Sunday, October 08, 2006

King of the house



Now lets talk about who is king here. In this castle, here. What I am going to talk about is a message from Mark, and I will leave it at that. Mark got it from Sam.

Everyone, whether willfully or not ends up making some things in their lives more important that other things. Sometimes the things that are very important to us we protect, sort of, so that they will not go away from us. We like them, we want them to stay around. Sometimes, even our lives sort of revolve around them.

Some would say that it can get to a point where these things sort of start to rule our lives a little. Like TV, or a nice car, or nice things like cell phones, clothes. Or the computer. Sports, our jobs, our kids...good honorable things even ascend to such import in our lives that they start to really get a little higher in the pecking order than maybe they should be.

For our house, it is the computer. My husband, being an internet developer, derives endless hours from his computers. He has a file server, a laptop, a desktop and of course we have a fast constant connection. Since he is on, I, have often gone there too. It has gotten to where we will IM each other from our separate rooms on the computer. I am not proud of any of this, pretty much every night for at least a couple hours we are both on.

Sometimes I feel uneasy about this. Neither of us are looking at pictures of birthday suits or even fully dressed folks doing private things, he legitimately sits there and codes. I read stuff.

But despite my persistentness about time together, even with time together, I don't like the post the computer has in our house. It, in many ways, gets more attention than it should.

I believe that in the course of our lives, if we don't acknowledge a God, a God will emerge in our lives in the form of something else...whether it is satisfying our own desires to our hearts content and beyond, or it is our jobs, sex, cars, houses, or our kids or a chemical. It will receive our time, our attention, our priority and guide our decisions at the expense of other areas.

So I chose a God that would keep me in line.

But the computer could be the king of my castle if I let it.

I don't want to allow it. I never chose any of those things above to control my life. They will never lead me anywhere truly of any value.

I am posting this because I know that this is not only something I deal with. In fact, lately I have come to understand that almost every one of the *problems* I deal with are just so common as to be blase, even boring. And I thank Margie who pisses me off initially because she never sees my problems as real, but ultimately I realize that she is kind of right.

(HAPPY BIRTHDAY LESLIE! 30s are actually even better than 20s in pretty much every way!)

So what is it in your house, reader? What is the thing that consumes the most of your time? That you protect and guard and value? Whats the king of your castle?

5 comments:

Margaret said...

I've put a fridge in the basement so I can't paint for hours and hours with out giving in to hunger or thirst.

Mrs. T said...

Like you, the computer could become the king of our castle, but we struggle to not let it be.
The thing I value and protect and guard is time together as a family. It's not easy, but we do sit down and eat dinner as a family every single night. Even if my husband isn't home because of work issues, I will sit down with the girls.

Anonymous said...

Oh, it's definitely the computer, which I freely admit... no qualms. Although when my internet was out the other day I was really confused as to what I was supposed to do with myself!

Anonymous said...

Great question! It is very hard to pinpoint one single king of our castle. We don't specifically give most of our free time to any one thing. However, when I reflect at the end of the day, I lay in wonder of where the time went and what it was that I did (besides spending time with kids) that was worthwhile today. I know for sure that valuable family time, reading the Bible, and praising God for keeping our hearts beating should be the things we ought to bow to.

Unknown said...

Zhenya! Wow I never knew you were coming around!

I have been on the computer less and less, but for J hobbies are a real time sucker.

I wish you could have heard the message, it is actually online. Really a very appropriate one.

we'll talk.