What's On My Mind?

I was having a really bad day the other day.  It was the kind of day that just made me frustrated, discouraged, sad, and mad all at the same time.  Everything seemed to be going wrong.  I found out that some dear friends of mine were having a really hard time.  Good, God-honouring people who have done their best to love and serve him.  I heard about another two families that are facing life-and-death medical emergencies.  Again, good people, people who love the Lord, who, in my humble estimation, don't deserve this, and do deserve a miracle.  Several transport truck drivers and luxury sedan drivers decided that my little Fit did not belong on the road and that 20 km over the limit wasn't fast enough, and tried to bully me, brush me off, or summarily dispatch of me.  It was just one of "those days".

And I really, really wanted to vent about it on Facebook.

I could have said something cryptic and attention-seeking.  Something like, "<sigh> . . . can't wait for this day to be done . . . " .  People would have responded with things like this, "Awww, you ok?"  "Why, what's wrong?"  "((Hugs))" "Tomorrow's a new day!"  A few spiritual folks might have put something like, "Aww, praying for you."  I could have continued the attention-seeking with a comment like, "Oh, you know, life . . . " under my own status.

I could have said something passive-aggressive-vaguely-humourous.  Something like, "To the transport truck driver that tried to crawl up my tailpipe:  You don't Fit."  And that would have gotten a plethora of other sorts of responses.  "Haha!", "LOL", "Hope you're ok," that sort of thing.  People who know me and my car might even have thought me mildly clever, and might have followed up with a pun or two of their own.  People who don't know me or the car I drive might have been tempted to correct my bad capitalization.

I could have said something attention-seeking-disguised-as-heroic, making other people's difficulties out to be my own.  Maybe, "Boy, it's going to be a long night.  I'm baking muffins for one set of friends who are having a hard time, and cooking a meal for another set of friends who are struggling with a life-and-death medical emergency.  And then it's off to work again tomorrow."  I can just imagine the comments.  "Aww, you're such a good friend,"  "Wow, you've got a lot on your plate,"  "Don't overdo it," blah, blah, blah.

Maybe I could have taken the online gossiper prayer-warrior approach:  "Hey, everyone, please pray for friends of mine.  They're going through a really hard time right now, and their little boy is in the hospital and they don't know if he's going to make it.  They have to stay with him 24/7, and they're all just so exhausted but their little guy is so sick.  Pray for them, ok?"  And here comes the clincher -- "God knows who they are."  (That shows that I'm really interested in prayer and not at all interested in sharing a bit of gossip.)

Or maybe I could have just come across as spiritual super-hero.  "Wow, life is so hard right now, but I'm just keeping my eyes on Jesus.  He is my strength and song."  Everyone will be so impressed with how holy and special and spiritual I am, don't you think?  "Wow, Marianne, you're such an inspiration." "Thanks for being such a good example to me."  "Jesus will honour your commitment to him."  "All things work for our good!"

I could have done any of those things.  I see them all the time on Facebook.  I'm sure that an examination of my own newsfeed might reveal similar updates (although I hope not too many).  But more and more, when my fingers are hovering over my keyboard to update my status, I find myself going back to a verse in Psalm 73.  "If I had said, 'I will speak thus,' I would have betrayed the generation of your children."

The psalmist has plenty to complain about.  He looks around at his world and sees that horrible, miserable people have great lives, and great people have horrible, miserable lives.  He wonders to himself what the point is.  Why bother trying to live for God when it all goes horribly wrong anyway?  I can just see the Psalmist's status update:  "That's it!  I'm giving up!"  But then he says, "If I had said, 'I will speak thus,' I would have betrayed the generation of your children."  So he doesn't speak thus.  He doesn't speak at all.  Instead, he spends time in God's presence, and reorients himself around God, without saying anything to anyone.

So my fingers hang above the keyboard, and I wonder, Am I betraying the generation of your children by writing this?  Could what I am writing here cause someone who reads it to stumble?  Could it cause them to question the goodness of God?  You see, when I vent on Facebook, I'm not venting in private, even though I may be alone in the room.  I'm not venting to an individual I know has the spiritual wisdom and discernment to help me reorient myself to God, which is what I really need -- to be reoriented to God.   Those are good and right ways of dealing with my struggles and heartaches.  But I'm not doing those things by venting on Facebook.  I am not being real and vulnerable, or building genuine community.  Instead, I am venting to a congregation of anywhere from 50 to 500 people, if my friends' list is conservative and if my privacy settings are tight.  (If they're not, I could have an audience of over 100,000 people -- bigger than any mega-church in the States).  And even if I know all the people on my friends' list fairly well, I can't possibly know them all well enough to justify unloading my doubts and concerns, my questions for God, my hurts and my hangups to all of them.  I may cause them to doubt.  I may add to their already-heavy burden.  I may find myself "feeling" better, but oriented to myself and my dutiful Facebook friends rather than to Almighty God, which is nothing but idolatry. If I speak of these things, I am betraying the congregation of God's children.  And if I've indicated that I'm a Christian under my religious point of view, I'd go so far as to say that I am misusing and abusing God's name.

So I don't write any of it.  It's been a hard day.  So what?  They happen.  The world doesn't need to know that Marianne had a bad day.  It is enough that God knows it.  If I have to, I have real friends, face-to-face friends with whom I can share and cry and pray.  Someday, I'll be able to look back on this day, too, and see God's hand of faithfulness in it.

In the meantime, it is best that I stay silent.  The status update bar will remain blank.