Deliver Us from Facebook

A couple of times in those early, post-surgery days, every other person but me left the house and I came out of the bedroom to claim it. The house, I mean, and the accompanying silence.

Turns out eight days spent in the violently invasive, needle happy "therapeutic" hospital environment requires its own recovery time. I awoke for 3am labs a good four or five days after I was in my own bed, and was desperately off-kilter after my morning prayer routine had been obliterated by painkillers that made it hard to focus my eyes. I considered it progress when I watched an America's Next Top Model marathon both half awake and sitting slumped over in a recliner, an accomplishment my nurses made over as if I'd just given birth. The Book of Common Prayer disappeared beneath a pile of US and People magazines, and I let it. God had sent me Tyra Banks and that was more than enough.

Until, you know, it wasn't, and I was home and feeling good enough to shuffle around the house and take stock of things while everyone else was out. I didn't even have to try to reach out for God in those moments, because the silence from the living room couch was lighter and holier than almost any I'd ever experienced. There were no machines; there was no IV; there weren't even the children I'd been aching to see but who exhausted me so quickly. Just me, and the God who had brought me unscathed through fear and surgery. It felt miraculous.

It was miraculous, and not just because of God's goodness and sheltering love. It was miraculous because I'd been unplugged long enough that technology had lost its allure. Facebook and Twitter seemed petty and insignificant after what I'd just experienced. Real connection was in peace I felt just sitting and listening for God. Real connection came in the form of friends bringing soup and sitting delicately next to me on the sofa, trying hard not to make me laugh and then handing over a pillow to press against the incision when, thankfully, they failed. Real connection came in the press of warm little bodies snuggled up to me in the bed while we read Richard Scarry.

Until, you know, it didn't, and I started to be curious about the status of pregnant friends and that one kid I used to eat lunch with in high school and the priest upon whose whose discernment committee I'd served and who was making a Batgirl costume for her daughter from scratch. (SO CUTE, y'all. Seriously.)

So back into the rabbit hole I fell, scraping at the sides to slow my descent. I made an overdue appointment at Richmond Hill to find a spiritual director to help me push the reset button even as I became way too involved in the discussion someone started on his wall about this Onion article, decrying it as devisive filth and brandishing Acts 15:1-21 before me like Excalibur. "HOW DOES THIS DO ANYTHING TO RE-ESTABLISH THE TABLE FELLOWSHIP?" I snarled, while my sense of humor caught fire and immolated the Modern Church.

I spent a gentle, quiet hour at Richmond Hill talking about where I felt God leading me and dipping back in to that connection that has so little to do with the Internet, welling up when my liaison flipped randomly through the book of Psalms and landed squarely on the 42nd, which I've mentioned before as my absolute favorite. How did she know? How did He know exactly what button to push?

In this case, it was the "Off" button, at least temporarily. I've dumped Facebook for a couple of weeks, the seventy-one-hundredth time I've needed to take a break from there and certainly not the last. I like Facebook. I like playing virtual catch-up with so many of the people I've known in the different stages of my life. Facebook is probably more good than bad. The thing is, the current stage of my life demands more of my present attention. There is so little free time in the day to blog, to prep dinner, to (gag) fold laundry and (double gag) put it away, and it is so EASY to just cruise downstream Romans 7:15-style and waste a precious hour reading status updates. I mean, Morning Prayer is one thing, but I get the sense that God wants more of me. Every time I push for that "more" it feels like I'm doing something right.

I know I want more of God. As far as I know, He's not on Facebook.