“She didn’t even comment back. Come on, that was hilarious!”
This was the mental dialogue I had with myself, bent over our computer desktop on a desk much too small to hold all our wired machinery, junk mail, and breakfast leftovers. Looking up from my monitor, I saw beams of sunlight coming through thin curtains, a corner of blue sky, and tips of trees that had swollen to tiny spring-green leaves overnight.
“What am I doing on the computer?” I asked out loud, shaking my head to dislodge the social networking haze that was as heavy as spring allergies on my fuzzy brain. A few minutes later my three-year old daughter and I were happily mucking about in the muddy but sweet-smelling backyard. Lunch was an outdoor affair on the deck. The combination of too many Cheez-Its and unaccustomed 75 degree weather had my daughter’s blonde head bobbing over her favorite book.She slipped off into dreamland right on me. It had been a long time since she had napped on me and for a moment I experienced perfect contentment. But contentment and I are never chums for too long. A minute later I was struggling to reach my nearby cell phone to take a picture. Its desired destination: Facebook. My blonde-haired beauty falling asleep over a book after a picnic lunch on the first hot day of the year was indeed prime Facebook fodder.
I performed the dexterous move of grasping the phone and clicking a picture, already thinking of the perfect witty caption. It was then that I heard it. Not audibly, but in my heart I heard the unspoken whisper that only the Holy Spirit can speak to the Father’s children.
“You know, Tim would love this picture. You guys were just talking last night about how he hates the fact that he misses out on the cute stuff during the day”.
A shift occurred. Suddenly, the shallowness of all those “friends” on Facebook loomed largely before me. The desire to keep connected to the one with whom I have the relationship status of “one flesh” was urgent.
That was six months ago. As of today I am off Facebook completely. My husband and I volley texts back and forth on our cell phones several times throughout our day.
But I am getting ahead of myself. Let me share how I went from being an obsessive social networker to signing off permanently—not to make some sort of statement, but for the sake of my marriage.
Back on that warm May afternoon, I was already having misgivings. Nagging thoughts would stay lodged in my mind—unsavory nuisances, like meat wedged between back molars. Why was I compelled to check who “liked” what? I was becoming preoccupied with what others thought of me. I was not staying connected to keep friends in the loop. I was updating to keep myself in the loop. I found myself having genuine feelings of camaraderie or dislike towards people based on how much of an ego boost I received from them via Facebook “likes” and “LOL’s.”
King David described those who were ungodly in Psalm 12:2 as speaking with flattering lips and double hearts. Like a monster kept locked in the basement, I felt the worst part of me being fed and fattened up on the scraps that Facebook was obliged to throw me. I greedily supplied my social network with more and more updates: the mundane, silly, sarcastic, clever, and controversial to a growing number people who could not even tell me the ages of all my children.
However, when my husband came home from work I found there was nothing to say. In the mad current of dinner, homework, and clean up, all those short pauses of life were crammed in the back of my brain. Our three-year-old falling asleep on me while reading her favorite story normally would have been mentioned in passing, followed by an “Oh, that’s sweet . . . Honey, is she supposed to have glue and toilet paper?”
Deliberate texting put a halt to what I feared was starting to happen. My husband and I were becoming what I had warned others to avoid: two people on close but parallel tracks. No intersection.
Tim and I had texted in the past. It was, however, more utilitarian.
“Are you going to be late?”
“Don’t forget she has practice tonight.”
“I think we over-drafted again.”
Things of that nature.
Making the decision to send that cute picture of our drowsy daughter was a deliberate intersection.
Slowly, as the leaves on the trees went from tiny spring-green to full lush summer-green, I obtained the desire to share the mundane, silly, sarcastic, clever, and controversial with my spouse—the person with whom I have the most important relationship on this earth. Now, at five o’clock we have more to talk about. Because of the intersecting. The inside jokes. The updates. The prayer requests.
Short, present, and to the point. Texting is exclusive. Just between him and me. No one else reads about the joke I just cracked, the hideous outfit my daughter just put on, or the terrible moment I am having.
Do not get me wrong. Friends are a great blessing, and I would be lost without some of the females in my life. But it is the Christian marriage, not Christian friendships, that is crashing and burning and destroying children’s lives in the church today. There is no lack of fellowship or social get-togethers in the body of Christ. There is, however, a starving empty void of intimacy in marriage in the body of Christ.
The writer of Ecclesiastes reminded us that the days of our marriages should be joyful ones spent with our spouse (Ecclesiastes 9:9). Those little pauses in your day are not much of anything, but when added up and shared with your spouse, they become something that brings joy.
A cell phone, a keyboard, a camera, and two minutes. It may just be the answer to your pleas of, “God, how can we connect again, before it is too late?”
