A couple of days ago I found myself in a Twitter blur, just scrolling through strangers’ tweets, wondering what makes people want to broadcast 140 characters of … whatever… into the cybersphere. It’s fun. I like Twitter. It’s kind of a noncommittal medium. You say it but it floats away. Like on the wings of a bluebird.<\/p>\n
Anyway, I saw the trending topics in the margin and saw one called #aboutme. I don’t generally spend a lot of time on trending topics (or on Twitter, actually), except for that one October night, when there was that #addawordruinamovie hashtag, where thousands of people were playing this hilarious game of changing a single word in a movie title and making it suddenly an awful movie. Laughed until I wiped away tears, threw in a few of my own that night, including “Days of Thunder Thighs,” “An NSA Bug’s Life,” and “Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey Concert.” So. Much. Hilarity.<\/p>\n
But this #aboutme caught my eye for some reason and I clicked to see what people would post.<\/p>\n
It was tremendously sad.<\/p>\n
Young people, whose Twitter bios that seemed upbeat about their fandom of this or that, posted heart-wrenching secrets about crying themselves to sleep or feeling horribly down or cutting themselves or abusing substances to self medicate to dull the pain of their lives.<\/p>\n
I sat there and wiped away tears, this time for sadness.<\/p>\n
The thing that puzzled me\u00a0so\u00a0much was why. <\/em>Why are these young people (because most of the\u00a0posters were teens or young 20-somethings) so emotionally adrift?\u00a0Where is the spiritual anchor?<\/p>\n As 2013 ends and I begin a new year with everyone else, I reflect on the goodness of my parents, the strong foundation they grounded me with, the strength that they imbued in me by teaching me the things of God while I was young. Even when it was hard for them (I’m sure), they made sure I attended church every Sunday, increased my faith, helped me learn to pray each and every day, and showed me through their daily (often multiple times a day) actions that service to their fellowman was a sure path to happiness, and that hard work makes us forget our own troubles, just like serving others does.<\/p>\n I was blessed beyond measure to have been born to my parents, and to have the heritage of grandparents with those same values. And great-grandparents.<\/p>\n It is my 2014 anxiety-of-my-soul to teach my children, to continue<\/em> to teach my children, these things and to help them set a sure course of happiness and peace through the storms of life that will surely try to topple their little vessels.<\/p>\n I pray God’s help in doing so.<\/p>\n Happy New Year, all. And a much happier<\/em>\u00a02014 to anyone whose 2013 brought pain and sadness and tears. I pray God’s help for you as well.<\/p>\n\n A couple of days ago I found myself in a Twitter blur, just scrolling through strangers’ tweets, wondering what makes people want to broadcast 140 characters of … whatever… into the cybersphere. It’s fun. I like Twitter. It’s kind of a noncommittal medium. You say it but it floats away. Like on the wings of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"","bgseo_robots_follow":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[303],"tags":[654,652,651,653,656,347,331,658,657,655],"class_list":["post-1136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family-2","tag-654","tag-blessings","tag-faith","tag-good-parents","tag-hashtags","tag-new-years-resolutions","tag-parenting","tag-service-is-happiness","tag-trending-topics","tag-twitter"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2OUjT-ik","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1136"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1136\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1138,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1136\/revisions\/1138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}