when there is just too much noise

A friend of mine recently posted on facebook, something to this meaning,

"don't let Satan trick you into thinking that being on facebook is actually doing something!"

I was challenged to reject my obvious laziness.

And then the next day on twitter,

"if social media is the first thing you check in the morning and the last you check at night, chances are you have a problem."

And I am challenged to examine what really has my heart.

And on my heart lately is the challenge so appropriately presented by Hands Free Mama to unplug and just be, so as not to miss a childhood.

And even more so than just unplugging so that my kids remember my face instead of my iPhone case, I am right now in the very middle of grappling with learning again to be alone and be quiet.

To not run to my email or facebook when I have a spare moment.

Community is great.  In person and online.  With people who I know and hug and real life and people who I have discovered kindred spirits with online.  But I'm afraid I'm in a place where I am becoming so connected that I can't be alone anymore.

Still.  Before Him.

Without everyone else in my life (really, literally) at my fingertips.

I'm praying for a heart more like David, with praise on my lips the first thing in the morning.  Not the desire to quick check facebook or instagram, as innocent as those actions may be.  

Really, for me I'm finding it's a heart issue.  Because when I'm that connected, it's easy (for me) for the world to get little footholds in my heart.  Comparison.  Perfection.  Insecurity.  Standards that aren't given by my creator, but the best-foot-forward image that I see in everyone else.

I know that they don't all share their dirt, but my heart somehow still gets wrapped up in it.

Even my Bible reading plan is on my iPhone, and I can't tell you how much that drives me batty some days.

There is just too much noise.  Right now, I need more silence.

I'm entering into a season that's more intense than I've had in a long time.  More focused on Jesus and the kingdom in an intellectual way, as I'm taking a 14 week course to really educate me on the gospel throughout the entirety of the Bible and teach me how to put it into terms that I could present to anyone at any time.  I'm also in a position of discipling, which I haven't done in a very very long time.  All that to say, I'm feeling the pull away.  From the things that aren't bad, but aren't good for my heart right now.

I also have the tendency to want to know everything.  To research to death.  To google any fleeting thing that crosses my mind.  I want to wonder more.

It can easily become an obsession of sorts for me.  The needing to know and needing to be connected and get worldly affirmation.  But that's not what I need.

That's why I've been quiet here lately.  Not because I don't intend to write (because I do), but because I'm sorting through where my heart is in relationship to the internet.

The internet and I are having a DTR.

I wish I could live a disciplined life naturally, but I need to set myself rules and goals and boundaries on a daily basis.  Or else my days just wash away and I wonder what the heck I did with them.  But I have big dreams.  Big hopes to bless my husband and my family.  A big heart to share the gospel and to be ready with it on the tip of my tongue.

That kind of life doesn't just happen.  At least not how I want it to.  It takes intention.  Focus.  Discipline.  Rules.  Boundaries.  Dreams.  Goals.  And loads of prayer.

That is where I'm at in this second.  Making goals to put the digital devices away while my kids are awake.  Goals to do more truth saturating, more homemaking to bless my family, and more unplugged time to clear my mind.

That's the dirt of where I'm at.