Screens

It's Sunday and I've taken a short lunch break from researching and working on a couple of essays. I made my usual lunch meal - mixed herb salad, with slices of avocado, tomato, and bites of Morning Star's buffalo style chik patty. Sometimes it is accompanied with grapefruit from my favorite, San Jacinto Farms, and other times when there's nothing else in the fridge it stands solo. Today I took my break, fixed up my heaping salad and sat down at the couch to enjoy a few moments of not studying. A few minutes passed (probably only seconds but when you're brain is unwinding it feels like forever) and I found myself scrolling through my Instagram feed, moving to open the Facebook app and realized that this was not restful nor relaxing, instead I noticed that my eyes were feeling tired and dry and that I felt more exhausted and overwhelmed. So I put my phone down and sat in the silence and crunching of my salad. It didn't take long and I was on my phone again looking for flights that I was needing to check on, but my eyes reminded me that they were tired.

So I run to my blog to write about my attachment to screens. How my eyes are always blood shot from looking at screens for research, for homework, for class, for lesson planning, for cooking, for communicating, for being informed, and for relaxing. Then I come to this place through a screen, the only place that feels safe somedays, to open up and be understood. It's become an unhealthy disorder that has gotten way out-of-hand. We weren't created to rely so heavily on these bright pixels that translate our feelings for us. 

These days I find it hard to feel satisfied or that I am satisfying to others. The translations I'm seeing on the screen are so far away they just aren't good enough. The words I write being translated for someone else to read are going to hurt their eyes too and most likely not be good enough for them either. So now I'm writing about this awful cycle that I'm feeding and I don't know how to break. 

Just this week I started a new book that my friend Sonya recommended, You and Me Forever, by Francis and Lisa Chan. I'm not far since I've been so absorbed with my screens, but in the first few pages they talk about how we as humans will never feel whole or satisfied until we realize that this world is brief, we have a mission to accomplish with only a few years to do it before eternity, then it will be over, our chance to tell the world about another way, to accept grace and receive eternal peace, love, joy, perfection. So why do we get caught up in the latest and greatest (and soon to be gone and replaced with the next latest and greatest) like a screen filling our thoughts and minds with the media that tells us we aren't enough? We are enough. If we are enough for eternity, we are enough for this short lived technology focused world. We are enough, and we have a task at hand, it's a serious task to be a good news bearer. Luckily, I don't have to do it alone, or even with a screen, because Jesus is waiting for me every morning, afternoon, and night to take my hand and lead me through this brief moment. 

My eyes are tired and blood shot, so I'm taking a break from screens only for today since there's still work to be done, and I'm going to go outside and enjoy the real deal.