It’s been a little over a week since I did a post. Life got a little busy and then it was going to be Labor Day weekend, and I decided to take a bit of a “vacation,” relax, and enjoy the end of August and our mini-vacation out to see my dad at the lake.
Then we came home and last week was the type of week where I had a hard time bringing myself to write. I would have an idea for a topic or the motivation to write, then something would happen. I finally told myself that I needed to just write, and then Little Mister came down with something and refused to eat, drink, or talk. I decided it was more important to snuggle with him.
Luckily, he’s doing better, but Little Miss woke up yesterday morning covered in hives that seem to refuse to go away. We’ve seen the doctor, but for now, it’s just a waiting and watching game. So as my two children nap in our bed, I am sitting on the floor, watching them sleep, typing away on a post… finally.
With Labor Day and what has followed, I’m reminded of being present. I recently joked in my Sunday school class that the story of Mary and Martha has been told to me more in the last year than it has my entire life. I joked because our class lesson was about being present. It was as if God was like, “Fine, you won’t listen to me with Mary and Martha? Let’s try this way!”
Being present in today’s world is difficult. Many times we see our world through the lens on a camera. I wonder what the view is from our children’s eyes. How often do they see our faces looking at them? Or do they, more often, search for our eyes around a phone. Do they see just the camera in their faces or do they see us behind it, excited for whatever they’ve done?
I was listening to a mom panel speak last spring about their experiences. One of the moms mentioned that, whatever you place importance on, your kids will place that importance as well. She as referring to church and God, which I wholly agree on as well, but it also made me think about social media.
So many of us spend so much time on social media – whether it is Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or something else. We are busy communicating through our text messages and emails. We want to post photos of our families to share with the world. We try to create this persona online of who we are and it can become a full-time job just trying to keep it up. I have even caught myself telling my husband to hold off on talking to me so that I could finish my thought on an Instagram post.
What must this look like to our kids? Even if we aren’t telling our kids to hold on while we post something, they are observant little buggers. They see how we act. They recognize the importance we put in our technology, our phones, and our social media lives. They see us putting the ones we love on hold for a moment on our phones.
Don’t get me wrong, I think we have something that is incredibly fortunate. We have the ability to whip out a phone and take a photo or video, capturing a moment in time so easily without the need to chance a bad shot, wait for it to develop, or miss the moment and it fading into a weak distant memory. Phones and technology have given us the opportunity to capture moments that may have previously only been recorded in someone’s mind and through stories that were passed down. That makes us incredibly lucky, and I wouldn’t trade that for anything.
I often hear adults complain about the amount of time kids spend on their phones. They laugh or shake their heads when they see kids sitting at the same table, texting each other rather than verbally communicating. I know I sigh when I see a family around the dinner table at a restaurant, each individual on a different piece of technology. But is it any wonder that our kids are doing these things? They have seen how important the technology is to us. They watch as we obsessively check our emails for new messages, our Facebook for new comments, and our Instagram for new likes.
It’s so easy to let social media run our lives – it is, after all, just a quick click away through an app on our phones. It may seem like just a quick moment, but those quick moments add up.
Sometimes, though, we need to enjoy the little moments. The moments that take our breath away. The moments that are fleeting and we want to instill them in our memories. The moments that we take advantage of when we have a phone constantly in our hand.
I challenge you to be bad at sharing photos on Instagram. I challenge you to take a quick photo and set down the phone. I challenge you to post it later or forget to post it at all. I challenge you to be present in the moment.
I challenge you to set your phone down and forget where you put it. Spend less time checking your email and social media and more time laughing with your children. There’s no race in who is the fastest to post an event. When it comes to the end, I want my memories of my children to be in full color and not from through the lens of my phone camera. I want my pictures to enhance my memories, not be my memories.
So I challenge you to demonstrate the importance of being present. I challenge you to demonstrate the importance of your children.