Blogger Missing: Last Seen w/ Real Life

Real Life has been kicking up a storm around here, and I find myself uninterested in blogging.  When I was a mom of all babies and toddlers, internet communities served as a bulwark to gaurd against the overwhelming feeling of isolation.  I suppose some personality types wouldn’t mind the isolation.  As an extrovert, I find myself enjoying social interaction, as long as it’s intersperced with time to be alone, particularly to read, think, and reflect.  The sound of silence has taken on a new beauty, what with motherhood’s relentless NOISE.  Unless they’re zoning out in front of a video, of course, like this morning.  Hey, at least they’re getting a good abdominal work out while their little brains are turning into mush.

The noise of a pack of kidlets is a GOOD noise, don’t get me wrong, but it’s noise nonetheless.  Loud noise.  Only two quiet ones in the bunch, and that only barely.  I had an overnight hospital stay last month and came home feeling like I’d been to a spa.  I laughed with my husband as I described how refreshing and relaxing it was.  You know it’s bad when those are the adjectives used to describe uncomfortable medical procedures and a restless night.  That’s like when you look forward to going to the dentist. I can’t tell you how many other mothers-of-littles I’ve had say how nice it can be to spend an afternoon laying back in a room of adults.  So what if one is poking your gum with needles and sawing into one of your teeth.  A small price to pay… 

I had no idea motherhood would prove to be so isolating until we moved up here with our little 8 month old and I sat in our apartment in a new area, pregnant with a second child, alone except for a fat-cheeked baby.  My husband worked ten hours a day (with our only vehicle), and the baby and I took daily walks, prepared meals together (she would sit on the kitchen counter with me and I’d talk about each item I was adding to the bowl, etc.  This would never have worked with any my little boys, mind you—the contentedly sitting still on the counter part).  One long dark Alaskan winter passed in a blur of cleaning bathrooms that were hardly used, putting mittens on fat little hands and looking out the window at a squirrel that I would make friends with, only to have him take all the food I would give him and use it to stuff up our dryer vent.  I had no idea that the vacant listless feeling in me was the sharp ache of loneliness.   

We’ve since moved up in the world—another vehicle, no more penny-to-penny existance, and the fat-cheeked baby is now an energetic fun-loving nine year old, with four younger siblings to boot.  All of that admittedly makes life easier.  Life has become almost too full.  But it wasn’t like that then.  I remember the first time I discovered Discussion Boards.  I would feverishly type out my replies to another mother’s questions while my one year old bounced happily on the bed behind me, or dig around in my closet trying on mommy-sized shoes.  It was like dining at a fine restaurant after a day of fasting, this orgasmic THING I’d discovered—-like someone put an oxygen mask on a drowning person.  PEOPLE!  OH MY GOSH, there are Real Live People, at all times of the day!  I relished the hour or two I’d spend on the discussion forum, every topic as if it was of life or death import.  When the baby woke up, I’d cringe: time to shut off the computer.  It was like turning off a dear friend.   

That was then, of course.  Now, I find myself needing the internet community less and less, using it for enjoyment instead of survival.  My kids are getting older, and with that comes more time out of the house—drama practice, violin lessons, etc.  Plus, get this: I can go to the grocery store all by myself now.  (This is a big and wonderful thing—trust me)!  My oldest two are competent babysitters (they know my cell phone number, too), plus, now that we’ve moved into town, the store is only a few minutes away, as is Grandma’s house.  (Yes, I do pay them to babysit.  I didn’t give birth to them so that they could watch my little kids).  Not only that, but now I have friends, activities, businesses and a life that extends beyond motherhood alone.     

With the black-and-white world of fundamentalism behind me, I also find that I no longer have this overwhelming urge to share “the truth” with anyone and everyone who doesn’t see life through my framework.  For one thing, a lot of what I’d thought was “truth” were really little bumps—certainly not hills to die on.  Simply differences of opinion, different ways of looking at the same thing.  

And I’m realizing (though I knew this in word-form before) that while sometimes Truth can be shared in the form of printed words, more often it is made visible through the real live fruits born of a branch abiding in the Vine.  My ears tune out a sermon: my eyes pop open wide when I see gentleness, patience, kindness, and self-control in real live action. 

Anyone can blab on and on about the way things oughta be.  It takes blood, sweat, and tears to live it.  I like writing about it better.  WAY easier.  But writing about God doesn’t get me any brownie points with Him.  There’s no quota to be filled, no performance bar to hit in order to make Him smile.  He doesn’t work like that.  Writing an excellent sermon about worshipping Christ while snarling at your kid’s clumsy milk spill just doesn’t cut the mustard, you know?  Plus, you can’t quantify things like grateful hearts, patient serving, and gentle answers.  I’ve realized that, at least for me, blogging and belonging to internet discussion groups are really a lot more about me meeting my need for interaction with other humans than it is about “a ministry” to others. 

Maybe I just tried to think of my internet time in terms of “ministry” because I felt guilty about it before.  If I couched it in spiritual terms, I felt a lot better about it!  But I don’t really feel that guilty about internet community now.  It’s just another form of community, another circle of friends—very legitimate, very useful.  The only reason to feel guilt about it is if I’m shutting out other communities begging for my time (like my kids), in favor of human interaction through a flat-screen mediator.  That said, anyone who thinks kids should have a full 24 hours of parent interaction every single day needs to go somewhere else.  I have NO problem taking an hour off of parent duty to chill out on the computer.  

But, ahem, mini clip games don’t count.  Do you know that I’ve almost beat the hardest level of Canyon Defense?  My toddler sits on my lap and cheers for me, “Kill ‘em, Mom! Kill ‘em!”  I suppose it’s counter-productive to muse about the relationship of pacifism to the Christian life while desperately trying to save enough money to buy one of those red guns that nail up to three enemies at one time (though nothing beats the laser gun).  But, hey, think about it.  If I don’t kill them, they’ll make it through the canyon and, well, there goes the little village I was supposed to protect.  Really. I shoot because I care.