Goodbye, Facebook

This book.  This book has been the reason for many of my decisions as of late...it is really changing my thinking, but what I am praying is that it is changing the way that I live.  

Jen Hatmaker...I don't even know how to describe this lady :)  She is hilarious, yet she has depth and she speaks truth boldly in grace and love.  At one point she desired to be a bible teaching, book writing, Christian women's speaker girlie...but now she would say that her main desire is "to simply be a Christ-follower making an impact through radical obedience."

So she writes the book 7...the story of an "experimental mutiny against excess", aka a 7 month experiment that she did with her family of five in which they focused on 7 areas of excess in their lives: clothes, spending, food, possessions, media, and stress.  The book is an account of how it went, what she learned, and the biblical importance and application that she came to conclude in it all.  (you can watch a trailer describing the book and the study here.)

I have been going through this experiment study with a group of women who live down in Northern Haiti as well.  We have been meeting every Saturday morning and have been wolfing through each area of the study together.  In her study materials, you only fast in each of the 7 areas for one week, literally an experiment.  Which is why I am also doing it on a larger scale with another group of women (my sister, my mom and some of all of our friends) on a larger scale as well.  We are doing each of the areas of 7 for a full month.

I haven't talked about this with a lot of people outside of these groups.  There are all sorts of reasons that people fast and all sorts of reasons they choose to do so.  The main reason for this fast as a whole is, More of you and less of me, Jesus!  In doing so, I have not wanted to draw a whole lot of attention to myself; not to be self righteous, but more for the fact that I know if I start whining to you about what I can and can't eat, or the fact that I have 7 items of clothing to wear for an entire month...it will really open up the door to make it easy to justify my way out of this fast.

Some areas are hard...we downsized SO much when we made the move down here.  Gave away bags of clothes, left behind toys and furniture, etc...crazy to think that God is calling me to still be in that place of simplifying, but I really think that he is!

This was a quote from our study this past week that talked about possessions...

"Jesus was right.  Our hearts are deeply connected to our treasures, and the more I gave away, the less I considered them treasures at all.  I couldn't talk myself into feeling differently.  I couldn't talk myself out of wanting more.  I just had to give them away, and herein was the miracle.  "We don't think our way into a new life; we live our way into a new kind of thinking."  Maybe this is one of those truths that must be lived to learn."

So that is what we are doing...trying to live our way into a new way of thinking.  Trying to be less attached to our stuff and more deeply rooted in the worth and the identity that God has for us solely in him.  Trying to acknowledge our blessings, all the while knowing that we will never fully know why we were born where we were born, or why we have what we have...but also acknowledging that with "having" comes the responsibility of caring for those who "have not" and being intentional in how we do that.  

So this week is the "experiment" in the media department.  Thus I am staying off Facebook in its entirety for the week...

Someone asked me tonight if that would be hard; isn't it how I stay connected to the world back home?  Yes, yes and yes!  It is going to be VERY hard!  But I also acknowledge in full that FB is an idol in my life.  I get on there SO MANY times throughout the day just to cling to what is happening in the world we used to be a part of and often for no reason at all.  I have a feeling it will be in this week, in my intentional step of turning off the noise that social media provides, that God will  have something to teach me...I am truly seeking to be intensional with my time-with both Him and with my family and even with those that I live and work with.

So, that being said...if you want to get ahold of me this week you can email me at erinvandelune@gmail.com

I am still hoping for a few Face Time dates with my family and will listen to music and will check my email during my allotted morning and evening times...but no Facebook, instagram or any other "extra" connection point will be present in my week this week!  

I vainly want to believe that I will be missed...I know that I will miss keeping up on all the happenings (sometimes Facebook is as addicting as that soap opera that you used to watch-filled with happiness and love stories as well as the gossip and the latest back stabbing plots ;)  But I am confident that there is a purpose and a reason for this fast...and I know that I need to rearrange the way I spend my screen time and decrease the amount of it as well...

I am going to leave you with a quote that the dear Jaclyn Houston posted on our "7" group page...

"Fasting and prayer are often mentioned together in the Bible. Prayer takes on new meaning when you're weak enough that you sometimes feel the wind might blow you over. It is a physical manifestation of a spiritual reality: We are husks of nothingness without God.

While I was fasting, the lines between spiritual and physical realities blurred. The Hebrew word that's translated "soul" in the Old Testament actually means "breath." The ancient Israelites didn't have the distinction between mind and matter (or spirit and body) that we do today. We got that from Greek philosophy.

We run into problems when we make the soul all-important and the body totally insignificant. When we forget that our bodies matter, we live lopsided lives. We forget to rest. We forget that our very cells are holy and that the clearest word God's ever spoken came to us as a body with red blood and breakable bones. The spiritual intersects profoundly with the physical.

Our souls are all tangled up in our bodies, and when I fast, I know this. I become more aware of each small physical thing and each small spiritual thing, and that they are not so separate as I once believed." - from a blog by STEPH GEHRING