Facebook

Justin and I were sitting in church a couple weeks ago and our pastor was discussing lent during the sermon. He said that last year for lent he gave up Facebook. After going without it during that time, he realized how much of his life it was consuming on a daily basis. That any down time he had was used searching through Facebook to find out the latest update on everyone and to see how many people "liked" the most recent status he had posted.
 
In the weeks/months prior to that week's sermon at church, Justin and I had commented to each other on multiple occasions how much Facebook consumes our time. We are constantly wait on each other during commercials while watching TV so the other can "check up on Facebook". When we get in bed at night, the first thing we both do before falling asleep is look through Facebook to find out what's happened in the few hours since we last got on. When we wake up in the morning, after telling each other good morning, we're searching through to find out if anything happened overnight. Our dogs have to wait to hear that special "click" that means we have locked our phones to know we are going to pet them or play with them. We had been talking about how much time we really waste just to find out the latest "gossip".
 
Our pastor's comment during the sermon was not meant to tell the congregation to get off Facebook or to say that Facebook is bad. He was simply just stating a fact from his life that hit on a point in the lesson we were being taught. However, for Justin and me, we felt God was trying to tell us something more.
 
It really hit home with me. I started thinking about how I spend my time and live my life now. There are some things I need to change for the near future. I don't want to raise our baby in a way he/she has to wait on mom to finish what she's doing on Facebook. How fair is that? I don't want to continue restricting my relationship with my husband because I HAVE to find out what's going on with people that I barely know and/or haven't talked to in years. I don't want to continue keeping my face in my phone while spending time with my family and friends. I want to really start being present in life and in conversations, rather than it all going through Facebook.
 
So for these reasons (and some others), I have decided to leave Facebook. Justin has already closed his account as well and his reasons are the same as mine. We still want to keep in touch with all of our friends and family, especially during the exciting time in our lives we are experiencing now. My goal/plan is to keep this blog updated with all our baby happenings, pictures, maybe even videos. I can't promise I will update it daily, but I will do the best I can. Feel free to leave us comments, to email us, to text us, to call us, or even stop by our house to visit!! We plan to do the same for everyone else too. We are not getting off Facebook to become hermits...we'd still love to keep in touch with everyone!! If you need either of our email addresses or phone numbers, leave a comment below and we will get the information to you!! Check back soon to see/hear everything that's been happening...it's been a busy year so far!!