Social Media, the good, the bad, and the extremely difficult

A few minutes ago I scrolled through the Instagram pictures of a local middle school boy who was airlifted to an Ohio burn center this weekend after a freak bonfire incident.  Earlier this morning I watched a short facebook video update on a six (seven?) year old boy with leukemia.  Saturday evening I spent an hour reading 3 years worth of facebook posts from a woman who passed away on Valentine's day after a short illness.  The woman was the youngest person to attend our wedding to have died.  In all of these cases I don't really "know" the person, but I know and love people who know and love them.  I recently had a conversation about how the human psychy (not sure how to spell that) was not made for today's social media, as in it is hard to digest the amount of information we can get bombarded with.  I am still a proponent of social media when used properly.  For one thing I think it is a fantastic way to evangelize (Pope Francis thinks that too, I follow him on twitter).  Prayer requests can be sent and in minutes people from all over the world can be praying for your intention.  It's kind of like the communion of saints right here on earth.  I was thinking about these three people who I've been praying for and realized a couple things.  One is because I know people who know these people (friends of friends, but in the real life sense), I would know about all of these events even without social media.  Not necessarily as quickly or as much, but I surely would have heard about them.  I think the thing that is really hard for the mind to fathom is the fact that I can look at  posts and pictures that the very people who are now in heaven or in a burn center in Ohio posted just days or weeks ago not knowing their fate.  This is the kind of thing that gets me shaking as I type this and will bring tears right to the surface so at a moment's notice I might freak out crying on my family.  (I did it often this weekend!)  It's hard to love.  The more people you love the more you open up for hurt.  It's hard sometimes to know about the difficulties people have to face, but knowing about them gives you a chance to pray for them.  Knowing that a sweet little girl who's had multiple brain surgeries and has been seizure free for a year means so much more when you've followed the family's difficult journey through social media and joined them and thousands of others in prayer.  Social media also allowed me to see pictures of beautiful twin babies just minutes after their birth.  I've never met the babies' parents, but I've prayed for them and their marriage and prayed for the little girl when there was a possibility of a health issue.  if I didn't know those possible complications (the bad), I wouldn't as much appreciate the good.  We are called to be a light.  Sometimes that might be sharing the fact that your 18 year old son (who's had his own health issues pre-social media) got accepted into college such that 105 people can "like" it.  Maybe that was the best social media news they've heard all day.   Or maybe sometimes we can be a light by posting something "lite", like the fact that we laid sod in our backyard this weekend.  Even amidst all the tragedy you still have to have hope, even if that hope is that maybe this time we'll get something to grow in our back yard.

My first baby boy...

...got his college acceptance to UCF today.  There is still plenty of discussion and decision making to come because he may very well continue at Lake Sumter next year, but options are good.  Also as a homeschooling mother who's been in uncharted (chartered?) territory for the last 18 years, this is a huge relief. HUGE!! Like really really really HUGE!  PHEW!!

Jonathan very likely has dyslexia.  He has amblyopia and strabismus, had eye surgery at 9 months old, and he only uses one eye at a time.  We've never really looked into getting a diagnosis, and truly never even thought about it until about a year ago.  With homeschooling that involved tons of talking sprinkled with read-alouds and audio books, this wasn't even a thought.  With a 4.0 in all his college classes so far, it still doesn't seem necessary.  Anyway it's still another hurdle for him in addition to the mom in uncharted territory thing.


I'm often doing (or at least thinking of) far too many things at one time.  Sometime in the last few days I heard (it was on TV, but I wasn't looking at it, I was doing something else) a Goodwill Industries commercial about a mother that was so thankful that Goodwill Industries was there to provide a job for her "son who had a stoke at 6 months old."  For some reason it took a while for this commercial to sink in, but... my son had a stoke at 3 days old.  I know the elasticity of the brain rewiring and all that is so much easier the earlier things like that happen, but I really hadn't thought about a lot of this in a while.  I mean I am thankful every single day that my kids are healthy because we have had too many close calls, but I hadn't thought it in the sense that a baby who had a stoke might have a goal of being able to work at Goodwill.  WOW! 

I have many more tangents that I could go off on, but lets just sit with that for a little while, ok?

7 QTs what I'm reading...

1. I think I heard somewhere once that reading more than one book at a time (not the exact same time) is good for your brain.  Just like Sudoku and occasionally brushing my teeth with my wrong hand, I like to do what I can to help my brain.  Sometimes I go overboard.  I am reading enough books right now that I can fill a quick takes post with them.  The first one I mentioned yesterday and it doesn't really count as overboard because it is just a one page a day think, pray, act kind of thing.  Small Steps for Catholic Moms.


2. Numero dos will be done this weekend and is a book that a friend recommended.  Where'd You Go Bernadette.  There's a lot to talk about in this book.  If I were a 'real blogger' in addition to these amazon links, I'd be some kind of an affiliate and get a penny or two if you bought one of these, but I'm not, so I won't.  This means I get nothing if you buy or read any of these.  If you do though, let me know so we can talk about them.

