Cutting off my hand to experience freedom

J was jumping back and forth between the two air mattresses while doing a sort of twist thing in the air. At one point he stopped, looked at me and said "mom, I'm doing applesauces!". To me it seemed as if he clearly couldn't remember the word "somersault", so I reminded him what the word was and he looks at me with a huge smile and says "mom, I call em applesauces, cause I'm just teasing ya"......3 year olds are so hilarious, and I love that this one has his daddy's trait of being a smarty.

We went to Ft. Where last weekend to take care of some things around our old house. I call it Ft Where now because I don't want my blog popping up in a G*00*gl search, I know this is open to the public but I still prefer for it not to be front page news (wink, wink). Anyway, it was good therapy for me to see our house empty and to stay there on air mattresses. It's hard to explain I guess, but I feel like I got some closure that I didn't know I needed. To me, it's now just empty floor surrounded by brick and limestone walls......I don't feel like we left our home behind as I had before.

To be honest, I've been struggling with all the change and then after getting sick it just kind of brought about a depression the past few weeks.

I as crying a lot......I would beg God to answer my cries, but it was if He was just silent. In the past I've been able to hear His still quiet voice reassuring me. It felt now as if there was a curtain across the sky.......

And just as that was happening, thankfully I started sharing it with my family and a few close friends who I knew would be praying for me. T-rav, being as kind and gentle as he always is, suggested that maybe the reason I felt like God was silent was because I wasn't being quiet and listening, that sometimes getting our thoughts to be quiet for even 15 seconds is a huge challenge. In my self pity I didn't realize that I wasn't even allowing for quietness in my head..... There are so many things that demand and even steal my attention away. These 2 precious little boys are just small and weak, depending on me for almost every need, and while I'd like to say that being a great mommy was my real distraction I'd being lying.

My real distraction, my real IDOL, was the internet. There is a certain web site (the name is similar to All Look) that I clung to when we first moved to here. I justified it because it was a way to stay connected to my friends in Ft Where, to help me get through the 1st stages of being the new girl in town. BUT as I stayed "connected" I found myself checking into this web site more frequently....until it was a habit to check it every hour or so. Since we didn't have a routine yet with places to be, it was filling in the void....the gaping hole that had been punched into my social world. But this void started to rob my time....time with my little boys that were sitting right next to me, and as I have discovered with J, they would too soon be moving into independence and altogether not "needing" mommy quite as much.

It was even starting to ooze into time with T-rav in the evenings. I found myself on more than one occasion checking this web site if he walked into the other room and even once as he was sitting across the table from me while we were on a date! As if the time we had carved out to be together with out other distractions was not that important to me. I had lost complete self-control....while trying to stay "connected" I was literally disconnecting with those sitting right next to me.

It got worse..... I started to feel bothered if someone needed something from me while I was checking into this web site. It was feeding my loneliness as well. I was starting to notice that I was thinking "I'll never have close friends like this again.....why did we move here?.....my life was so "perfect"'. My idol had started to re-change and form my thinking into complete selfishness. I was so immature in my self-control that I had let it start to control me.

It's funny how God moves through the heart of my praying husband. I had not once shared this new found love for this web site with him and could even hide it from him because conveniently there is an "app for that" which was installed on my I-rene, which made it more accessible. So in my tears again one day, T-rav gently asked me "how are you spending your time during the day? Is there something that your allowing to distract you? to penetrate the foundation of your faith and trust in God?" He didn't ask it for an answer, he asked it because he wanted me to be thinking......and thinking is what I did. I realized that His still, quiet voice that I thought I couldn't hear when I was crying was getting louder every time I logged on. He was speaking through my pain alright. He was speaking when I was hurting myself, but I was ignoring it. I then started recognizing it, listening to it.....and in His perfect timing, a friend of mine posted this on his blog and it became like a glaring light in my eyes and blaring horn in my ears. I had put this web site before everything, my family, my purpose and sadly, most importantly, My God. The commandment "Don't put anything before me" (Exodus 20:3) was finally completely understood in my world. So within a few days after realizing what was robbing, stealing and destroying my time was this web site. I also came to the realization that I was too immature at this point to control my usage on it and the solution was to cut myself off from it. "If your right hand is causing you to sin, then you need to cut it off so you won't continue to fail" (Matt 5:30) But since I can't cut my right hand off from my body, the same hand that clicks on the web site, then I had to cut myself off from the web site. So with a faithful heart that God would change my depressive situation, I deleted my account the following morning. I would love to tell you that I felt freedom almost immediately but I didn't. I felt like I had just gotten into a car accident on a dark, whiny road with no cell phone to call someone for help, which within a few days made me realize how dependent I was on this web site for satisfaction......

