So I am aware that I am being good, and it feels a little good....but, also, a lot more bad, because Iam struggling a little. I am fine in a way. Able to function and not even think about it for a large percentage of the day, but the thoughts and impulses to look at my phone for notifications are still present, even though I have deleted the app, and no longer have prompts from the phone itself. It's a little like phantom limb syndrome.
I know, because I am told by just about every article on the subject, that there is a reward mechanism intrinsic to the social media habit, that when I get likes or shares or comments, there is a dopamine hit somewhere in my neural receptors, but to be honest that is, to my conscious mind, almost negligible. It doesn't really feel that good, and yet my behaviour certainly suggested there is an addiction formed by habit. I am certainly missing it, although I can't really say why.
Another little phenomena I am becoming aware of is that although I have got rid of Facebook, my mind is switching to other forms of online communication to replace it. I am, in the absence of my FB app, now looking regularly at my emails, texts and whatsapp group, ironically my life group whatsapp, which exists because we used to communicate entirely by Facebook, and so needed an alternative. But all this is to say, I'm looking for 'replacement idols', as my friend calls them. I have certainly found this in the past when fasting. My inner nature almost instantly inclines for something to replace the thing that I have given up, or am fasting from, with anything, almost anything BUT God.
I have found this with fasting too; How do you replace something with God or with a spiritual discipline? If I give up food, how does that draw me to Him? There is of course the time one would spend eating. This could be spent in prayer. But how does it draw the heart? And with my FB habit, it's so small, in a way, a glance here, 30 seconds there (probably a hundred times a day), five minutes on the toilet, any time waiting to go into an appointment, etc. But then of course sometimes, once in a while, those 30 seconds turn into 30 minutes and they turn, unchecked into an hour or two. How do I use this small and sometimes large chunk of time to lavish my attention on my Father, and not the demands of my fragile deflated ego, looking to be pumped up.
I have found with lent, often, because I am not following a program (but just rather giving stuff up and seeing what happens) the vacuum created by it's absence is not filled with God, and, as I have said, if anything gets filled up with other non God stuff.
So if this fast doesn't have a structure, I surely can expect more of the same. I mean right now I am writing this blog instead of getting stuck into some intimate prayer time with Father.
So back to the book. One of my friends from life group has started to send me the pages by screenshotting them, so now there is something to connect to. Although this is day two, being written on the morning of day three, the first days chapter really did have something to say to me.
This is the thing that jumped out at me:
“There is no neutral ground in the universe. Every square inch, every split second is claimed by God, and counterclaimed by Satan.” ― C. S. Lewis
This is such a good quote and even now I am dying to post it to my Facebook. The author (Wendy) is talking about how everything is permissible but not everything being beneficial, and about God only being good (Why do you call me good, only God is good) and all goodness emanating from him. Into this we see that God has a claim on every moment, even those spent on Facebook (and those spent not being on Facebook). So I suppose for me the challenge is 'how is God claiming this moment, and what is the counterclaim, and where and how do I resist it?'
So, thanks to my friend, the book is beginning to have an impact. I just hope I can translate this into the reclamation of time and space for 'intentional devotion' rather than random distraction.
Watch this space, I guess.
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