Unplugging

I have always celebrated Lent by letting go of something in order to create space for other things--usually practices or activities that help me connect more with Jesus or people, and every year I am always glad I've chosen whatever it was. One year was TV for my roommate and I--we spent the end of winter reading, hosting dinner parties, knitting while listening to great music, and walking around the neighborhoods in the evening. My freshman year of college I was fully addicted to AOL Instant Messaging. I would often have 4 conversations going at once with various people while attempting to study at the same time. I decided that wasn't all that healthy, and signed off for 6 weeks, focusing instead on my schoolwork and on connecting with people in person. It was a fantastic experience.

For quite awhile now, I have been realizing something has grabbed hold of my life in a way that I am not super proud of--sucking a ridiculous amount of my time and attention away from other, more meaningful things. Yup, confession time, I'm afraid I've become a little addicted to facebook. I honestly can't tell you how many times a day I check it. I don't even realize my fingers are moving the mouse towards the Facebook link in my bookmarks list. I've realized how inundated I've become with information about people I literally haven't seen since childhood--not that I don't care about them, but these are people I literally don't have a relationship with. It's actually sucking time away from me doing things that I truly value--caring for my home, my husband, my soul mate friends, being fully present with people, reading amazing books, hand writing letters etc. I'll have a free 1/2 hour and instead of picking up a book from my growing pile on the bedside table, I surf facebook until it's time to fall asleep. I don't dislike Facebook, I dislike the way I've let it consume so much of my energy. So yesterday, I posted that I'd be signing off for Lent. It's been pretty obvious to me for several weeks now that God's been nudging me this direction, and I can't ignore that any longer. In these next 6 weeks I hope to read a few books. I hope to bake more and give away that which I create. My husband and I are in the midst of talking through some big life choices and transitions, and I'm hoping to spend more time journaling and praying about these changes. I hope to write more on here, give myself space to think more deeply about things that matter to me. Most importantly, I hope to learn to immerse myself in scripture. I'll share more about what that is going to look like in a later post, but a conversation with our associate pastor yesterday reminded me how absolutely essential it is to let scripture fill us.

I'm actually surprised at the number of people who pushed back when I mentioned I was signing off Facebook (and a few others I know who are making this commitment experienced the same thing). I'm not saying Facebook is inherently bad. I'm not saying I love denying myself. I'm not making this choice because it sounds like a "good challenge." I'm signing off because it was so clear as I was praying about what had a strong hold in my life that this was it. This was what God was asking of me because He does want me to live more intentionally with my time. The tradition in Lent is to break one's fast on Sundays--even in the midst of the darkness of Lent, Sundays are still set aside as "mini Resurrection days." One is allowed to celebrate life by partaking of whatever one is fasting from. So yes, I'll still be checking up on some folks Sunday afternoon. I'll be "awwing" over any new photos of any of my nieces that have been posted. I'll be checking for friend's wedding photos or baby photos that I know are coming up. Maybe I will share some thoughts about the things I've been doing with my time since backing away from the computer. I will probably post links to things I've written over the past week and comment on a few youth group kid's pages because those are things I love about Facebook. But then, I'll sign off again, because between now and Easter I hope to come to a place where I re-discover the joy of living life away from a screen.