Withdrawal Symptoms

I've given up my Facebook iPhone App. And it's a lot harder than I thought.

To explain. I am participating in another awesome Beth Moore study with my friends at church - Daniel. In the first session, she encourages us to give up something (like "rich meats") for the duration of the study and in extreme Daniel style (see Daniel 1), in order to separate ourselves from the Babylonian mentality around us.

I struggled with this suggestion because
(a) what in the world are "rich meats"? does Oscar Mayer Cracked Pepper Smoked Turkey deli meat fall in that category? I mean, that's as close to delicacy as we get in this house these days...
and (b) I am not only nursing but also working really hard to cook for two boys, so any restrictions on diet (other than actual dieting) are just more than I can handle at the moment.

Soooo, I was relieved when, in Session Two, Beth elaborates on what we might give up for the study: anything that connects us to our culture and its self-serving values. She explains that one of her office staff decided to give up wearing jewelry, for instance. (When all my jewelry was stolen a few days later, I was tempted to follow that example... but perhaps that was missing the point?)

After some thought and prayer, I finally decided that I needed to give up something on my iPhone. I realized that in my rather cocooned lifestyle of a stay-at-home mom, I am pretty good at staying an arm's length away (at least) from the world. Heck, I don't even recognize the titles of any of the movies in theaters anymore! (How do you miss out on stuff like that? I'll tell you how: don't get cable, and then get your TV stolen. Oh, and breastfeed a baby so that you can't go to the movies on dates, either.)

But before you start feeling too sorry for me, rest assured that I am not exactly suffering solitary confinement.... because, you know, anything I want, well, there's an App for that....

And once I started thinking about it, I realized that I spent an awful lot of time thumbing around on my iPhone - an awful lot of time that could, at the very least, be spent admiring the sunlight streaming in the windows - and at the very best, be spent interacting with those precious kiddos who grow up way too fast already!

So I considered getting rid of my data plan altogether. And I'd love to give a list of very logical reasons why I decided not to do that, but the truth is I chickened out. I'm just not ready to have to have a computer around every time I want to check email... Anyway, the next best option, I figured, was to get rid of every App that tended to "suck me in." Solitaire. Sudoku. Crosswords. And yes, Facebook.

And it's working! Now, when I pick up my phone to check it every 15 minutes (still can't quite break that habit), it takes me less than a few seconds to see that there's no new mail or messages and put it down again. Occasionally, I do check my Yahoo! News app, but that's always so boring that I'm never it in long. (You'd be amazed by my sudden expertise on current events over the last few weeks, though!)

I still have my Facebook account, but I can only check it when I have time to sit in front of the computer. Which happened today. And that's what I really wanted to tell you in this long, drawn-out explanation. Because now I've spent some time catching up on all that I missed in the Facebook world, and in spite of the fact that I'm really just a Facebook "lurker" and only post my own stuff every other full moon, I missed a lot over just a few days. And I am really tempted now to put it back on my phone so that doesn't happen again. At the very least, I'm starting to think in terms of when I can start using it again, after this study...

Isn't that just ridiculous?? I mean, really?!? Why is this so important? Lots of people - yes, even those living in the world right now at this very moment - have functioned quite well without a Facebook app for their iPhones.... why does it seem so hard for me now? And how scary is that? Oh, the implications...

Well, I don't have any answers, folks. Hopefully, over the course of this Bible study, something will connect for me about this issue. Maybe I'll have an epiphany about this topic - and about what it really means for me (and maybe you?), spiritually, to let something like Facebook set up permanent camp in our lives. I've never been one to speak Doomsdays over technology, and I don't believe it's as simple as saying that Facebook is from the Devil. (It probably isn't.) But my prayer is that the Lord will help me sort out the issue for myself - whether it's a basic matter of something that steals me away from my kids and my husband and my God (as I initially believed), or perhaps a matter much more complex.

P.S. Please leave your thoughts, if you have any! And I know you do...