Thursday, May 28, 2015

Aspire to Live Quietly

...and to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, 12 so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one. ~I Thes. 4:11-12

I have loved these two verses for many years and it has often kept me from butting in where I do not belong.  Lately, I have wondered how well I have lived by these verses after all.  I have thought long and hard about shutting down and deleting my blog. What keeps me from pulling the plug on this blog is that fact that so very few people read it.  My blog is largely for my benefit; it always has been.  I have used these pages as blogs were originally intended....as web logs.  Knowing that others can read it, however, has kept me from allowing it to morph into a diary of sorts for the whole world to see into my private battles.

But I wonder about Facebook.  My newsfeed is filled with people (self included) giving their opinion (sometimes quite forcefully and/or angrily), offering unsolicited advice, gossiping, bragging, and tons of negativity.  Don't get me wrong....I am NOT a Pollyanna, but I do wonder about my involvement in Facebook.  I have been a huge fan of the phrase, "Not my monkey; not my circus." since I first heard it, but it seems to me that I keep showing up at said circus as a spectator, gorging myself on other people's dramatic performances and clever tricks. 

Does this mean that I plan on leaving Facebook? No, I tried that, but social media seems the only way that I can keep in touch with family members and I do enjoy seeing old friends who live far away.  Frankly, I'm not sure what it means, apart from muting some of my negative newsfeed and "un-liking" some pages and leaning towards more substance & quality sites as opposed to ones that mirror bad reality TV shows. I also plan on more real social contact, so if you're free for lunch or coffee (tea) sometime and would like to chat, fire a message my way.

Saturday, May 02, 2015

For Our Daughter's Friends

I have not always been well liked by our daughter's friends.  In fact, there have been times that I have been both feared and hated.  For the most part, I'm okay with that.  You see, my job has never been to be their friend.  My job has always been to look out for the emotional, physical, and spiritual welfare of our daughter and that, in the past, has included her friends when they have been in our home or in our care.  I have been a parent first and a friend second.   I always told her friends that I would be the first to come their aid in a just fight (figuratively, of course)  and that I would also be the first to give them a swift kick in the pants when they needed it....again, figuratively.  Any wounds they received from me, I hope that now, as adults, they can begin to see that it was done in love.  You see, I don't care whether or not a child likes or loves me; I care that they are safe and on the right path.  I would rather someone be happy long term because they have chosen well than to have a fleeting, temporal pseudo happiness from wrong choices.  So, if you are reading this and you have been or are our daughter's friend, I loved you, cheered for you, cried over you (yes, I'm not the toughie you think), and prayed passionately for you....particularly the ones I fussed at.  I still pray for many of you....daily.  I watch from a distance, often only hearing news of you from you moms.  I hope you can see that I loved each of you, and while I would have enjoyed being your friend first, that's not what was needed.  Maybe you can't see that yet, but I hope that one you can and that there will be those who will watch out for and protect your children as well.