Give me a Shot of that Hard Stuff, but make it on the Rocks.

When I was young...heck even now, I had a very specific way I would clean my room.  It was never a simple process of playing pick up, it was long and drawn out and required me to tear everything out of everywhere and reorganize every inch of my room.  This process of cleaning took way longer than my older sister and I was usually stuck cleaning my side of the room for a few days, at least.

Hello adult life, not much has changed.  When speaking about cleaning up the messes in our lives my approach seems very similar.  I must deal with it all.  In this season of life, this very trying and challenging season of life, my painful past life experiences have come up as well.  Some may argue they are related in some right, others would see them as separate issues.  I just see them as the hard stuff piled on top of more hard stuff.  A layered cake of rocks.

The other night I wrote out a portion of my journey that I had buried deep inside myself.  I never ever planned on releasing this part of me.  I felt I had come to terms with it, forgiven, and moved on.  I was golden.  That is until I started writing it.  I wrote specifics never shared with anyone.  The details, which entailed all the senses, came flooding back.  Tearfully, I finished writing.  It wouldn't end there.  After I closed my journal I realized that there were key moments throughout my childhood that pointed back to this moment.  I realized things in my own marriage were marred and damaged because of my 5 year old brain.  It has opened me up to more understanding, but that understanding is not without great pain as I  put pieces of myself back  allow God to work to put me back together.

HE brings our messes into the light and it is only through Him that these messes can be cleaned and organized.

"But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed." Isaiah 53:3

"And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose." Romans 8:28

Facing my Own Reality of Facebook

I have expressed my discontentment for Facebook in a prior post, and I still have something to say about it...I know I know "Can you just drop it already?"  Oh believe me I wish I could, but I am far from jumping off the Facebook bandwagon.

I have to ask myself, if Facebook weren't around would I exist?  Duh, of course I would still be living, breathing, walking, and talking.  But would I be me?  Would I be the person you all know and love.

Would I run?  Would I train for crazy races?  How many mountains would I choose to climb?  What would be my joy in life?  Would I be known for something?  Would I care so much what others thought of me?  Have I just been doing all these things for my page "content."  If I gave it up, what then, would be the content of my life?

I found myself getting to a place where my motivation for doing something was to gain a like or reaction from my cyber buddies.  I used Facebook as my very own brag-book.  It was just subtle enough that I could smack a different name tag on it other than what it is...but let's call it what it is.  It fed my ego and fed my pride.  And I am tired of being defined by an edited and simplified version of myself.  Believe me I am so complicated no wall could contain me and my life.  

Now that I am back in the stone ages with my old school flip phone (that barely holds its charge for more than 5 hours)  My goal of decreasing life online is more easily obtained.  I lack the filters and editing tools to bedazzle my life.  Not to mention you can't really log on to social media with a flip phone, no matter how many times you click it open and shut and say "there's no place like Facebook, there's no place like Facebook." So I am on my way to living Facebook free but I still struggle with the scroll/ scroll/ like dance.  Scrolling, always scrolling.  So many little pieces of other's lives that are viewed by me with too much judgement or not enough compassion.  If we were supposed to be exposed to other's lives like that God would have made highways we could drive on to view them...but still, I think I can scroll faster than I can drive.

I desire for people to know me through more than just a photo.  What my heart say about me is more important than what an invisible wall says about me.  Jump over the walls and get to know people, face to face.  Use it as a tool but not a lifestyle...do you think Mark Zuckerberg would install a timer device that limited how long you could be logged on in a  24 hour period?? is there an app for that?

Facing the Reality of Facebook

Facebook has been a part of my life since my junior or maybe senior year of high school.  This year marks ten years that I have been out of high school so that is about twelve years that I have been in a relationship with this Facebook site.  My commitment to it trumps anything else in my life...besides running, and even that has proven to be an "on-again/off-again" relationship.  It has changed over the years but it is still the basic concept, staying in touch with people.  With the invention of the smartphone Facebook has only grown to be more popular and more accessible.  

These are things you already know, I am not having breakthrough intelligence here that towers above anyone else.  But I am realizing things about myself.  

I am a slave.  I have allowed myself to become codependent on a social media site.  I have allowed others to hurt me by using social media.  I do things because I think it will please the audience.  When did I become so weak?