Why I Had to Let Go of Comments

Jun 18, 2015Kingdom Uncaged

This decision has been a long time coming. And it’s part of several decisions of late that have been a huge blessing to me. Letting go of the podcast. Giving myself space. Realizing that I need humans in my life (not just from behind a screen).

The Lord is reducing noise in my life of late. Not that comments are simply noise, but they can be a distraction to me.

Ooooh, look! A happy comment! This post has worth! I need to write more posts like this one.

Oh no, a negative comment that reinforces my insecurity.

Oh dear, there are twenty comments, and I feel like I should respond to every single one.

Since this post has not one comment, perhaps the post was unworthy of writing in the first place.

Sorry to give you a peek into my chaos brain, but these are the things that go through my mind every time I receive a comment.

And after last week’s Duggar posts, I saw another aspect of comments I typically don’t have to deal with: the wrath that unleashes in a “safe” place like a blog.

I’m not one for controversy, and I seldom write about things that can get me angry comments, but writing about sexual abuse brought out strongly worded opinions that bordered more on attack (of me, of others) than dialog. Frankly, it wore me out.

Because this blog is a safe place. And normally it’s a safe place to dialog and disagree. But this time was different. I cannot imagine having some of these conversations face to face. Which is why the Internet has its dark side. We can hide behind personas and screen names and hurl the kind of anger we’d never THINK of hurling in presence of someone.

As the Lord brings me closer and closer to the goal of immediately interacting with an audience (face to face, face to faces as a speaker), I am learning to let go of detached communication, where it tends toward the one-sided people “speaking” at one another rather speaking with one another.

And along with that, I found myself diminishing under the harsh criticism of others. Yes, you’re right, that’s a huge weakness of mine. I freely admit it. I need to grow in this area. But as someone who struggles with worth anyway, I realized this wasn’t helping me further along the security path. It’s not comments that make me feel better or worse about myself that really matter. What matters is what God says about me, and the comments started to drown out His sweet, encouraging voice.

I hope that makes sense.

Anyway, I felt you might want to know why I’ve shut down the comments. It’s not you; it’s me. I so appreciate all the time you’ve taken to respond to my posts, and I’m grateful. But right now, I need to retreat a bit and hear the still, small voice of my Creator.

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