Facebook, Friendship and the Trials of Seventh Grade

Her text came through at a moment that I wasn't ready to read it.

"You are isolating yourself again," it read. I glanced at it, ignored it, and moved on with my day. It's a pandemic, for goodness' sake. EVERYONE is isolating him or herself. There's no problem here.

Except, there was. There IS, really.

About two weeks ago, I decided to get the heck off facebook, for the most part. I found that watching people call each other names, watching bullying, watching the extreme ways in which we are willing to be keyboard warriors that shout and rant from the privacy and seclusion of our homes was taking a huge toll on me. Particularly on top of all the uncertainties with the pandemic. It was affecting the way I parent, how I do my job, which thoughts and voices I let set up shop in my head during the day. It was sucking time from my day and energy from my soul. It was distracting, disheartening and, most of all, paralyzing. 

But why? 

As I have slowly detoxed from that world, God has brought something sharply into focus for me: Seventh grade is still a big part of how I do life.

Seventh grade was 30 years ago. I really only remember small details of that period in my life. A lot of what I know about it is what my mom has told me. Apparently I cried. A lot. Probably more in that year than I have total in the 30 years since. I dreaded school.  I isolated myself because the risk of friendship became too painful. I had very few friends and basically none at school.That was the only year of my life where that was true. I have mostly loved school, craved learning. I was mocked for being smart, left to sit alone at lunchtimes. In recent days, I've started to remember how closely I watched the clock on the wall in the cafeteria, begging for free time to finish. It's made me wonder if my inability to sit peacefully in the now, to practice mindfulness and presence, is rooted in that wish for time to hurry up and finish then. I started my struggle with insomnia, a struggle I deal with to this day. I started running to dissipate the anger and sadness, a practice that has served me well, but has also sometimes taken the place of the hard work of lament and healing. 

Mostly, though, in this past week, it has become clear to me that the way I view female friendships, the way I retreat and isolate and keep to myself, is largely a product of that time. I don't trust women. I don't trust that they aren't gossiping. That they don't have nasty things to say behind my back or, honestly, straight to my face. Have I had some truly amazing friendships with women since 7th grade? Absolutely. However, do I assume those women are rare and unusual? I do. Do I avoid all women's ministry events at church? 100%. 

As I think about how I feel after I spend time scrolling or commenting, I recognize that facebook doesn't bring out the best in me. Nor in many of us, if we are honest. It reinforces my assumptions. It tightens and defines the boxes I have built. It allows me to villify and "other" people and it drives me inward. Bottom line, it usually makes me worship and focus on what I can do or say or believe much more clearly than who God is or what He is doing or saying. 

And that's a dangerous place for me to linger. 

Seventh grade still has power. But I don't want it to. I have never really sat down and hashed it out. I've never truly asked God to heal me of those deep wounds. To show me the ways I have let the pain of that year drive my relationships for 30 years now. So while I am grateful to facebook for unearthing how clearly that period still has power, I also know that it's time for a real and true break so I can lot God do the deep work of healing that He is clearly in the business of doing.

If you have been a friend I have pushed away, I truly apologize. If you have been a friend I have othered or vilified, may God reveal that to me so I can ask for forgiveness. If you have been a woman who has pursued me and tried to love me and been met with rejection, please know that I am working on this. I truly am. Part of what God has been showing me during this pandemic is who I truly am, in all the areas that are good and beautiful but also all the areas that still need growth.   

In the meantime, I'm going to sit back and breathe. Journal. Paint. Run. Speak with humans face to face. Stay pretty much off of social media. Garden. Try to find my laughter and smile. Love and serve the heck out of humans on my ambulance. Pursue my husband. Use my punching bag. Pull out the guitar. Have amazing conversations about justice and shalom and grace because those things give me life. And just ask God to heal. To reveal. To redeem. And to infuse my soul with hope that this pandemic WILL one day end and that I will come out of it stronger, kinder and a better friend. 

How Facebook Became God

Click. Read. Like. Scroll. Comment. Repeat.

Simple actions with great power. Power to encourage, power to wound, power given and power taken.

And power, when wielded loosely and unwittingly, can be a terrible thing.

Two weeks ago, I had a frank moment of revelation that life couldn't continue on as it was. I felt exhausted, angry, frustrated and powerless. And I felt it all the time.

