Missed Part I on Monday? Grab it here–and make sure to come back for the social media giveaway on Friday!
4. If social media is to love others, it’s gotta stay in its proper place. I highly value this post on 6 Ways Your Smartphone Is Changing You, in which the author asserts that our smartphones can take the place of embodiment—of simply being fully present with the real, live folks around us.
My son—my oldest—turned twelve a few weeks back. Helping him with his piano lesson, I played a few notes of the “New World Symphony” for him. He didn’t remember a bit of it—though we played it night after night after night for him as an infant, willing that cranky boy to go to sleep in one different house after another during a crazy season of life. We visited 13 states in his first 13 months of life. I’m pretty confident he was grumpy in all 13.
But mothering him well looked so different than what it does now. Now we’re having conversations about puberty, about ethics; he just finished reading The Hobbit, and borrows my phone to play TobyMac while he washes dishes. Each stage—crabby or not—has enveloped me in a rich joy that could only be flattened if I attempted to describe it to you.
If you’ve ever stood in the middle of African worship, it’s…well, it’s pretty hard to stand still.
As I first stood just mildly observing at our recent refugee center staff retreat, I marveled at the full-bodied–literally!–movement and singing: music that took over my heart, my body. I was, um, really dancing (don’t necessarily try to picture it…) to worship for the first time. Moisture leaked from the corners of my eyes. Perhaps you can see what I’m talking about:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDCKhJFGYas
“Mom! It’s the one with the crossed bill!”
I ducked my head at his urgent whisper, peering out the glass. Sure enough—an Openbill Stork. Three feet in height and layered in glossy black, this one seemed shiny enough that it might have just glided in from Murchison Bay, a handful of kilometers from our home. Weeks before, my son and I had sat quietly together, watching the same variety of stork leverage that gapped bill upon of the fist-sized snails that creep somberly across our yard.
![Now You're Speaking My [Love] Language](https://www.janelbreitenstein.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/love-languages-text-1.jpg "Now You're Speaking My [Love] Language")
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