Blame-Shift

Early last year, a study at Stanford University showed that Facebook usage leads to depression and misery because of the overwhelming positive bent in other people's status postings. Because Facebook gives everyone the opportunity to personally handcraft their image and post things that reflect favourably on them, while minimizing negatives, the average user often thinks that the lives of others are far more satisfactory than his/her own. Most of the articles on this study have titles such as "Facebook Is Making Us Miserable" or Is Facebook Making Us Sad?". But while I think the study is probably quite accurate, the insinuation that it's Facebook's fault is not.

Facebook can't make you do anything. Granted, there may not yet be a "dislike" button. Granted, Facebook is accessible to any self-glorifying person who wants to use it. But Facebook is an inanimate being. It can't force you to be discontent with your own life because someone else's looks better. And it can't force you to post all things in the most flattering light, either. Facebook is used by people. People can be discontent. People can be deceptive, intentionally or not.

And WE are those people.

Facebook may be a tool that squeezes our hearts, causing sour juice to overflow, but it doesn't put the sour juice into our hearts. It merely reveals what was there to begin with. If we are dissatisfied because our friends seem to be always having fun, because their children say the cutest things and never seem to throw all-day temper tantrums, because they obviously have the ability to make birthday cakes look store-bought, make amazing gifts from scratch, and handle a 30-kid party all in the same day, we shouldn't blame Facebook... or our friends, for that matter. If we are dissatisfied with our lot in life, it is because we don't believe that God loves and cares for us in the best way possible and gives us exactly what we really need. It is because we think we deserve better, when we really deserve far, far worse. If we are struggling with discontentment and misery because of comparison with our friends' Facebook lives, we need to humble ourselves before God, remember what we really deserve, and be grateful that instead, we have received unfathomable mercy at the cross. And instead of being miserable, we need to earnestly seek the Spirit's help and strive to "rejoice with those who rejoice".

But we also need to recognize that WE may be part of the problem of carefully planned Facebook images. I might be tempting my friends to discontentment by the things I choose to post and the way in which I post them. Does my Facebook wall reflect only the best experiences of my life? Do I tend to post things in an overly positive light? I'm not saying we should all go post miserable things on Facebook, or that it is wrong to share your excitement about something with others. But we love the adoration of man, and so it is very easy to post things (and pictures) that make our lives look great, and not very tempting at all to post about how much we feel we're failing in our parenting, or our homemaking, or our job. In fact, when we do post about the bad day, most of us Christians feel a certain pressure to end it with a "But praise the Lord! I'm still happy!" Really? Are we being totally honest? If we are, that's certainly something to praise God for. But if it's been a bad day and I just want to crawl into bed and moan, I shouldn't save face by putting the negative in a falsely positive light. Maybe it would be better to skip the details of the day and just post a good lamenting Psalm longing for God to strengthen me in my weakness. Maybe one of my friends who's also had a bad day will be comforted by the Scripture and encouraged to plead with God for mercy, instead of feeling like they just don't measure up as a Christian undergoing trial.

If, on the other hand, we're posting good news, we need to be careful not to exaggerate, and we also need to beware of pride as a motivation for our posts. Am I just posting this to prove that my life really is great (even if it is), or to somehow compete with my friends' posts? Social media easily becomes a game of one-upmanship, and that's a game we don't want to play!

And of course, the best way to get an accurate view of our friends' lives, and let them have an accurate view of our own, is to spend time with each other in real life situations. Facebook can be used to enhance our friendships, but it is no substitute for the real thing!

Facebook: Tool or Time-Waster?

I love Facebook. I have family and good friends all over the globe, and it is a great tool for staying in touch with them far more often and more easily than I would otherwise be able to. I love being able to see pictures of my friend and her children as they play and grow in far-away Indonesia. I love being able to know what my mom is up to or thinking about across the Atlantic in Germany on a day when I might not normally be able to talk to her. I love hearing news from friends back in Louisville and not being totally out of the loop when we go back to visit. I love having an easy way to interact with local friends about their thoughts or upcoming events. And I love that it's all in one place.

