19 hours ago
A couple of years ago I gave up Facebook for several months.
There were several reasons I decided to cut myself off from Facebook, and there were several reasons I decided later on to give Facebook another chance. The whole experiment taught me a lot about other people, and a lot about myself.
I never really wrote about it, though I considered starting a post on my decision several times. The words just never seemed quite right. However, recently a current Facebook friend of mine posted on her decision to give up Facebook for a little while, and it made me think of when I did the same - so I thought that maybe the time had come for me to write about it here.
I went back and read a rough draft that I wrote at the time about all the reasons why I wanted to get off Facebook - and though reading that did refresh my memory about a lot of the things that I don't particularly like about Facebook, there is a general tone of exasperation to that post. I was just done.
I think I first started to realize there was a problem when I would close my browser feeling dissatisfied or annoyed. I was friends with a lot of people that I had known in years past. You know the ones that I'm talking about - friends from high school, "friends" that had rejected me informally long ago, though thankfully without severing the relationship with a dramatic de-friending gesture.
But I was still connected with all these people - people who might have hurt me, or people who had always been competition to me, whether in reality or just in my own head.
I got to see their lives play out on cyberspace. Graduations. Marriages. Pregnancy announcements. Houses.
Sometimes it hurt because I was sad that these friendships ended.
Sometimes it was jealousy spurred by something that someone else had, and the frustration came because I wanted that thing, or thought I had worked much harder for that thing. The whole comparison game that it is so hard not to play.
Then there was just the general negativity from people who always seem to want to air their gross laundry where everyone can see it.
I felt beat down. I felt dissatisfied. I felt I felt inadequate. It left me wanting to post about everything fun I was doing to prove to everyone else that I was doing cool things too. I was someone interesting, and they were missing out if they weren't friends with me.
As in real life friends. Not Facebook friends, because "Facebook friends" can mean anything.
Looking back, I think these things were largely a heart issue, and I can't blame Facebook as much as I blame myself. Pride was a huge factor here. The bottom line is that I wanted to feel good enough, and I thought Facebook made me feel less than.
I just ran around in circles like this for years before I started to realize that maybe there was a problem here. Ironically, the effect of Facebook on my own pride was just an afterthought at the time, though now I realize that pride was the biggest problem I needed to recognize with my Facebook use. But that is not what made me give it up.
One day I realized that a lot of the girls who I really wanted to be friend with, but that I didn't really see outside of Facebook, actually thought that we were friends. They thought that keeping up with me on Facebook meant we were friends, even though our interaction only consisted of an occasional "like" or comment on one of my posts.
I didn't want cyber-friendships with these people. If we were going to be friends, I wanted to be real-life friends, and I started to wonder if Facebook's tendency to create a false sense of friendship was getting in the way of actually forming real friendships with these girls.
I started to hear stories of gossip and drama that people had experienced on Facebook. I never experienced much of that personally, but I started to feel a bit convicted. Even though I had never started an actual rumor based on information on Facebook, I would be lying if I said that I had never drawn incorrect conclusions or gossiped to my husband about something someone said on Facebook. I may not have let anything escalate to the level of traditional, rumor-spreading gossip, but I did judge people's motives and invent narratives in my own head about situations I had no actual information about.
I also realized through comments from extended family and friends how much information about my life people got from Facebook. It seemed wrong to me somehow that these people got to know these things about my life without ever actually talking to me.
True friendships can't form without conversation, but on Facebook you don't have to have that. People don't have to put out any actual effort to be friends with you, because all the things they might want to know about you are probably on Facebook. I started to wonder if people might be more likely to reach out in real life if they didn't know everything that was going on with me already. It made me feel a little "spied on", to be honest, but how could I blame anyone but me? I was not only providing the information, I was encouraging the "spying".
The final straw came when someone who I rarely saw gathering a little bit too much information about me from Facebook. It freaked me out a little, and all the other things that had been bothering me came rushing to my mind. In that moment I made a decision that it was time to take a break.
I deleted my account that same week.
Click here to read the rest of my Facebook story!
Clyde was just a few weeks old when Focus On The Family's documentary Irreplaceable came out in theaters, which was a prequel to The Family Project small group curricuum that was released this summer. Needless to say, we didn't make it to the theaters to see it since we had a brand-new baby! I was bummed, because it sounded really good, and I knew I probably wouldn't get a chance to see the full Family Project unless my church decided to do a study on it. However, recently I realized that there is a Family Project book, so I jumped at the chance to review it!
This book is an overview of the theology of the family - God's purpose and plan for the family, specifically how family and individual members of a family, reflect God's image. I wasn't expecting such a deep theological book when I first requested this - I thought it would be more about the scientific research about the family. But even though it was different than what I was expecting, it was even better than I thought it was going to be!
