A Facebook Fast

I chose to write this on here as a reminder to me for the future:

This morning, I woke up with an ear infection: praise God! And no, this is not sarcasm, I am truly thankful for it. Why you ask?

Well, when I woke up this morning, I started doing my regular stuff for the day, checking Facebook, getting breakfast, the usual. I had a full day planned ahead, and was looking forward to every minute of it. I was getting ready to go out in the morning with my Mom, mainly to do shopping for Father's Day AND for Life Action. However, I suddenly started to feel something wrong with my left ear. At first, I just tried to brush it off, but as we started to go from store to store, the "something wrong" turned into genuine pain in my ear. It became so bad that me and Mom decided to stop the errands and go home to see if we could clean out my ears. Normally cleaning my ears out helps them to feel better, but when we were done, nothing had come out, so we were sure it wasn't any kind of blockage. Rats, well that didn't work at all. So we decided to call the Doctor's office and try to get an appointment. Now for those of you who don't know me very well, I NEVER go to the Doctor's Office or take any kind of medication, so hopefully that puts this trip into perspective of how bad this was hurting. After we made the appointment, I decided that it would be best to call off all of my "activities" for the weekend. And that realllly hurt. I was really looking forward to seeing good friends again, having fun, and just enjoying the weekend. Why did God allow this to suddenly happen?

Well, as I sat at home, I was cruising around on Facebook, trying to figure out something to do, when a storm started to roll through the area. A basic lightning storm, but just to be on the safe side, I went ahead and unplugged our internet to keep it safe. So....now what do I do? I found myself sitting on my dad's truck's tail gate, just kind of looking out at the rain pouring down from my garage. It's these kinds of times that I value the most; quiet, alone time when I can just sit there and think. As I sat there, I thought about how nice it was to not have any technology on me. And then, it just kind of hit me. When was the last time I had a quiet time with no cell phone, ipod, tv, something around me that connected me to the outside? It seems so simple and yet in today's techno filled world, it is hard to get away from it. I decided to take advantage of this time and have my quiet time later in the day, and it was some of the sweetest, simplest time with God I have had in a long while. All because I kept myself away from technology.

As I read through Proverbs, I started to realize that Facebook specifically had become an idol to me, nothing more than Golden Calf in my life. I spend a lot of pointless time on Facebook that I could be using for reading, learning music, and preparing my self spiritually for the upcoming year. With that in mind, I am going to be taking a Facebook fast for this week. I feel that I need to take this week to get a grip on my Facebooking. With all that being said, I won't be on Facebook this week, instead I'll be using the time a bit more....wisely :)