become assailed by the thoughts, musings, and daily happenings of 637 "friends" of mine on facebook, so much so that when finished perusing everyone's latest status updates I lack the ability to think beyond what I ended up having for dinner (since that was what everyone else posted about). I am so used to popping open my lap top everytime I have two minutes to kill to see what's new in cyber world that I have lost the desire to choose one thing to think about and invest deeply in it. My ability to focus seems to be disappearing. This has become so much more apparent to me now that I'm working. I'm at my computer all day, with the temptation of the internet right at my fingertips. I'm amazed (and disgusted) at how many times a day my hands automatically enter facebook.com in my webbrowser, or how many times a day I visit my google reader account to see if anyone has updated their blog. I'm appalled at how when something happens, my first reaction now is "wow, that would be a great status update, I'll have to remember to enter that when I get home." I've had really really good friends tell me that they are frustrated when they have to resort to facebook status updates to figure out how I am because I haven't called them back or sent them a real email (or even a hand written note--gasp, what an archaic thing!) in awhile. There is nothing about that that is remotely okay! Yet, I've been content to reside here, cramming my brain full of pointless pieces of information while my soul is crying out for something more.

I have been thinking a lot lately about Jesus' model of his friendships--how he had 3 that were his closest, inner circle, then he had the 12 that were an integral part of his life and a crowd of 70 that made up his primary community who traveled with Him. I wanted to see how this would play out. I went on facebook recently and went through my list of 600-something friends to see where people would fall. I made literal lists (you can group and classify your friends) of people: My 3, My 12 and My 70 and started assigning people to them. Here's what was astonishing to me. Out of my 637 "friends," there were a total of 70 people I actually have a relatively real relationship with and a desire to connect with. This includes family members. (It does not include youth group kids, but that's another story...) 70. Out of 637. Yet I spend hours of my life checking up on these 637 people, many of whom I will never see again. And that means I don't spend hours reading, talking to people, being outside, taking walks, cooking, thinking or writing about anything deeply.

I'm not deleting facebook. I know that would be a great solution to this problem, but it is literally the only way many of our youth group kids will communicate with us, and there are people I do connect with regularly that are actually in that group of 70 with whom I'd like to maintain contact. But, I am going to make some changes in how I want to use technology available to me. I want to use the internet to develop more of my writing and thoughts here on my blog, and to actually write to people, real notes, not mass emails to catch a ton of people up on things. It'll be tough, but I want to avoid updating my status all that often--I don't need 600 people knowing what I did today--we've lost a sense of privacy in our culture that I long to regain a bit of. I do still want to read the blogs and thoughts of my friends, but I don't need to be browsing through total stranger's musings. I can't help but wonder, 10 years from now, if we don't start changing some of the ways we communicate with and interact with one another, what will our relationships look like?