I got so much out of this book. I had never even thought about the theology behind God's plan for families, and this book made me appreciate how perfectly God has planned the family to reflect His image in the world. I especially liked the sections on intimacy and children, because these sections brought up things that I had never thought about before. I thought the book was very well thought-out and biblically sound. All of the major themes in this book were spot-on, and there was just one minor point I wasn't sure I totally agreed with.*
There are many paintings described in the book, which you can also look up on the Family Project's website - warning, there is nudity in some of these pieces! I didn't look up all the paintings, but I really appreciated reading the descriptions of the art in the book, and I felt like it added an extra impact to the points that were being made. If you are an art enthusiast, I would say you would probably appreciate those sections of the book even more than I did!
I would highly recommend this book to any Christian - I think this is a neglected area of theological study, and I learned so much through reading this book. It still makes me wish my church would do the Family Project small group study! You never know, maybe they will. If they do, I'm signing up!
Note: I received this book for free from the publisher in exchange for this review. This is my honest opinion.
*The one minor point I didn't necessarily agree with was a comment about surrogacy being outside the ethical bounds of a married union - if we are talking about a type of surrogacy where the surrogate's genetic material is involved (i.e. when Hagar was a "surrogate" for Abraham and Sarah), then I would agree with that - but if we are talking about a gestational carrier carrying the biological baby of a married man and woman when the married woman is not able to carry her own child, I don't see a problem, because the baby is still conceived within the marital union. That's just my personal opinion. The comment in the book was made in passing, and was not a major point, so even if you disagree, I would say don't let it stop you from reading the book. It's definitely worth reading.
When I was three or four years old, I had an entire Curious George book memorized. I used to sit down with the book, turn the pages, and recite the entire thing while my mom and dad listened (and chuckled to themselves about how adorable I was, I’m sure).
This is not a unique story – I have heard of many children memorizing the words of their favorite book and pretending to be able to read it themselves. As adults, we smile and chuckle at the fact that these little children, who technically can’t read, like to pretend that they can.
However, now when I hear those stories from the perspective of a parent, I also think about how the parents of those kids must be doing something right! If a child who can’t read has an entire storybook memorized, it must be because someone has read it to them, and read it to them many times. Those kids may not be able to actually read the words on the page, but they already have a head start with reading skills because someone is reading aloud to them.
I’m sure there are experts who could tell us about all the intricacies of the benefits of parents reading aloud to their kids, but these are few of the reasons that came to my mind…
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Visit the Tommy Nelson blog to read the rest of my thoughts on why you should read aloud to your kids!
I will be the first to admit that Derek and I are horrible about having "date night". We don't get out very often (once every few months maybe?), and when we do we usually just go see a movie. So when I had the opportunity to review 52 Uncommon Dates from Moody publishers, I decided to jump on it, hoping to get some inspiration for going on more unique dates.
This book did not disappoint! The book starts with an introduction from Gary Chapman on the importance of continuing to date your spouse, and then it jumps right in to the date ideas. Some of these dates are things that I might have thought of before, but most of them are things I don't think I would have ever come up with.
What I liked about each date idea was that they were each geared toward helping you connect with your spouse or significant other on a deeper level, emotionally and spiritually. Discussion questions that have to do with the theme of each date are included, along with ideas for praying together before and after your date, ideas for incorporating your spouses love language into the date, and Bible verses you can look up related to the themes. The book was very much geared toward Christian couples and strengthening not only your relationship with each other, but also pointing you both toward God through the process of dating. That was pretty great, I thought.
I found that a lot of the dates were also flexible enough to adapt for a couple with young kids - which is nice, I think, because we can't always get a babysitter (which is probably why I can count on one hand the number of dates we have been on this year). I liked that we could probably include the kids on a lot of these dates and still have a good time reconnecting with each other! So Derek and I decided to do a jigsaw puzzle date over Labor Day weekend, inspired by the book. Here we are:
(Derek always makes these funny faces when I pull out the camera! he cracks me up.)
I think this is a fun book for any Christian married couple, and it will challenge you to date more creatively and think of ways to not just have fun together but also to include the Lord in your dating process. Definitely check it out!
Note: I received a copy of this book for free from the publisher in exchange for this review - this is my honest opinion.
I'm sure you've heard the statistics that the divorce rate is 50%, and that this number is the same between Christians and non-Christians. But what if that wasn't really true?
When I read The Surprising Secrets of Highly Happy Couples, this book, The Good News About Marriage by Shaunti Feldham was referenced, and I was intrigued. I put it on my to-read list next.