I was addicted to clicking on my browser, to watching Facebook load, to seeing the number of notifications pop up in the right corner. To knowing there were things to read, videos to watch, photographs to see, stands to take.

Addicted to the god on my screen.

You see, we can make god a lot of things. It can be the thing we care about the most in our lives, like making money or our families or our belongings. It can be the ideas or opinions we hold dearest, like politics or religion or our philosophy of parenting. It can be what we spend all our time and energy working towards or thinking about, like money, career, even happiness. It can be what we depend on the most for affirmation and identity. And it can be to whom or what we relinquish all our power.

Facebook, my friends, can be a dangerous place. Because on Facebook, all of those possibilities, all of those things we look for in or assign to our god can be found.

And when we give it too much time, we give it exponentially more power. The power to make us feel (though elusively and vaguely) connected. To feel good, to feel right about something and surround ourselves with only people who agree. We give it the power to affirm our identity or to plummet us to a point of despair. We give it the power to control our emotions, our thoughts, even the direction our day might take. We give it the power to keep us mired in what's on screen instead of what surrounds us.

This affects the very core of who we are, who we were created to be.

As a Christian, I believe I am created in the image of God. Made beautiful in his sight, brought into relationship with Him through the life, death and resurrection of His son Jesus and invited into abundant life through His Spirit. A life that is submitted ultimately to the power of God but that lives in the power that He then gives me, power to deal with all that life has, fighting with joy, hope and the knowledge that I am never alone.

When Facebook is god, this all changes. I see the ugly in myself and others more acutely. I feel the pull and destruction of comparison, rather than the deep challenge and joy of honest encouragement in real relationships. I am blown here and there all day long by anger and frustration and petty humor and confusion and the need to be affirmed by "likes" and comments. And it doesn't end when I shut the screen. It translates into real life in quicker cynicism, deeper sadness, chronic distractedness, shorter attention spans and fewer true relationships.

That, my friends, is not abundant life. It is the life of someone who has paid homage to the wrong god.

I have been off of Facebook for a little over a week now. At that point of revelation I knew I had to stop. That all the rage and chaos I was feeling inside was a result of a bad decision I was making over and over and over again in the vain hope of feeling less lonely, more connected, more aware and informed. Every time I opened my computer I was looking for something I really could not possibly find there.

Purpose. Life. Joy. Friendship.

Those first few days I felt lost, almost adrift. Like something had died or been taken away from me. As a stay at home parent, sometimes Facebook was my only means of communicating with other human adults during the day and I missed it. I longed for that feeling of being with people, even though that feeling of connectedness was just an illusion.

Sometimes we are so used to the poor version of something that we will cling to it believing it is full of riches.

I knew, though, from truly worshiping my first love, the God of the Universe, that those were not really riches. So I waited.

And soon things changed. I knew this was a moment straight from God. A gift in the midst of a chaotic season of life to take stock. To pray. To make some decisions. To invite some close friends into prayer and dreaming and hoping for what life can be.

When there was a calm moment of a child playing independently, I cleaned up the kitchen or sat for a moment and prayed for him, instead of quickly trying to get online.

When there was a child waking up from a nap, I didn't feel annoyed or interrupted because I had to shut my computer in the middle of completing a thought on a political post.

When the house was quiet, I pulled out my guitar or my journal or a book. I walked outside and dug in the dirt. Or wrote a letter.

I smiled more.

I made it to the gym and didn't wonder the whole time if there were things I was "missing" in being offline.

I initiated more dance parties around the house.

I spent more time with actual adult human beings.

I said yes to some really, really good things, both in my personal daily rhythms and in my community.

I complained less.

I hoped more.

I began to long for time with Jesus in a way I hadn't in awhile.

And in all of it, I stood up straighter. I felt less burdened, less distracted, more tuned in to what was immediately around me.

Was life perfect? Of course not. It can't be. I had a stomach bug, a toddler was working on molars, life in all its noise and grit went on. But it went on with my head held a little higher. With my hope fastened more surely on God, not Facebook.

Getting off Facebook wasn't a cure-all. It was one step, one big step for me, in saying no to a major, destructive distraction so that I could say yes to the many more beautiful opportunities I was no longer seeing.