But several months ago, I realized that my Facebook usage was causing me to regularly lose focus on the things I was responsible for in my own home, with the very real people and things in my immediate environment. It's not easy to teach the kids to focus on their schoolwork when Mom is busy taking a momentary break to check her Facebook. And it's not easy to carry on a deep conversation with my husband when I'm also trying to engage with the pithy saying some friend posted on their wall. Try getting the house cleaned up while also making sure to check every 15 minutes if someone's responded to your message. Trust me--it doesn't work too well!

So I had to ask myself: Why am I on Facebook? If Facebook is a tool--and that is what it is!--what am I using it for, and what do I want it to do for me? Am I master over my Facebook, or is it master over me? And then, once I've decided what kind of tool it is, what are practical steps I can take to keep it a useful tool, and not a waste of time? Now your answer to what kind of tool it is may be a bit different from mine, so your practical steps may differ, too. But I'd encourage you to ask yourself those questions and then make a list of ways to keep Facebook as something you are master over, rather then slave to.

I've decided that for me, Facebook is primarily a communication tool to stay in touch with the people I care about, not unlike email, aside from being faster, more public, and having the added bonus of lots of pictures.

So I decided to take a few practical steps to make Facebook do for me what I want it to do:

1) I cut my friends' list down once or twice a year. A few months ago, I had it down to 100 (it has crept up slightly). If Facebook is a tool in my relationships with people I care about, then I want my friends' list to reflect that. I don't need to know what every single person I've known since I was 2 is currently doing. It has little to no lasting value, and I find it makes much less time for the people I'm close to. Yes, I occasionally look up an old friend I've lost touch with (and I have rekindled at least one friendship that way--as in, we actually get together face-to-face sometimes). Yes, I occasionally add someone I've just met, in the hope that I will get to know them better. But I want my Facebook to be about the people I would want to invest time and energy in, even if Facebook didn't exist. So I keep my friends' list fairly short.

2) I am selective about my news feed. There are a few people I want to keep in contact with, and whom I genuinely care about, but whose regular postings are unhelpful. I hide them from my news feed so that I'm not bombarded with these links every time I log in. I do this with people who consistently post critical and/or depressing things, too. It's not that I'm against critiquing things, or being real about trials in your life. I'm not! And when genuine friends mention genuine suffering on their Facebook wall, it helps me know how to pray for them. But it is not helpful to me, or to my view of others, when people use their wall as a great big gripe about the world. It doesn't help me think well of those people. So I hide that stuff. Then I can send them messages or visit their wall when I want to, and not when Facebook wants me to.
For the people I'm closest to, I also ask Facebook to show me more of what they post, and less of the postings of people who are a bit more peripheral, so that my news feed better reflects the amount of investment I would otherwise make in these various relationships. It's most important to me to keep in touch with my family, local church members and a few other dear friends. So just like these are the people I make more time for outside of Facebook, I make more time for them on Facebook.

3) I schedule my Facebook time. I decided a few months ago that as a general rule, I was going to visit Facebook once a day. It's not a legalistic rule--I break it occasionally when I'm having a more leisurely day. But my general routine is to visit Facebook once in the morning, do my commenting and message writing, and then be done with it until the next day. Because honestly, when you only have 100 friends, some of whom don't show up on your news feed, there's not that much to check that can't wait until tomorrow, unless, of course, I am in a running comment or message streak about something that is happening today, in which case, I break my rule. But actually, even when I am responding for the 5th time in a day to a message, I try to keep my news feed visits to one a day. This leaves a lot more time in my computer usage (yes, I try to schedule that, too) for more personal emails, important tasks, and reading blogs that will help me in my walk with God. This also helps keep me from being more attentive to Facebook than I am to my immediate family. And I've found that whereas before I limited my time, when I was away from the computer for a few days I couldn't wait to get back to Facebook, I no longer feel the need to jump right back on after after a couple days away.

Now you may use Facebook more for networking, in which case, having lots of "friends" is probably helpful. And I'm sure there are other legitimate uses where these kind of things would not apply. I'm not saying that if you follow Steps 1, 2 and 3, you'll be doing it the "right" way. This is just how I decided Facebook needed to work for me. And I'd be lying if I said that I was always master of my Facebook time. Part of my incentive to write this down is to help me remember these things. But if you're not sure if you spend too much time facebooking (and especially if you are sure that you spend too much time there!), I'd encourage you to think and pray about what kind of tool Facebook should be for you, and then write down and stick to practical steps that will make it a tool that serves you, rather than hinders you.

