Dear Facebook

First off, I have to tell you that I am definitely a fan of yours.  I love the way you give me access to the lives of people I barely know, allowing me to know where they work, letting me see pictures of their children graduating preschool, teaching me that they do not think favorably of the latest referendum taking place in their state, which is likely miles and miles from my own.  I especially like the time you save me.  In a short, often witty sentence, you quickly catch me up on the details of my actual friends' lives, so that I can be all, "I saw on FB that you went to that new restaurant," thus saving me the pain of having long-winded conversations:  "Oh hey, how are you?  So what have you been up to?  Oh, how was date night?  What new restaurant?  How did you like it?"  Such tedium.  I think Entertainment Weekly summed it up best when it said, ""How on earth did we stalk our exes, remember our co-workers' birthdays, bug our friends, and play a rousing game of Scrabulous before Facebook?"

So it causes me great pain to inform you that I am going to have to take a break from you, dear friend, and from the 333 friends, relatives, and other acquaintances I can spy on--I mean, "continuously stay in touch with wherever they are in the world!"  (Whew.  Thanks, Wikipedia!)  I know others have done the same, stating "I'm taking a break from FB" on their status and going MIA for a month or so.  Their reasons vary, but when pressed they'll tell me (through FB, I don't actually talk to most of these people in real life) that they just wanted to disconnect for a while, they didn't like the time FB took from them, or they wanted to live more intentionally.   I, on the other hand, am perfectly content answering your siren's call, oh wonderful social media tool. I don't think that ooccasionally checking my neighbor's status while ignoring my kids' pleas to play with them makes me a bad mother. And who among us hasn't checked FB while going to the bathroom? It's no different than reading a book on the toilet.

No, my break stems from something else entirely and has to do, of course, with THE INJURY.  As you may know, Facebook, summer is a good time for physical activity.  As the weather warms and the days grow longer, people venture outside and start moving.  They discover that moving makes them feel good.  Before long, they decide to move toward a goal, so they sign up for different athletic events:  5ks, triathlons, fun runs, marathons.  And then the postings begin.  "Look at me!  I just signed up for the such and such triathlon!"  Or, "I'm going to run the Mud Run!  Am I crazy or what?"  Or, "Here's a picture of me having just run my longest run ever!  It was awesome!"  Nothing whatsoever wrong with this.  I used to do the same thing myself.  Except that now, of course, I can't.  THE INJURY has disqualified me from training for any such races and I'm not going to get too many "likes" with posts like this: "Just took my dog for a really slow 30 minute walk.  Got to clean up his poop.  It was awesome!" 

So I am left to read about everyone else's pursuits.  And this is when Bitterness creeps in along with his close friend, Envy.  They make themselves comfortable in my heart as I am perusing you, Facebook.  And I get mad at my friends, who (let's be honest here, FB) aren't even my friends.  But some of them are, and instead of applauding their efforts and encouraging them, I am envying them and somehow holding them responsible for my inability to do the same things they are doing. 

After a while I am forced to ask myself if this sort of behavior is healthy, which, of course, it is not.  I feel lousy enough not being able to run or do anything else without having to deal with the ugly feelings that come about every time someone mentions physical activity.  1 Corinthians 13, the Bible's golden chapter on love, states that "Love does not envy, and is not easily angered."  Rather, "Love is patient and kind."  I know the kind thing would be to write something encouraging on my friends' statuses (surely this isn't the plural form of "status") and patiently wait for the day to come when I can join them, but right now I'm not there.  So it's easier for me to just walk away, to stop checking you, to--(gasp)--DELETE YOU FROM MY PHONE.  (No, silly, I am not going to delete my account.  I enjoy our relationship too much for such nonsense as that.)  In the meantime, I will pray for healing of THE INJURY and of my heart, will spend some more time playing with my kids, and will look for different reading material for the bathroom.