Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Blogging's fatal flaw

For me, blogging has a fatal flaw. I discovered it over the weekend, and it's going to radically change the nature of this sight. As in, I'll be gone for awhile, again.

Over the weekend I was helping to lead the Children's Worship Choir at church. The kids led worship for four services, and we had such a great time doing it. It is always a privilege to work with these kids who love Jesus, believe what they're taught, and thrive at being given responsibility in the body of Christ. The weekend was good for my heart and soul - streams of fresh water on parched ground. And it gave me opportunity to reflect on my life, this particular season, on what's going well and what's not going so well.

What's not going so well for me these days is the amount of time I spend on my computer. Rather than toss it in the trash, I decided to examine the areas I was spending the most time. Hands down, it's facebook and blogging (as well as reading the blogs of others).

One of the questions I'm learning to ask is, "What is it I truly desire here?" In this case, what I recognize as my true desire is friendship. I am lonely and longing for a place to connect with others, to be known and understood, and to interact with others. I tell myself that my life is too busy for play dates and coffee dates. I tell myself that I don't want to get babysitters for my kids in order to go out with my friends, but then I proceed to spend as much time on my computer as I would have spent had I gone out with a friend. The real - people in person - is being sacrificed for the less real - people online.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think YOU are less real than other people, I think this style of communication is less real than face-to-face. And in my life, I don't have much face-to-face with friends. I see my family quite a bit, and I have ministry connections with people, but I very rarely hang out with friends.

As a matter of fact, I'm not completely sure where to start in cultivating healthy relationships. Eight or nine months ago I realized that I didn't know how to rest. Yesterday I realized that I don't really know how to sustain healthy, deep relationships. It resonates with my soul, my heart knows it's true, and while I've been looking to my computer screen to fulfill the need, it has not only fallen dreadfully short of meeting my true needs, but it has drawn me away from the very things that would fill me back up.

The fatal flaw with blogging is that there is something in me that has been expecting this blog to fill my need for friendship, interaction and "doing life" together. I put my heart out there, someone out there reads it and "wahlah," I've had relational interaction. But to be completely honest with you, this one sided communication isn't filling up my friendship "bucket". I'm less and less content with the way I've been doing life lately. So, I'm needing to take a break, again, in order to get my life sorted out.

I don't actually think blogging is all bad, quite the contrary, I think there is a lot of good done through blogging. I feel like I know the people I read regularly better and it improves our relationship when I run into them in person. I also feel like it's a great way to keep up with long-distance friends. However, I think I have some other relational issues to work through. If I work through them, when I work through them, when I have healthy relationships outside of the blogging community, when God gives me permission and I feel like I have strength to offer the body of Christ, I will return. If not, I will be pursuing personal relationships in the real world, and would welcome a coffee date with you. My number is 503.508.2801.

2 comments:

  1. I so appreciate your honesty. And I hope you know that even though blogging may not fill your friendship bucket, it is a ministry to others. Thanks so much for the time you do put in. By the way, you wanna go for a run?

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  2. Wish I lived close enough for a coffee or tea and face to face friendship. I'll miss your blogging, it has been an encouragement to me and challenging as I feel I have some similar issues. Good for you for doing what you need to do at this time, I'll look forward to updates :)

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