My Second Journey

As I go into my second time of Media Fast, I am both excited and anxious. I know that I will have more free time, be disappointed I can't listen to new music, but overall grateful for the experience. In the last couple of weeks, I have struggled with the idea of life after death. I know heaven exists, but I can't even begin to imagine the idea of "eternity," and sometimes that scares me. I will be grateful to grow closer to God and learn from the experience, and hopefully He will be able to help me out with this. I will be giving up all social media as I feel this is important in my media time. Before last year's media fast, I spent a lot of time on social media, but since then more of my time has been spent on more worthy things. I hope the outcome is the same this year but with Netflix. Can't wait to see how it turns out! Life is a journey

Realizations

A third of the way through the month, and I have realized two things. One: While my whole world seems to have slowed down due to the fact I have no idea what is happening in the world right now, everyone else's world has stayed the same speed. While avoiding news articles and news media, it has become more clear to me how much we rely on that to know what is going on in the community as well as in other countries. My second epiphany is this: There are tons of Christian movies on Netflix, and yet most all of the ones I have watched have not been good, they have not done any justice to the awesome power that God is. And though my playlist of Christian songs is 71 songs long, I have already gotten tired of those 71 songs. I do feel that it has gotten easier to fill my time with things like homework, studying, and cleaning around the house instead of having the urge to sit down and watch TV. I look forward to the rest of the month to see how I progress in my journey with God.
-Samantha Ross

And They're Off!

Usually when I wake up, I head straight for the bathroom to start getting ready for my day, and I always bring my phone with me. I scroll through Instagram, send Snapchat streaks, or read an interesting book. However, today was different. I got up, changed, brushed my teeth, filled up my water bottle, and was ready to go in under five minutes. Normally, I take around 15 minutes to get ready in the morning. Just the simple act of cutting out my media saved me 10 minutes. It may go unnoticed by us in our daily lives how often we check our phones or unlock them just to turn them off again, or how many times a day we go to Instagram or Facebook to kill time.  But for those of us purposefully avoiding media, I realized how many urges I had to check my phone, and I am sad to admit it was more than I would have liked. I am not so addicted to social media that not going on Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook etc bothers me, but in fact it does the opposite. I don't have any time wasters. That means getting ahead on homework, studying for my math test, and practicing my several upcoming presentations. On the way home from school today, I noticed a beautiful tree with budding purple flowers that I know I would not have seen normally, as I would have been on my phone. We miss so much by the time that adds up very quickly when we are looking at distractions. Although it is hard for me even after one day to avoid Netflix and my favorite 80's music, I am excited to prove myself to God that he is the most important thing in my life, even if that means giving up things I "love." I am looking forward to the next 29 days as we all continue our journey.
-Samantha Ross