on being disconnected and yet...very connected




I spent last week mostly disconnected from the world. Most places we fished had no cell service, and for a moment I remembered what it was like twenty years ago when people were more comfortable with silence. No one reached for a telephone to swipe up or down or side to side and no one reached for an iPad to check the latest news or scores, and no one played games on any device. We just sat and were still (unless of course we were wrangling the six little monkeys we brought along), and in the stillness, I felt very connected--connected to myself, to my family, and to God.

I took several walks alone through the mountain passes and just thought and prayed and thought some more. I wondered how I'd gotten so damn mixed up and confused. I wondered when I let myself believe it was okay to feel skeptical of everything. I wondered when I stopped feeling joy. It is impossible to pinpoint a day, an experience or a conversation. I suppose it just happened because I let it happen. I slowly started wandering "in strange roads" to quote a favorite scripture of mine.

As I pondered these things, I talked openly with God and was as direct as one can be with deity. I asked for forgiveness, but it felt shallow; it felt empty. I knew that I could not only ask for forgiveness, but that I had to start doing something about it. I kept walking and talking. I kept thinking. And at the end of the week, I knew what I needed to do.

I can't tell you how necessary it is to forget the world, its teaching, its whisperings, its incentives, its lies, its fake reality/news. My body and mind required the stillness. I think it always will. I am grateful to God and this magnificent world we live in that reminds us daily all we have to be grateful for. I am so grateful. I see God everywhere I look. He is in the smallest details. And he is with me.

2 comments :

"Be kind and considerate with your criticism... It's just as hard to write a bad book as it is to write a good book." Malcolm Cowley