” And then! Oh, the noise! Oh, the Noise! Noise! Noise! Noise!
That’s one thing he hated! The NOISE! NOISE! NOISE! NOISE!” I sometimes reenact this scene from the Grinch as the day begins.
The barking dog at 5:15am, the crying baby, the toddler who’s new favorite phrase is “that’s annoying”, and the nine year old that is quickly getting closer to teenage status. The house from pre-sun up to post sundown is noisy. Sometimes I add to the mix “boys stop fighting over the dog toy!”, “hey, give me one minute I just need to finish going the bathroom”, “no, you can’t have cookies for breakfast”, “Girl! I need help up here the baby had a blowout and Bishop is running around naked while the dog tries to lick his butt!”; true story.
It’s noisy. Like really noisy. It has become a constant noise. One that you get conditioned to like a ceiling fan in the summer. It’s our normalcy. It actually can be sometimes calming.
It is a rare occasion that all this noise stops and I am left with my thoughts. Here in these moments of silence the big questions wiz through my mind like pages from a flip book. My mind races with thoughts; sometimes good, sometimes bad, but what I have found is whatever I feed my mind I often think about.
Have you ever woke up singing a song out of the blue? You can’t recall the last time you heard the song and still you’re singing word for word? That happens to me a lot. I always imagined it was something carried over from a dream. What I have found is that these songs are just extensions of my thoughts.
Lately, I have been finding myself losing patience for Facebook. This is the main source of information I consume on a daily basis. Sometimes it is uplifting, thought provoking, emotional, and hilarious but recently I have been discouraged or even bored by what I am seeing.
Addicted to the Scroll?
At the end of the day when I pull out my phone and the glow fills up the half of the room while I decompress I start my routine. Work email, Personal email, Instgram, Facebook,. I find myself clicking random articles (today for example: “Behold the Uncanny Terror of the Simpsons Facing Forward”, “8 Hilarious Party Hames”, a short Tasty BBQ video, various comments on a Pearl Jam related post. Ahhh! Congratulations, Andrew! You have wasted approximately 30 minutes of your day and gained absolutely no useful knowledge.” This is the basis of why I have become bored with social media, but I do it to myself.
So, I have been seeking more informational articles to broaden my awareness of world events, industry trends, and inspirational stories of Grace, Love and Hope. But finding these I have to filter through a lot of garbage. This is where the basis of my discouragement is coming from. I read all this conflict, hurt, depression, anger, and pray to find an answer as to how I can be a light.
Tonight, in this moment of silence, instead of reading an article that bears no fruit, I picked up the Bible. Here is where God led me:
“As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.”
2 Timothy 4:5 ESV
What’s my ministry? This I believe. The ability to take these moments alone and open up. To share a glimpse of my life with the world beyond a shared post or an article of ‘nice-to-know’ information. Yes, there is a benefit to that and I am not 100% against it. I just think there’s opportunity to flip the time wasted and replace it with something people could grow and benefit from. It would shape our our thoughts and would result in change. We would have meaningful dialogue instead of hate filled opposing views, we would share our lives vs recipes we likely will never attempt. We would connect on a deeper level. I think lives would change and instead of growing apart, we would grow together.
I am challenging you to accept a challenge. Spread good news daily. Take the few moments of silence a day and feed your brain with information that will grow into something meaningful. Make a commitment, help break the mold, and change the social media environment.
Here is a great place to start Good News Network; it is a website filled with good news. Check it out!
In this moment of silence I find peace.
HEATHFAMILYEXPERIENCE 