And let me make something clear. I don't think it is Facebook's fault. I chose to be on it all the time. I kept turning to it again and again even as I felt myself changing. I gave it the power it held over me.

Some of you are thinking it sounds crazy. That something so silly could not hold so much power.

But let's not kid ourselves...whether it is Facebook or career or romance or any number of things or ideas or people, we all have that innate tendency to look to something or someone to define us, to fulfill us. We search for it in small ways or in big ways, but we are always looking. And the way I see it, life is one long journey in figuring out how to keep my eyes fixed on God, not on the things of this world. One never-ending decision to wake up and choose peace, choose joy, choose hope and love.

To choose God.

And any time I start to choose something else first, all of me suffers. I learned it 30 years ago as a young Christian and again a hundred times since.

Each time it sticks a little longer and grows a little deeper, by the grace of God.

So, I am taking it one sweet, slower, facebook-free, God-seeking moment at a time right now. And loving it.

Hiking in Sneakers

I own a really nice pair of hiking boots. I purchased them 16 years ago for a hiking trip through the Adirondacks with a high school friend. Since then they have been worn very rarely. And for some reason, perhaps because they live at the back of my closet, I forgot to pack them for our trip to the Canadian Rockies.

Entrance to the path

Yesterday I found myself at the bottom of Beehive Mountain at Lake Louise- gazing up at the snow-covered path, down at my sneakers and then into the back of my mind picturing those left behind boots. Dang it.

But avalanche warnings and snowy routes weren't going to stop us from attempting that climb. Sneaker-wearing husband at my side, we slipped and plunged, snow melting on icy ankles, socks soaking through, slowy making our way up the mountain, hikers on their way down pausing just long enough to issue a friendly hello and a cursory glance at our ill-informed footwear.

For the first 15 minutes all I could think about was how on earth we would ever make it back down. It is one thing to claw your way up on icy paths and quite another to slide your way down without plummeting off a lethal embankment.

The only positive thing I can say about my preoccupation with our return trip was that it distracted me from the "how to survive a bear attack" sign that was so helpfully posted at the start of our journey.

The negative things, though? There are many, the biggest of which is this: for 15 solid minutes, I missed my surroundings. Sure, I saw the footsteps I followed, the white of the path. But I missed the life and beauty around me. I was so caught up in the potential of difficulty that I could not enjoy the healthy challenge of the present. It hit me that if I continued in this way then the only thing I would remember about this hike would be my worry about how it would end.

So I stopped. I asked God to take it, to guide us up and down, to suppress my 36 years of needing to have a solution to every potential problem ready in the back of my head, to help me just breathe in and out, to put one step in front of the other and foget that I was hiking in sneakers.

View of Lake Louise from above

Soon I could smell the pine in the air, feel the burn of cold, thin oxygen in my throat. Hear the quiet rustle of the evergreens, glimpse the views of the lake as it receded, all blue ice and blown snow, far below us.

At the top, we emerged at Mirror Lake. Possibly the most quiet, still place I have ever been. Maybe a mirror, miraculously, for my soul in that moment. I sat on a stump, a beautiful squirrel my companion, no fear in his eyes, feasting on a miniature pinecone while I feasted on the view and
silence.

Monsieur Squirrel, my little friend.

If only I could do this more.

I don't mean hike to quite places and have days and days to myself more often, though that would be lovely.

But what if I could let the what-ifs fade away and live right now? I'd leave the house more with my spirited toddler, potential public tantrums and ensuing embarrassment be damned. I'd stay out later with friends, potential fatigue tomorrow not taking away from the joy of good conversation and laughter that my soul needs more than an extra hour of sleep, anyway. I'd just live my life without my brain lost to what new problem or challenge might emerge tomorrow. I imagine I'd feel a lot less tired. A lot less fearful.

It is an illusion that I am ever in control of that return trip, anyway.

This is one of those lessons I have been taught over and over in my life and that still hasn't become a reflex. I am thankful that it only took 15 minutes to pause and reset this time. Maybe it'll be 14 next time and eventually 10 or 5 or 1.

At least for this trip, though, these sneakers will remind me to just live. To walk. To breathe.

And for those wondering, I only fell once on the trip back down, laughed about it and, quite obviously, lived to tell the tale.