The deafening silence from my sleeping keyboard has been calling me for weeks. My notable absence from blogging has grieved my writer’s urge but equally allowed space for emotions to flow and practicalities to be overcome.
Life has been exceptionally busy and sometimes hard, but God has made a way for me to rest. Last week our internet provider turned off our connection 8 days early, before our new provider was due to connect us up. As our telephone also uses the internet and mobile signal is limited out here in the sticks, we have been out of communication with the world for over a week. We asked the provider to sort out their mistake, but they had no protocols in place for such an event. So that was it, nothing could be done and so we decided to make the best of it. I mean it’s not been that many years since we all lived very happily without the internet, surely we wouldn’t miss it that much, would we?
I’m fairly technophobic and so I delighted in the concept of being disconnected, but how was in reality? How did it impact the family, Phil’s work and the teenagers? What did we miss? What did we gain?
family at Chirk Castle
Phil’s work was the greatest priority and he quickly found a solution. He set up office at his parents’ house, who live 10 minutes away. This worked very well in general. He missed his big screens and he wasn’t able to step back into the office at 10pm for a weekly meeting with the States, but largely his work felt little impact. Here at home we missed Daddy’s input. Questions from the builders, currently renovating some of our property, were unanswerable by me; with shaky mobile signal I sometimes had to stand on the drive scrabbling for a couple of bars of connection just to ask a simple question. An issue with the chicken feeders and the cow’s water trough showed up another of Phil’s tasks he quietly gets on with, which the children and I had to fumble our way through to find solutions.
The teenage girls discovered that they could get some connection if they climbed the scaffolding and sat on the roof of the barn! Desperation drove these young ladies to these drastic measures as they spent several happy nights chatting to friends in the twilight. I’d hoped it would disconnect all of us, but sadly where there’s a will there’s a way and their technical know how found a way.
The younger children missed out on some online lessons, some reading and apps, but largely they didn’t notice the lack of connection. We still had DVDs for afternoon rest time and so life for them just went back a decade. I personally felt much more at home as a parent. Technology is moving so fast and I often feel that the children keep up but I’m still scrabbling around, feeling like a time traveller from the year 2000.
I did miss some things. I missed by word quizzes, downloading podcasts and searching for recipes. I didn’t miss google doctor. We’ve had a couple of health incidences this week and I’m sure I would have wasted hours googling how to deal with these situations the answers I would have found would have undoubtedly plagued me with anxiety. Google often reminds me of the health encyclopaedias we had pre internet; whatever symptom you had, by the time you’d followed the pathway the book sent you on, you had to see a doctor immediately, as your condition could be life threatening. It was a classic situation of a simple headache being a brain tumour! I always swore I would never get one of those books but now we have the internet; health anxiety in the general population has skyrocketed, I suspect there’s a correlation.
Perhaps the greatest thing I’ve learned is how I can waste time or use it wisely. I can read an edifying book or I can read the drivel in the newspaper. I can scroll through Instagram or I can paint or draw. I can browse through YouTube or I can listen to a pre-downloaded podcast, already selected for its soul nourishing content. I can read someone’s opinions or I can read the Word of God.
Time is a gift and God gave me more of it this week. The gift continues to give as I have come to see my time in a new way. It’s so easy to get lost on a device scrolling and searching and yet the answers will often elude us. Sometimes we need empty head space to hear God’s voice.
The irony isn’t lost on me, that the silence of my sleeping keyboard could only be awakened when the noise of the world, via the web went silent.
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