Monday, September 13, 2010

Discipline Thursday*

*Just pretend today is Thursday. I got a little sidetracked after I wrote this and forgot to publish. 

If there's one thing I've learned in college it's that sometimes crazy things happen late at night. You're tired. You let your guard down. You agree to do crazy things.

That's how I agreed to be part of a secret society last year.

But it's also how I agreed to be part of some strange group almost 2 weeks ago now.

Picture 7 college kids sitting in a living room. Might as well picture a pretty small living room because, let's face it, we're broke college kids. They're all talking, laughing, and of course studying. Then one issued a challenge - "Let's try going without Facebook for a week."

Maybe it's because we're competitive. Maybe it's because we were bored. Maybe it's because God needed to show us all something. (I think the whole late at night thing had something to do with it.) But eventually that one challenge evolved into giving up Facebook, Twitter, and blogging (reading and writing) for a week with the promise of giving up something different each week.

So from here on out (at least for the next several weeks) Thursdays will become Discipline Thursdays so that I can tell you all the great things the Lord taught us in the past week of giving things up to Him.

For the week of September 1-8:

The Discipline: Give up all social networking (Facebook, Twitter, and blogs) for one week.

The Lessons:

  • There were several times over the week that God did really fantastic things in my life. Anytime it happened, my first inclination was to get on some social network to tweet or status update about it. "God is so good!" "I'm so amazed at what God's doing in my life." "God's timing is perfect." But I couldn't update electronically so most of the time, I just stopped thinking about it. Did you get that? I just stopped thinking about it. I didn't run to tell my best friends. I didn't find the first person to tell them. I just stopped. How disappointing. I am so comfortable praising God online but when it comes to praising Him in my everyday life I get embarrassed or afraid or apathetic. 
  • There were also several times during the week I was in a horrible mood. Again, my first inclination was to turn to my beloved internet. I wanted to read all those encouraging blogs. I wanted to see who had encouraged me on Facebook. I wanted to laugh at someone's tweets. But instead, the Lord called me to Him. "Let me heal you. Let me dry your tears. Let me put you in a better mood."  
  • I got SO. MUCH. DONE. I did more homework in the past week than I've done in most of my college career combined. 
So hopefully now that it's over I'll be able to still limit my time on this internet thing.

This week's discipline: No texting. And waking up at 6 am every morning. Ambitious, I know. 


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3 comments:

Summer said...

You can come to bikini boot camp (or very conservative one-pice boot camp and I like to call it) with me at 5:30 AM if you want.

Also, thanks so much for leading in WOmen's chapel. As I watched you yesterday I couldn't help but pray that someday Mia would be as confident, poised, mature, centered, and talented as you are. Love you!

Travis said...

You are such an encouragement to me. I know I say that a lot, but you are. I didn't even know you were giving things up, as I'd given up blogs, FB and tweets for a week too. Crazy. I, too, have found lots of times I want to run and check out what everyone is doing on FB. It's crazy how addicting it is.

Thanks for always posting such challenging posts. I look forward to reading your thoughts and I look forward to a day when we can hang out again. I miss you!

Travis said...

by the way... this is Laura, not Travis. I'm on his computer and didn't know he was signed in.