So last week this time, I was in the final day of my seven day Go Dark week in which I turned off all electronics for the week other than some predefined exceptions (at work, etc.). This is the second summer that I did “Go Dark” week and the experience, though similar in many respects, also was markedly different. I suppose first though I should start by confessing my shortcomings.
- Late Saturday Night my wife needed help with work she does for the High School Sports program. They were having a meeting Sunday afternoon, and she needed the accounts reconciled before then. I had planned for everything I needed to do, but I didn’t plan for what my wife needed. I had to turn my computer on for about a hour to help her with that.
- There was one day where I was expecting a personal e-mail, and I ended up checking my e-mail more often than I had laid out in my original plan.
- I didn’t remember what I said in my rules about text messaging, and frankly I haven’t gone back and looked. I did send a handful of messages to my wife by text message during the week.
There, I feel better now having admitted that. So, what did I do with my Dark Week? I read! I read a lot. Just for fun, here are the books I read:
- Blue Like Jazz…Donald Miller
- Parenting Beyond Your Capacity…Reggie Joiner & Carey Nieuwhof
- To the Rising Generation: Addresses Given to Children and Young Adults…Jonathan Edwards
- Turning Your Child’s Failures Into Success…Jim Wideman
- The Ultimate Children’s Ministry Survival Guide…Ivy Beckwith
- The Kidology Handbook…Karl Bastian (started)
- Created to Learn…William Yount (started)
- Rock Solid Teacher…Gregory C. Carlson (started)
- Morning & Evening…C.H. Spurgeon – I did a lot of catching up in this one. It’s a daily devotional. I was doing well at the beginning of the year, but I fell behind and stopped reading sometime in May. I got all but a couple of week caught up.
I did a lot of additional reading I had printed out – research, curriculum, etc. and caught up on some back issues of magazines I hadn’t read.
In addition to all that, I got a couple of months of lesson plans for Sunday morning at least preliminarily mapped out. I got a lot of praying done too. It’s amazing how easy it is to find time to talk to God without all the distractions and noise.
So, I mentioned that it was a lot different this year too. Last year I was a little worried about whether or not I could stick to the plan. This year I was really looking forward to the week as a means of winding down. It wasn’t nearly as “hard” this year, but I think that had a lot do with knowing that I could get through it and knowing the benefits of unplugging. By Friday night, I was ready to plug back in, but when I did I realized that it had definitely lost its pull. I actually considered going two weeks this summer.
Anyhow, it was definitely a worthwhile week and something that I am planning on doing again next summer. I know of a couple of people who were talking about going along with Go Dark week this summer. If you did, leave a comment below and let us know how it went!
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