Just writing

Today I am going to Just Write.  When I just write, I write with no predetermined intent and I just tell simple events in my life.  I don’t try to edit or make it beautiful or have much of a purpose other than to tell and to write. I can make it as short or as long as I want.

I have a stomach virus.  This virus has been traveling through my house since Thursday, January 29.  My son had it for five days.  My daughters (yes both) had it for only a moment.  I seem to  have caught the version my son had.  Yesterday, I didn’t feel like driving a car so I kept my son at home.  And for most of the day, I felt good.  But then I ate and today, I don’t feel so good.  Yesterday, though, we played magnetic dolls and went outside, where Lisabeth and Elijah rode bikes.  I watched them play with a fire truck, and balls, and a tee tiny alien figure.  Then we went to the swings and swang for a while.  (Growing up swang was a word – swing, swang, swung, but my spell check is telling me it is no longer a word.  I want to keep it anyway).

While we were outside, I thought about Uganda and why He keeps repeating that word to me, and if I am to adopt a child from there and how long I would wait before I knew His plan.  Needless to say, when I was looking for a photo for my post, He kept bringing up African children, so that’s what you see.

Children © by sidelife

It was simple and breezy and enjoyable just because of the its elegant quietness.  This kind of moment was the kind of rest God had been telling me to do all throughout preparation for the women’s conference.  Yet it was so much harder to be resting at his feet, to be like Mary instead of Martha.  We’ve had a lot of sickness this winter.  I’ve had a lot of heart sickness too, just missing my family as I wrote/prepared, wanting to be fully present with them and not quite sure if I was.  I feel like in a way, the sicknesses were opportunities to rest, to fill my heart’s desire to BE with my family.

Back in December, a couple of my friends completely checked out of facebook, and then reengaged after Christmas season.  I have been toying with the idea for some time before that, but didn’t want to lose clicks on my blog or opportunities to encourage hurting friends.  This seemed totally risky knowing that this blog is new and I could get readers just by sharing on my fb account.  However, I am doing “a new thing” here at this blog.  Writing posts like this one and like the general posts on my old blog about life and family are not what I aim to do here.  I assume readership will be different.

But when my husband I hurt one another, I decided it was time to finally do some of the things I’d been wanting to do.  One, I deactivated my facebook account.  Two, I disconnected the Wii.  My son totally has an addiction problem, and it was time to relearn how to spend REAL honest to goodness time together, without looking at a screen.

My family and I are relatively simple.  We have one laptop, one TV, and one smartphone.  No iPads.  No e-readers.  No multiple computers or TVs.  Even my husband’s cell phone is a work phone; he doesn’t have his own.  That means this computer is always shared.  And believe me, as a blogger, there are times when I’d rather have my own screen that I don’t have to share.  But if facebook and the Wii complicate my life already, perhaps adding more screens would not aid.  This blog does have a facebook account, but it is separate from mine, and I am sure I will re-activate mine sometime soon, but for now, I enjoy the simple life of not knowing what everyone is doing.

And if they miss me, they know where to find me in the blogosphere or hopefully some way to reach me in real life.  I rest fully in Him, knowing that He will accomplish His purposes in me on facebook or otherwise.  🙂

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I am linking up with Heather of the Extraordinary Ordinary for Just Write.  She is on #21 today.