Stewarding our Internet Time

Have you ever added up the time in one day that you spend on the internet for non-work purposes? I'll admit that I haven't, either. But my guess is that if I did, it wouldn't always be information I'd like to see written up in public. We live in a culture where popping in and out of the World Wide Web all day long (or even being tied to it all day long) is the norm. When your phone sends you automatic email, Facebook and Twitter updates, and you have non-stop access to Youtube and your favourite websites and blogs (including this one, of course!), it's easy to be in constant communication with the internet. Even if you're a bit of a relic like me and don't have a cell phone with a data package (or even a cell phone), the internet calls you all day long. "Pssst... I'm your inbox. Why don't you give me a quick check in case something new is in?" "Hey there, you haven't checked Facebook in at least 30 minutes... What if some friend has posted some incredible news and you're not in the loop yet?!" "You've worked hard at that job for a good hour. A nice Youtube break will help you rejuvenate!"

Yes, we live in the internet age, and surfing is a way of life.

But is it helping us?

I'm not here to say that the internet is evil, that Facebook is a total waste of time, that Pinterest is completely useless. I am thankful that we have quick access to information and the ability to communicate easily with people who live very far away from us. I am often encouraged, convicted and spurred on to greater faith by blog posts that I read, and I praise God for using the writings of people I would not otherwise have contact with to point me to Him. Being able to answer one of those impossible "why" questions of a 7-year-old is a lot easier with a quick search on Google. But I need to be careful how I use these things, or the drawbacks will quickly outweigh the blessings.

Over the last several months, I've spent a fair bit of time examining and cleaning up my internet usage (though I still have plenty of room for growth!), and was about to blog some of my thoughts on it, but before I had a chance, Carolyn Mahaney and Nicole Whitacre started a series of posts on GirlTalk about examining your internet consumption, so I'd suggest you go read what they have to say in the way of really helpful questions to ask yourself (start at the bottom of the page for the first post and then scroll up to read them in order), and then I'd like to just take a couple posts to mention some practical things I've done or am doing to help steward my web use. And if you have some of your own, I'd love to hear them, too!

Lord of the Fleas

Every year, the week before Easter, our church has a special week devoted to prayer and specific Bible study. Every year, there is spiritual growth in the church as a result of that week. And every year, that week is full of multiple difficulties and trials.

This year was no different. It was the week that the kids were all at each other's throats, with a particularly nasty brand of infighting. It was the week that the schedule did not go as planned (not that this doesn't happen often, but it was particularly noticeable this time). And it was the culmination of the weeks of mystery bugs.

A few weeks before, the weather had warmed up to almost summer temperatures (well, actual summer temperatures for Ontario). The kids were outside a lot, playing in the newly growing grass. And they were getting some bug bites, of which I thought nothing, because I'd seen some mosquitoes out for an early spring rendezvous. But then the weather got colder and rainier and the kids were inside. They were still getting bug bites, and so were we. And as the tallies started ramping up to 10-15 new bites on at least one of us every day, the anxiety started creeping in. My first thought was "fleas", because we have a dog, and because the bites were consistent with flea bites. But I couldn't find evidence of fleas anywhere, and they're usually not too hard to spot. So then we started thinking "bed bugs"... Uggghh! You know that creepy-crawly feeling you get when you think hard enough about little biting bugs? Well, we were feeling it all the time. We searched the beds, the mattresses, the couch... to no avail. There were no visible bugs in the house, and yet "they" were eating us alive.

So by the beginning of the Week of Prayer, as I was writing on anxiety, I was being forced to actively implement the things I was writing about. My prayers went something like this: "Lord, something is eating us, and we can't figure it out, and if it's bed bugs, I don't even want to think about the cost and effort to get rid of them, not to mention the fact that I'll probably have the creepy-crawlies for the rest of my life! Please help me to cast these anxieties on you, knowing that you are the Lord of even the tiniest, unseen bug. And Lord, please give us wisdom to know how to proceed! Please show us what is biting us! And whether you do that or not, you are the God who brought the gnats and flies in to Egypt and back out again, so you are able to command these mystery bugs to move out. I fully believe you are able to cast them out of this house, but if it takes me lots of work and money, help me to be content in your sovereign care for me."

