My Social Media-less Life

It’s been another long month. In this case, it was simply because I was busy from start to finish. To be fair, most of my summers are busier than the rest of the year. Something about June to August, they just happen to be the busiest months…

Yesterday was my first anniversary of living without social media. And you know what? I think if I made the choice to just ignore everything the Lord is calling me to do and had the option to go back… I don’t think I would.

It’s gotten to the point where the biggest thing I miss is knowing what’s going on with certain people’s lives that I don’t actively see for one reason or another. But I’ve also found other creative ways to keep up with people. On the flip side, the biggest thing I don’t miss is all the drama and stress that comes with having social media and instantly being able to see everyone’s thoughts.

The world is a lot less stressful when it’s just your thoughts and the Lord’s words in your head. Which is another big thing I love… being able to actually focus on the Word of God. I don’t read the Bible everyday like I should, but I have a dear friend who sends me a small passage of Scripture through text every day and I try to read that. So it’s a small start.

Since the month has been so busy, I haven’t been able to do nearly as much as I wanted to when I started the summer with almost no extra duties.

The above pictured dog is my One Big Exception to the “no more sitting” rule that came down from the Lord clear back toward the beginning of the year. It wasn’t until the beginning of June that Zeke’s person needed my best friend’s and my help checking on him while she works. Thus, I feel like I’ve been working almost every day since June *insert date here* and have had to figure out what my life looks like with all these extra driving miles and dog-sitting hours I thought I would no longer have.

This hasn’t been as easy as I thought it would be and I realize my best friend had the right amount of hesitancy when asked if we would be willing to help. She does not like driving as much as I do, but at least she’s only slightly better at waking up early than I am.

However… I have had some of the best moments on these mornings, driving down the highway as the sun’s coming up with my windows rolled down and some of my favorite music playing on the radio.

There are some nights that the only reason I convince myself to leave my house is because I know I’ll get to drive home while the sun is coming up. Driving at night doesn’t have the same luster, since I’m usually so tired I don’t even want to be on the road.

In some ways, it’s like a tee-up for my day.

Sometimes I don’t swing at the teed day very well… but the whole situation has caused me to slow down in the mornings and pay attention to what I’m doing. And since I’ve been relearning and reframing my relationship to food and how it relates to my day, slowing down has been for the best. (More on that last sentence in a future post…)

Even if it makes me late for the rest of my day. That’s the beauty of working for yourself: you can show up whenever you want… within reason of course. 😉

I’ve said all of this to say, life rarely works out the way you want it to, but you have to learn how to go with the flow. And that’s what I learn (and relearn) every summer. I’m reminded of that verse in Proverbs: “The heart of a man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.” (Proverbs 16:9)

I make plans all the time and have had to learn to live with how life actually goes, but it’s not until I see it as the Lord’s actual plans… or even a “side-quest”, since it was probably more a “side-quest” for me than it was for Him, that I realize… side quest or main quest… it was all planned out by the Lord to begin with. And I’m learning to give him the reins to my life, in some cases, one step at a time.

There was a book I had to read for Literature class way back in high school: In His Steps. Don’t ask me who it’s by… to be fair, I thought all the books I read for Literature were written by some of the same people who made the curriculum I used all through school. So author names were never important growing up. Anyway, in this book, an entire congregation of people choose to make every decision by first asking the question: “What Would Jesus Do?”

As I reflect back on this last month (starting somewhere close to the end of July when I began purging my bedroom), I see now that asking that question before doing anything isn’t bad, weird, or over the top, like I thought when I first read the book almost 20 years ago. It is, however, a way to draw closer to Jesus and actually do the things He did and say the things He might have said. We are to be His hands and feet on the earth, after all.

And ultimately, that’s what I’m shooting for with every day I live on this earth. I don’t always succeed, but I’m also not dead yet.