In this book, Felham evaluates existing studies to try to determine what the actual divorce rate is - and her findings are surprising and encouraging.
For one thing, she finds that the actual divorce rate is not 50%, and it never has been. The actual numbers are probably closer to 30%. And what about the argument that divorce rates are the same inside the church? It turns out that much-quoted fact is actually based on a misunderstanding of some data - and that among those who attend church weekly, the divorce rate is 27% lower.
I found the numbers and statistics in this book really interesting. I have never thought to myself "I have a 50% chance of not getting divorced", because I know Derek and I are both committed to being married until we die, so divorce has never been an option for us. However, I'm sure there are a lot of couples out there that have been discouraged by the 50% statistic that is thrown about so carelessly, so I think this book would be really encouraging to many couples when they realize that number is not accurate!
I would say that I never internalized those faulty statistics in the past, so learning the new statistics wasn't necessarily life-changing to me personally - but, I was encouraged to hear those numbers in respect to defending and encouraging the institution of marriage! It turns out that the divorce rate is much lower overall than people have said, and the majority of couples are happy in their marriages - and I found that really encouraging to me when I think of society as a whole.
I will say I was a little annoyed at the repeated mention of people who married at younger than 25 and baby boomers as being higher-risk groups for divorce. I got married before age 25, as did most of my friends, and my parents happen to be baby boomers, so I guess I took those stats more personally. I felt like focusing on and comparing the stats of the "higher risk" groups to "low risk" groups could actually be discouraging to people who are in the higher risk groups, and as a result I felt a little excluded from some of the "good news" that Feldham was trying to present. Considering her main goal seemed to be to encourage people about their marriages, I was a little frustrated that her references to those who married young seemed to be more negative than positive. Personally, I would like to see stats on how many of those young marriages ended before year five of marriage, and how the divorce rates of "high risk" groups are affected by things like church attendance, but my guess is that this kind of data isn't currently available.
Regardless, I'd say this book is worth a read, whether you are married or not. It will make you think about divorce statistics in a different way and look more critically at some of these statistics that are so often quoted.
Note: I received this book for free from Blogging For Books in exchange for this review. This is my honest opinion.
The book of Revelation has always been one of the most interesting books of the Bible to me, ever since I was a child. The imagery is just so colorful, and I love the end when Christ conquers and creates a new Heaven and earth! It never fails to make my heart jump, and reading through Revelations always puts the day to day struggles into perspective - it reminds me that we are all part of a bigger story, and it makes me want to live more for Jesus, because someday He is coming back!
The Book Of Revelation Made Clear by Tim Lahaye and Timothy E. Parker is a great guide to Revelation. When I first picked up this book I thought it was a regular chapter book, but I would call it more of a Bible study guide. Each section opens with a short quiz about the Scripture text. Then it gives you the actual Scripture, along with a short commentary about the verses, and the section finishes off with the answers to the quiz questions. Every verse in the book of Revelation is covered in this manner.
If you have ever wanted to do a personal Bible study on the book of Revelation, this book is a great place to start. I also think it is ideal for those who have never read Revelation before - it makes each verse easier to understand. For those, like myself, who have studied Revelation before, I'd say this book still left me with a fresh perspective and brought attention to some things that I had never thought about. The quizzes were also fun for me to test my memory of the specifics of each verse!
I also have to say, one of my favorite parts of the book was the appendices - Apendix A covers everything Christ says about Himself in the first three chapters of Revelation, and I liked reading through it and seeing that focused picture of Jesus that is presented in Revelation.
Apendix B is a list of all of the Lord's names throughout Scripture - I have been wanting to find a complete list like this, so I loved that a list of His names was included. It inspired me to make this printable - click the link below to view and download it!
(Note: For Personal Use Only)
Note: I received this book for free from BookLook in exchange for this review. This is my honest opinion.
I remember the first time my kids got in a real fight (my oldest is three, so it wasn’t that long ago).
We were enjoying a peaceful morning when suddenly it was disrupted by screeching. I rounded the corner and found two of my kids, each holding one end of a toy – and they were yanking it back and forth and yelling at each other.
Wow, I thought, this is like a scene out of a movie!
That was probably not the best or most mom-like first thought to have, but I was caught off guard. After I got over my initial shock, I took the toy away and we sat down and had a talk about sharing and being kind to each other. At least I recovered well, right?
The truth is, I shouldn’t have been surprised at my kids’ behavior. Selfishness is something that is ingrained into our fallen human nature. Selfishness comes naturally to kids – it is unselfishness that must be nurtured and taught…
To read the rest of my thoughts on combatting selfishness in kids, check out my post on TommyNelson.com!
To read the rest of my thoughts on combatting selfishness in kids, check out my post on TommyNelson.com!
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