Balance

Hello Zeteo Community!

As the Family Life Conference draws near, Tharin and I are busy getting our trailer ready and I am getting so excited to hopefully see many of you! (And to spend a large portion of the weekend taking bugs and grass out of my child's mouth...)

Have a fantastic Friday, and weekend!

God bless,
Olivia

Week Two: Balance

My two weeks of fasting from technology have, as I suspected, not gone as well as planned. The more aware I was of my technology usage, the more I realized how pervasive it is. And perhaps I came to a different conclusion than I expected.

Over this two week period, I have been attempting to start my day with prayer. I began my prolonged goal of reading all of Sirach, my favourite book of the Bible - though I have never actually read it start to finish.

When I read, I often double-check definitions so that I can develop a better understanding of what is written. Sirach is a beautifully eloquent book, which is both why I love it, and why having a thesaurus handy is useful. So it happened that, mid-prayertime, I allowed myself to pull out my phone.

I am not sure about the rest of you, but there are no hard-copy thesauruses in my house. I use the handy dandy one that I have uploaded onto my phone, and I honestly find electronic thesauruses so much more convenient than the paper variety.

In my own life, the same can be said about the navigational feature, recipe apps, having an updated schedule at hand, and the thousands of check-lists I would otherwise have scattered about my life. Technology has consolidated so many of the otherwise inconvenient odds and ends of life, and given us such a wide range of helpful and progressive tools at our fingertips.

I, personally, am a bit of a directionally-challenged, frazzled, and forgetful person - I find these tools exceedingly useful.

While it has always been a personal ideal to get rid of my smart-phone and get back in touch with the way things used to be, realistically, I know that will not be happening. The benefits of technology make me want to continue trying to strike a balance.

Between the temptation to waste time filling every moment with distraction and "connection" and preoccupation, and the ability to use technology to be more efficient with my time and my treasure. Obviously, as in all things that require balance, it will not be any easier from here on out than it has been in the past.

I vow to keep my phone free of the distracting Apps that have been time-consumers in the past, continue striving for daily prayer before checking my phone, and persist in keeping the proper order in my life. Sometimes it feels so freeing to just appreciate Jerome's cute antics without watching them through a camera lens, to leave my laptop in the living-room and go to bed when Tharin does. To read a book instead of finding a new show on Netflix, and to come up with my own ideas and inspiration without farming them from Pinterest.

I have come to realize that these are some of the hardest struggles for me. What are some of yours?