3. Floors.  This is a sunshine state book that I'm reading with Jake.  It's pretty good, and looks like it is/ will be a series.

4.  Is an oldie that I've never read... Screwtape Letters.  I'm not very far along in this, I'm just reading a letter or two every few days.  Next up in this category will be Mere Christianity also by CS Lewis.


5.  By What Authority.  I think I borrowed this one from Kirsten about 5 years ago.  Well I'm almost done with it :) !

6. Lastly another book that is meant to be read a little at a time, I picked this up at the library. 


7. And here's a bonus... two books that I am so looking forward to reading, both come out this spring.  Girl at the End of the World and Something other than God.


More quick takes are in the usual place.

Thought for today

I always leave our snowmen decorations up after Christmas.  Snowmen aren't just Christmas, they are winter.  Winter is a tricky subject in Florida, here one day (to the tune of 57* and drizzly...today) and gone the next (like yesterday's 84* and sunny).  So while my intention is to leave the snowmen up through Valentine's Day, I usually can't make it.  Today then became the day I shoved all snowmen and any remaining Christmas hand towels, musical peanuts characters, etc into the last Christmas stuff bin.  I even dusted a little and tossed up some generic knick knacks as well as some Valentine paraphernalia (yeah, I wouldn't have spelled that that way either, but I looked it up in ye olde fashioned dictionary) in their place.    I even managed to dust a couple surfaces before I decided to take a break to drink my smoothie (today's is lime yogurt, strawberries, pineapple, frozen mixed berries and a little peach mango juice), and order some wheat berries because we are running low and eating far too much store bread these days.  Well from there I went to a blog and spent way too much time reading about someone else's choices for baby names and far too many of the 145 comments that went with it.  Since over 10 years ago Mike and I made a decision that we would not have made if we could go back and do it all over again, unless there is a baby dropped on our doorstep (which I do sometimes pray for), this time spent reading about baby names is pretty moot and essentially a waste of time.  I started to realize that and opened my Small Steps for Catholic Moms (or if I'm being totally honest, I actually opened to today's page while in the bathroom, but I don't usually blog like that, so disregard).  Today's thought...

 "Take care not to meddle in things which do not concern you, nor even allow them to pass through your mind; for perhaps you will not then be able to fulfill your own task." ~~ St John of the Cross


So now I am closing the computer in hopes of fulfilling my "own task" for today and maybe those snowmen will make it out to the garage, and maybe too it doesn't really concern me and my family what 145 people that I don't know think of baby names. 

All this to say I'm a great rationalizer and lots of time spent reading lots of things on the internet can be considered worthy, but I think God and St John of the Cross just smacked me in the face with a reminder that there are also a lot of things out there that are not necessarily worthy for me

7 QTs bragging edition

1.  Tonight is opening night of the first main stage show that Jonathan is stage managing.  This is a pretty big deal!!  The show is called Secrets Every Smart Traveler Should Know.

2.  Jake got all As for the second 9 weeks of 5th grade.

3.  Jonathan's "official homeschool high school" transcript is in an envelope ready to be sent to the University of Central Florida, his GPA is 3.82 unweighted and 4.02 weighted.  We toured UCF on Tuesday.

4.  I didn't take any pictures at UCF and none of Jake's A Honor Roll certificate, but I did take this pic this morning of the two of them watching dirt get delivered.

 

5. Madi is on a team to host a high school retreat next month.  She has been attending very late meetings every Monday for the last few weeks, working hard to make this upcoming retreat life-changing for some fellow high school students. 

 

6. Madi is also part of Jonathan's tech crew for the main stage show, as well as playing the female lead in the upcoming young people's production of Music Man, she continues to work at the Eustis Rec after school program, she babysat four different times this week, and is trying to fit in a little school around all that!

 

7. Jake is hoping to read at least 15 of the sunshine state books before the end of the school year.  I think he's read 3 or 4 so far.  I'm so glad he's going to homeschool again next year, and I really hope he brings home some of the motivation he has at school.

 

Go here to read some more quick takes from the winner of the best link up in the Sheenazing awards.

for when I'm looking for this again

http://www.fldoe.org/articulation/pdf/DEList.pdfhttp://www.fldoe.org/articulation/pdf/DEList.pdf

BOOKS

While I'm sitting here aimlessly clicking through blogs, I found a link up where tons of people linked to list of the best books they've read this year (last year actually), and I'm going to want to go back to it again and again.  While I am sometimes the type to reread Judy Blume books or blog posts over and over again, I am always on the look out for other good books to read.  Sometimes I almost fall into that category that I detest which is spending more time looking for books to read than actually reading books, but anyway.  Without further ado (I googled that, I thought it might be adieu...it's not!)  here is the link of links.

And speaking of books and reading in an hour I am going to Jake's school to help a third grader that I don't know yet practice their reading.  Maybe I can give the child a little help in the run-on sentence department because I see to be a pro at that!