Tag: community

Posted in What I'm Learning, Work & Life

Walking Away

Posted on by Ann B. Hibbard

Over the years, I’ve seen a lot of people walk away from Facebook or take breaks. I’ve thought about it many times myself but have never actually done it. After all, that’s where my work “office” is and it’s the way I interact with various groups for ministry and productivity purposes. And, in all honesty, there are certain people I only interact with via Facebook because of our distance. Frankly, I don’t think it was the right time for me to pull back before now.

Now, however, it seems to be a different story.

I’ve come to realize three things.

1. When I rely on Facebook interaction for local friends, I am much less likely to interact with them on a face to face level. I’ve already seen their pictures or heard about their week. Why ask? Ouch. Facebook can only go so deep. I need to be face-to-face if at all possible.
2. There is far too much to wade through in a Facebook stream. Too many friends. Too many statuses. Too much time. And the important stuff is too easily missed.
3. When I rely on Facebook to interact, I don’t write. I can look back over the last few years and see this as a proven fact. Posting to Facebook instead of to the family blog reduced my posting there. Facebook posts are short, uninformative, and easily lost. On the blog, however, I have to force myself to explain and give details – and I can easily read and reread the posts as the kids grow! That’s a big deal to me.
I also wrote less on my personal blog because it was so much easier to offer a Facebook blurb than to process my thoughts enough for a blog post. When you can share brief thoughts, why bother to hash them out?

Why? Because I need to.

So, now I believe it’s time to start walking away. I’ve narrowed down my friends greatly and will continue to do so in the coming year. Those who are left will be there for very specific and personal reasons. It’s not that I don’t enjoy keeping up with the people I “unfriended.” I do! I just want to keep up with them more intentionally and personally.

(That word intentional just keeps showing up!)

It’s not easy. I still have Facebook. I still have quite a few nonlocal friends to try to keep up with. But, I have already seen a positive change with local friends as we are more intentional about our face-to-face interactions.

So, if you don’t see me on Facebook anymore, that’s why. I’ll be writing more here and on the family blog. And I’ll be trying to interact with you more personally. I might need help, and it will take balance as I still have to manage a full homeschool, writing, work, and church schedule. But, I look forward to seeing how this choice to walk away strengthens the ability to be more intentional in writing and in relationships.

Meanwhile, here’s my question for you. As you work to walk more closely with the Lord and with your community of believers, is there something you need to or have walked away from? If you feel comfortable, I’d love for you to share either here or in person! After all, I had to wrestle with this decision because other people have mentioned their own wrestling. That’s community, my friends. You are part of my community, and I’d love to see us encourage one another in this journey!

Posted in Marriage

A Little Help?

Posted on by Ann B. Hibbard

Have you ever tried to accomplish something without “burdening” those around you by sharing your challenge with them? You may have had any number of reasons for keeping the process to yourself. Maybe you wanted to be successful at something, and you thought doing it on your own to the surprise of everyone else would be a great success. Or, maybe you didn’t want others to feel obligated to put aside their needs, desires, or time to help. Perhaps you just didn’t think it was that big of a deal to get it done, so you never even thought to ask for help or collaboration.

Maybe you succeeded, and maybe you didn’t. But, either way, I guarantee you made it harder on yourself. How do I know? Because I’ve been there. We are created for community and created to accomplish tasks in that community, not on our own. When we try to tackle anything on our own, we set ourselves up for a struggle simply because it goes against the grain of how we were made.

Then there is marriage. I firmly believe our “own my own” mentality has an even more negative impact in a marriage than in a godly community, exponentially increasing both our risk of failure and the strain on our marital relationships. Again, how do I know? Because I’ve done it. Far too many times. And far too recently. My husband has a lot on his plate, and I don’t want to add to that. I don’t want to increase his stress, either, by sharing a challenge with him that he can’t help with, other than to be a listening ear. Why burden him when I know he’ll want to fix it for me?

Slowly but surely, I’m learning the “why” – and discovering just how important it is for us to ask for help from one another.

A Setup for Failure

Since we’ve already mentioned community, let’s first consider how marriage compares to community. Take a look at the Genesis 2 description of marriage:

The man said, “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; She shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh. Genesis 2:23-24

What I see here is a bond that is far more powerful and deep than even the strongest bond of Christian community. If refusing to seek and receive help is harmful to our community, how much more harmful is it to a marriage in which we are made to be one flesh? When we refuse to live in that union with one another, we are automatically setting ourselves up for failure.

A Greater Burden

When my husband and I neglect to ask each other for help because we don’t want to burden one another, we are actually increasing one another’s burdens. My husband knows when something is overwhelming for me, and it increases his concern and struggle when I don’t let him help me. He works extra hard on other things to try to relieve my burdens, but that only leaves me feeling like more of a failure because I’m adding more to his already full load.

On the flip side, I also know when something is bothering and weighing down my husband even if I don’t know what it is. It increases my burden when he tries to shield me from it because I work overtime to try to make everything else run smoothly. But, because I don’t know what’s bothering him, I often end up tinkering with the very thing I should be leaving alone, thus causing more damage than help.

When we do ask for help from one another, however, sharing the load and confessing the burden to one another, a very different pattern emerges. We figure out how to work together and balance the whole of the load between us. We’re not working against each other. We’re not taking from each other’s burdens only to make our own heavier. We’re instead finding efficient ways to lighten the whole load. And we’re seeking the Lord together, allowing Him to work in us as we carry the load.

Suddenly, it’s not a burden to either of us.

I would be lying if I said I was good at this. Time and time again, I carry my own load. I neglect to ask for help and share the burden. And time and time again it comes back to bite me. But I’m slowly learning, changing, and growing in this area. I’m working hard to be very intentional.

Where do you need to ask for help this week?