Wildflowers.
your life is not for cutting and filtering.
I deleted instagram.
Okay well not deleted, but one by one archived every post that I had painstakingly created over a period of 4 years. All bar one beautiful photo of wildflowers in a glass jar.
I couldn’t delete that one. It was, and is still beautiful.
And quite symbolic of many things.
Wildflowers from the fields; cut and put into a small jar for us to enjoy in our living room.
A bit like social media, really. Beautiful wild things, cut, rehearsed, filtered, positioned and then placed in a small box for us to ‘enjoy’.
Before having my daughter, my relationship with social media was more about the wrestle it had over my time and attention, contentment and peace. I loved keeping up with my friends and sharing our captured moments onto a little grid for reliving. But it ate up so much of my time, the filters, the edits, the scrolling and the unnecessary checking of said little grid.
I often took breaks and enjoyed the mental peace that those breaks brought, only to end up back on socials because, well, I just needed the distraction.
The price?
My peace, contentment, and satisfaction; all substituted by the hits of dopamine that kept me scrolling.
Since having my daughter, the balance has been tipped. It is no longer a balance between the dopamine hits and my contentment. It is now the balance between the dopamine hits and my presence with her, my shaping of her childhood, and my breaking of those sacred moments.
I recently read
‘s piece on phones and sacred moments (it’s got a much better title than that) and it made me think about the long-term ‘need’ of social media in my life. I had already come off the apps but it was a temporary situation, another one of my short detoxes. But Gideon’s piece caused me to change my focus. Instead of focusing on the negative impact of my socials, I realised I could make the same choice but with a much stronger ‘why’.I could instead change my focus to living fully presence to the aliveness and divine beauty of every day, of God revealed in the ordinary.
That is a ‘why’ that could sustain long term.
Sometimes I think about the day I will face the judgement throne of grace, where I will be cover by His righteousness, but still held accountable for all my decisions. Every day, every decision, every choice… I imagine it a bit like a film reel being played out. I wonder how much of that film would be me scrolling aimlessly on my phone.
It is devastating to think about.
My husband’s world is the marketing world, the social media world. So, I am not against it; God has used it to bless our family and community immensely. But, one thing my husband understood a long time ago was the boundaries that social media must have in our lives.
He understood that our lives could not, and should not, be like wildflowers in a jar. Cut and positioned for the viewing of others. Privacy is one of his highest values. So much so that when he posts a ‘story’ of him and his daughter on his close friend’s stories, his childhood friend responded with ‘We know how private you are, thanks for this insight into your life’.
Yeah, that is not what my friends would say! When I was active on socials anyone could see a snapshot of my life, whether you knew me or not.
We had often discussed privacy, my husband and I. I couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t want to share all about his family on social media.
Privacy felt like hiding rather than protecting, rather than love. I had bought into culture’s ideas of love. Ideas that has been shaped by the algorithms demand for more, and I had willingly sold my privacy for the cheap price of a button tap.
Now as I watch my daughter grow, I understand better. Her value and preciousness far supersede the price of a ‘like’ button, it overthrows any rewards an algorithm could give me, and it has taught me afresh, that precious things should be protected.
I used to work as a specialist social worker (stay with me I promise there is a link). I worked specifically with children at risk of or who were currently being sexually exploited, so think grooming, trafficking, and sexual abuse from outside of the family (yeh, heavy).
I remember I worked with a very young girl (under 6) who had been exploited online. I was speaking to her about her body parts and which parts are for ourselves and our safe people and which are okay to be shared in public.
We spoke about how some parts of her body are precious, so should be kept like treasure, only for those who we trust. We spoke about how treasure is often hidden and not out in public for everyone to touch and use.
I was happy with my conversation with her and felt she understood (she was really young). Until I had my supervision, where my supervisor/manager about that conversation. Apparently, using the words ‘precious’ and ‘private’ about a child’s genitals was cause for concern. They were worried that these words would cause feelings of shame.
Since when are precious and private synonyms for shame!??? Did I miss something?!
Oh, but I understand where this idea comes from, I understand why my manager asked these questions. Culture has told us that we should flaunt and share and sell everything, every part of us, vulnerable, precious, private. All of it is for public consumption. Because that means that ‘you are not ashamed’, and btw you have nothing to be ashamed of!
(side note: there are some things we should be ashamed of!)
But, FYI, hidden things, precious things kept private, are NOT automatically shameful things.
Sigh. It’s a sad affair.
And don’t be fooled, the enemy has a stake in it all. He doesn’t know your mind, heart, access points and weakness the way God does, but he sure can study you, your life, your habits, your patterns, and your weaknesses. But that is a different post.
Vulnerability for vulnerability sake is not the way forward (or wise!). Precious things can be kept private without them being shameful things. Privacy is not a prudent thing; it is not a shameful thing, privacy is a commodity.
Privacy is our way of taking ahold of our lives and saying, I will not cut, filter, position, and sort, my wild, free and precious life into boxes for public consumption.
Privacy is our decision to let the wildflowers grow free.
It is the choice to not pluck and pick from our lives and to let it grow as God nurtures it. The choice to enjoy the wildflowers in real life, to feel the wind that blows through their petals, to smell the pollen as it dances through the air and feel no need to capture it.
Privacy is a choice, and maybe one of our last choices in this digital age.
One final thought.
The need and compulsion to share every part of our lives is a sign that our inner lives are wrought by loneliness, wrought by the need for companionship, feedback, and interaction. We want to feel seen, known and alive.
We were made this way.
Made to be fulfilled in these ways.
But there is only One person who can fulfil us in this way. Not your best friend, spouse or child. Not your social media community, readers, subscribers or followers. But the God who made you; He sees you now and knows you more thoroughly than you can imagine.
When we forfeit privacy, hiddenness, and the secret place, we forfeit connection with the true source of life.
Don’t air out everything the Lord has spoken to you about, much of that is reserved for you and Him. Don’t broadcast what He has whispered to you in your private times together unless He says so, much of that is seed still growing.
Don’t cut the wildflowers before they have had time to bloom. Don’t cut them at all!
But cultivate the hidden places, enjoy and be transformed by the divine life all around you.
See with eyes that are primed to behold rather than intentions to ‘capture and post’.
Trust me, wildflowers are meant to be wild.
So I left the photo of my jar of wildflowers on my Instagram feed and changed the caption to ‘Attention is the beginning of devotion’—Mary Oliver. I want to remember, and I want to remind all who stumble onto my page, that their attention is more than their time and eyes.
It is their treasure.
Over the last 18 months, God has been leading me into a more hidden life. I am the generation that has grown up with big church being what feels like the sole aim, and mass influence the greatest treasure. So this journey has been more reforming of my identity than I expected. It sure has been needed and I know there is more to come.
Getting rid of instagram in a generation that lives, and judges each others lives and success from what we see in those little squares has felt so freeing. Though I believe some are called to navigate that world and I am so grateful for those people, I believe many more of us are probably called to let it go.
My desire has always to be able to exert ‘self discipline’ in my relationship with social media. But over time I have had to accept that self discipline is not what will enable me to beat the billion-dollar algorithm backed by years of intricate neuroscience, it is only surrender. Surrender of my identity, surrender of my social media accounts, surrender of it all.
Who knows what the future will bring but for now I am enjoying uncut wildflowers in real time.
Until next time,
Love, Anna x
Yes. As Elizabeth Barrett Browning has said: "All earth is crammed with heaven and every common bush afire with God. But only those who see take off their shoes."
I’ve been deciding/praying on whether or not I’m going to leave Instagram and I think this was my confirmation.