Today Facebook went public, and according to Conan O’Brien it happened just as the last MySpace user just went private. Mark Zuckerberg just made a few billion dollars selling off parts of his company which was built on the Timeline of your life, and all the details of which you were willing to post. For nearly a decade we have been handing over the details of our lives (read: relinquishing ownership of the details of our lives) to a group of computer programmers in Silicon Valley who through strokes of genius devised a way to monetized your life to the 115 billionth degree. Impressive.

It’s been 26 days since I “deleted” my Facebook page. Okay, so as it turns out, you can’t really delete your Facebook page. It’s impossible to do so (as far as I can tell) (Turns out you can delete it, just go here. It is now scheduled to self-destruct in 14 days.) So, I simply deactivated my account. Still residing on the mammoth servers that are Facebook are all of those pictures I posted, that friends posted (remember that one from Spring Break ’98 that you regret?), conversations about politics and religion that led to nasty exchanges and words you wish you could take back, places you checked in to complete with who was there, details of relationships gone bad, even those baby pictures your mom thought would be wonderful to throw out there… all cryogenically frozen in time on the interwebs, locked in this portal known as Facebook.

Which is a little creepy, right?

Relinquishing the rights of the life I posted on Facebook was only part of the reason for stepping away from Facebook. As Tracy and I have prepared for the immanent arrival of our daughter we have been thinking through the many implications of relinquishing the rights of our lives and now the life of our daughter to these innovative computer programmers. And in all honesty, I don’t want anyone, anywhere owning the rights to images of my daughter.

In San Francisco children are kind of like unicorns. (We boast the lowest percentage of children of any urban environment in the United States–13.2%.) It’s not uncommon to see people snapping pictures of children (that may or may not be their own) and posting them on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. In some instances these kids become their own brand of celebrity, attaining a level of notoriety that was uncommon just 10 years ago. In fact because of social media, I know an awful lot about kids I’ve never met before–the kids of friends who are scattered across the country. I don’t want to craft an online persona for my daughter, like I have done with myself, I want her to be her own person the unique person that God has created–not the person that I try and create her to be. I don’t want her to attain a level of celebrity, I don’t want the first words from people’s mouths when they meet her to be, “I feel like I already know you!” I want her to be able to surprise people with her own unique personality.

Yes, my daughter is taking me away from Facebook. But hidden not so subtly throughout my reasoning is the reality that we craft an image of ourselves online that is not really who we are in real life. We post the highlights of our lives online for all to see and revel in our amazingness, our opportunities, the “famous” we get to meet/see and have our pictures taken with, our achievements and awards. The person I had become on Facebook was not the real me. That person never had a bad day, never felt the weight of stress and pressure, was alway happy, always reading, always thinking, always doing something fun… He was never sitting on the couch in a hoodie and gym shorts stuffing his face with potato chips and crying at a Liberty Mutual commercial (not that that ever happened or anything).

Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “We have allowed our technology to outrun our theology.” We all need to take some time and carefully weigh the price of technological innovation and progress in our lives and for a season I have chosen to deactivate my Facebook page to do just that. I am unsure how long this “fast” of sorts will last but I can say that after 26 days I don’t really miss the Facebook. Life goes on in the same way, and I’m actually enjoying it a little more.

The normal rhythms of life that I have come to rely on and need in order to keep my sanity have been thrown into the abyss of chaos. The past couple of weeks I have begun the work of taking stock of just how out of rhythm life has become. And my conclusion: the picture isn’t pretty.

I’m not really sure how it got to this point, (I’m not sure we ever do), but one thing is for sure it’s affected a lot more than I would care to admit.

As I began to assess the full the picture of my life I’ve noticed how this unsustainable rhythm has negatively affected a great deal of my relationships… and our community. Honestly, I can’t remember the last time that I was fully present, fully engaged with the person I was with. Often times it was because I was too tired to function properly. Whereas other times I was already concentrating on the next meeting/appointment: how I was getting there and what we were supposed to be talking about, etc. The more I lived this way, the more ridiculously “normal” it became. At one point the realization came to me: “The unsustainable rhythms you are trying to keep are doing nothing but hurting yourself, your marriage, your community, and your friends… to keep this up is not only silly stupid at its best, but sinful at its worst.”