By mid week, I was starting to feel desperate. I mean, anxiety is hard enough to deal with when you know all the variables and they're just beyond your control. But it's far more difficult when you are not in control AND you have no idea what is going on. And yet, even then, we must fight to cast those anxieties on the one who IS in control and knows perfectly well what is going on, and what the outcome will be.

Now I know that God does not always answer our prayers in the way that we would like, or in the way we deem best. And in those cases, He still has our best in view, and knows we need something other than we have asked for. But I am writing this blog post because sometimes He does answer our prayers swiftly and just as we have asked, in ways so clear that it cannot be coincidence and must be the work of our caring and powerful Father, and I am so compelled to greater faith in His mighty care for us, even in the small things, that it must be shared.

On Wednesday morning, I was so tired of the itching and the kids' complaining and the uncertainty of the source of all this that my prayer was simply, "Lord, show us the bugs and/or march every last one of them out of this house and far away! Just order them to go!" And I believed He could do it, but I admit that I was expecting to be taught some patience and hard work instead.

Well, Wednesday afternoon, as I was doing the laundry, I noticed that the dog's bed was significantly dirtier than it had been the previous day, so I figured I should throw it in the wash. Now I had checked the bedding several times before and seen nothing, but as I lifted the blankets out... yep, there they were - those dirty little creatures, jumping around all over the place. And while many people might be horrified at the sight of a bunch of fleas making a home in the dog bed, I was actually relieved to see them. Mystery solved! And I was ready to take anything easier to deal with than bed bugs. So we did a bunch of laundry and vacuuming, and quarantined the dog outside because right at that moment, we didn't feel up to dealing with a bath, and didn't have the necessary supplies on hand anyway.

Since the weather was reasonably nice, she ended up staying outside for a couple days before we got around to bathing her. But we finally decided we'd better just get it done. So we brought her back in and soaped her up and then ran her coat through with a flea comb, expecting from the number of bugs we'd found in her bed that she'd be horribly infested. But we did not find a single one. Or a single egg. She was completely free of any sign of fleas. And from that weekend on, the bites stopped. I was fairly diligent about the laundry and vacuuming for another week or so, but even that dropped back to its normal schedule, and they haven't returned. And I have no explanation for it other than that God commanded those bugs to leave, and out they went.

So I just want to testify to the fact that God is in control even of the movements and lives of tiny, annoying, biting bugs, and that He cares not only for our major life decisions and great crises, but also for just how long a bunch of relatively insignificant and certainly invisible fleas will be allowed to bother your family. He is also fully able to answer prayers for miracles with the miraculous. So may we be spurred on to pray more often, with more faith, even about more insignificant things.

The Gift of Weakness

Well, I'm still here. May is normally a busy month in our house, but this year's May takes the cake! There was little time for pondering, and even less time for writing. But God was kind to sustain us through the busyness, and now we're in to June, with the 2011-12 school year behind us and a calendar that is (currently) relatively clear, so I hope to be able to spend a lot more time reading and writing (and cleaning and organizing and planning activities to help keep the kids occupied).

Due to various issues related to busy schedules, health problems and parenting troubles, I've been thinking quite a bit this past year about weakness and how to count it all joy. This morning, I was rereading a bit of Give Them Grace by Elyse Fitzpatrick. (If you are a parent and haven't read it, I highly encourage you to put it on your summer reading list - I've found it very helpful, not only for relating to my kids, but also for my own understanding of how the Gospel relates to my practical daily life.) Here is her challenge from 2 Corinthians 12:

"Paul understood that personal success and strength were barriers to his experience of God's grace. God's sustaining power is seen and developed in our weakness and failure. It is never developed anywhere else. The power of Christ flows through parents who boast in and embrace their personal weakness, not on those who think they don't need it. Of course, every one of us will quickly confess that we know we need the power of Christ. Yes, yes, of course we do. But the veracity of our confident confession will be tested in our response to our weakness and failure and to the weakness, failure and sin of our children. Do we see these trials as God's gift to us? Do we see our children's struggles as our Saviour approaching us in love to make his grace strong in our lives? Do we believe that we must have this kind of humiliation so that Christ's grace will flow through us to our family? Do we really want his grace that much? Do we really want to glorify him?"