I was so sad that I had allowed that to happen so quickly. I had prided myself so many times on how I have never been addicted to anything, and now I found myself in a full fledge addiction to a web site. My mind recalled a wonderful saying "The pride always comes before the fall,".....those words have been a huge eye opener for me the past 10 days.

So as of today I am 10 days post All Book free. Don't get me wrong I think it's a wonderful resource to keep people connected by the masses. Some very kind, thoughtful friends would post the most reassuring and encouraging things to my profile or send a private message through this web site helping me in the first few days that we were here. Not to mention some of my more drier sense of humored friends and their status updates that would give me a good giggle now and then. I don't know if at this point I will ever be back on this site, as I don't know how God will develop my maturity in self-control. Right now I'm thinking that just as someone who has gone through AA will probably not want to ever touch the bottle again.....that may have to be the same for me. Too extreme? Maybe. But God knows my heart and now that I'm free of it I can say that I never want to be back in that sad state again.

This is my personal conviction and I'm not posting this to shame anyone else or think I'm better because I quit this web site.....I'm sharing this because I love people who are transparent and I strive to be "real" even if it is embarrassing to admit your addicted to a web site.

Now I can humbly say that I've been recovering by leaps and bounds this past week, really spending some much needed time praying for God's direction, tuning back into my family and learning just who these little boys are that God has blessed me with for a very short time. I've eliminated a lot of "noise" in my brain.

In Isaiah 48, God shows himself to establish His people, will never give up on His promises to us and repeats over and over the word "LISTEN"....or translated in Crissyism "pay attention!".....I've found that me not paying attention to what I'm doing with my time each day was/is giving way to no peace. The question my BSF teacher asked was "how un-comfortable are you willing to be for His purpose in your life?". I can tell you that living here is super un-comfortable for me, but when I look at the past and how much I changed, joy in my life after we moved to Ft Where, it gives me abundant hope for what type of joy will come from following Him and his plans for us here in Austin. My hope is that I will be the type of person that radiates joy, humility and laughter. Those things are contagious, and they come only from Christ and draw those around to ask 'what is it about her, that's different from others?'.

I love this quote "I like your Christ, it's your Christan's I have a problem with. For they are so un-like their leader". I forget who said this, but it's something I'm really thinking about lately. I know I need a lot more humility, pride is a huge stumbling block for me and I hate to think of how many people I have turned off from seeking Christ because of this nasty pride I carry. They may have looked at me and thought, I would never want to follow Christ if it means I act like that, Yuck!

So that's my latest struggle. As I re-read this it doesn't read nearly as passionately as it sounds in my head. It's been a huge struggle for me and I'm so thankful for it because in it I growing more to find strength in the One who made me. I have a purpose in this life other than to live day to day, making it day to day. These set backs help me see who He is and who I can be when I live my life to making a difference for Him. I know one day I will be able to comfort someone else with this because I too walked through it. I'm not done with it yet, I'll never gain perfection in it but I'm gaining strength through Christ and that's all I ask for.

OK, so here's some pics of the boys....you at least deserve that after having read all this.

Helping daddy get the heavy boxes moved to build the new playground T-rav got for the boys

swinging on the monkey bars

trying out the rock wall

Look at that smile!!

Even baby brother got a swing too

My handsome T-rav. Love that man!

My little red-head

T-rav showing J how to climb up the rock wall with the newly installed rope

Trying it alone

The final product.

C loves his new swing

So does J.....course he loves anything that has to do with being outside

mastering the rope climb

His first sleep over.....J and his buddy crashed after about an hour and 1/2 of playing in the dark.

J having the time of his life running through the rain with his buddy B from Ft Where. What a blessing that we have friends that come to visit us

Silly Silly C, how I love thee

His red hair matches the floor in this pic

What a huge blessing these 3 are to me....truly a gift