Several months back I started a journey of fasting in seven different areas. I became inspired to do this after reading Jen Hatmaker‘s book 7 where she took set areas of her life and fasted for a month. I have since taken inspiration from Jen’s book and made each fast my own. I focus on the same area, but mold it to what I want my fast to look like. The areas of focus are:
- Food
- Clothing
- Waste (being more green)
- Spending
- Media
- Stress
- Possessions
As I sit writing this ready to tell you about my month on media I realized that I never updated about the prior month, so I will do the best I can to sum up both.
During May I focused on possessions. Our close friends where moving to Nicaragua to become full-time missionaries (you can read their story here), and I wanted to help. They were selling pretty much everything they owned because they couldn’t take it with them and they needed to raise the funds to move overseas. What a perfect month for me to let go of what I own! I went through our house digging in every closet and draw we had to rid ourselves of the things that we truly didn’t need. Seriously, how many pairs of shoes does one girl need? Our friends had this gigantic garage sale that we brought our stuff to. Yes, I realize that if you read Jen’s book then my possession fast was nothing like hers. But, it doesn’t matter! The entire point was to let go of our things that we hold so closely because someone else might need it more. That is exactly what I did. My donations to the garage sale helped our friends fund their trip. What better way to clean out my closet?
Jump ahead a month and I focused on my media fast. I took a while to decide what exactly I wanted to do for this month. Honestly, I don’t have a problem reading a book instead of watching TV, or going for a walk as a family after dinner. Yes, we could definitely use less TV time in our life, but, I didn’t feel like it was the big thing to tackle. Instead I decided my fast would be social media related, and predominately during family hours. With Instagram and Facebook on my phone it has become such a habit to be sitting on the couch, not really doing anything, and I grab my phone to start scrolling through Facebook. Not that this is really a horrible thing. I just wanted to set my phone aside and give my family my complete attention.
So I put my phone down when we got home for the day and wouldn’t pick it up again until after Eli was in bed, if even then. It’s actually pretty sad that I would have to remind myself of it. There were a few times not even thinking about it that I would grab my phone and start to go into Instagram only to remind myself that I was fasting. Habits happen when you don’t even realize, so this month was intended for me to break that silly iPhone in hand habit. Intentional family time, that’s what I want and not just when I am fasting from social media. I think this month taught me how easily you can slip into those not so bad, but not what I want habits. It’s not a bad thing to get on my phone, check out Instagram or Facebook. I just want to be intentional that when I am with my family or friends they know that they have my attention and the online world can wait. It’s all about being intentional in the time that you spend together!