So, I woke up to the realization that to continue was simply a sinful mess.

This is no way to live.

Two weeks ago I began to put into practice some simple boundaries for my life that would ease my schedule, give me rest, build some margin and create a sustainable rhythm for life. This hasn’t been easy–I’m trying to break a year long rhythm of un-sustainability–but it’s making a huge difference.

The first step was to simply “Reclaim the morning”. I sit down with a cup of coffee, Bible, and my journal and have re instituted what I call “Breakfast with Jesus.” It’s a quiet time of prayer, of meditation, of simply being still and hearing from God.

The second step has been to get my butt in gear and begin physical activity that has been sorely lacking. Running. I like to run. It clears my mind, reduces stress and anxiety and gives me a generally calm disposition.

The third step is to limit my schedule so that I can accomplish what needs to be accomplished. As a result I’m only taking on a maximum of 10 meetings per week. This is between 10-15 hours of my week instead of the 30 that it had become. I’m finding the space to get things done which has greatly reduced my stress… and is freeing up more time for me to spend with Tracy (the wife). This is extremely important to me.

And the fourth step, is re instituting date night with Tracy.

This will be a long process for myself, but one that will not only be extremely valuable for my sanity, but allow me to listen to and hear more from God and be a better husband, friend, and pastor.

I’ve created a twitter hashtag: #lifeinorder if you’d like to follow along with this journey or if you yourself would like to participate in getting your life back in order. I’d love the company!

Be still.
Be still and quiet yourself.
Be still and allow all the distractions that surround you, the noises of this place, the sounds of creation calling out, the voices in your head + the anxiety of the day, allow them all to quiet and cease.
Be still.

Be still and breathe.
Inhale deeply.
Allow the breathe to cleanse your spirit as you simply relax.
Be still.

It’s here in the silence of the moment that we begin to truly listen.
It’s here in the silence that God’s voice can truly break in.
It’s here in the silence that we are able to know God, to rest in His presence-not our own-and hear God say, “You are my beloved.”

Be still.
Be still and breathe
Be still and listen
Be still and know that God is present
Be still and know that you are His beloved.
Be still.

I absolutely love watching this guy do his thing. It’s amazing, beautiful, brillaint and poetic. I wish I could do that… but I’m too much of a chicken to give it a try.

This video makes me wonder about passion. MacAskill devotes so much time and energy to this, his passion, and it shows. I wonder what is truly my passion… what it is that I devote the majority of my time and energy to? For some reason it’s not as clear cut as I would hope or expect. For the past several months my life has gone out of order. It has spiralled into a margin-less mess of doing to do and as a result I have missed out on the importance of being present, truly present with people.

So, I’m working on that… I’m working to put things back in order. Re-engage on rhythms that have been lost and set aside and abstaining from rhythms that have created this mess in the first place. I long for the re-order. I long for the margin. And I long to be truly present once again with people, giving them the very best that I have to offer… not my meager left-overs.

So, I’ve created a hashtag on twitter #lifeinorder for you to follow along on my journey or even to use for yourself if you find that your life has become tremendously out of order and long for the margin and space once again. I’m looking forward to this journey, to seeing and remembering what a life in order is about, and what possibilities can come from it.

Finding the time to slow down is often times one of the hardest things to do. When met with deadlines, and large projects, the weight and stress of doing something bigger than you can even fathom, speed seems to be of the essence. This makes patience very, very hard to come by, and very, very hard to live in. Attempting to slow down is never as simple as stepping away for in the attempt you are met with nothing but the thoughts of busy-ness, the next to-do list, the next task that must be accomplished or the next and latest greatest idea that is in your mind. Slowing down is hard to do.

I’ve been fairly good throughout the past year, of taking one day a week off and using it for rest or fun but I’ve never been good at using that day to truly slow down, re-center myself and “de-tox” from the weeks activity. In this recognition, I am striving to learn what slowing down looks like… what slowing down is… and hopefully experience and learn just how good it is not only for my frame of mind, but for my soul.