When God Uses a Screen Detox You Never Planned For
We left home on a Friday. As my husband drove, I worked from the passenger seat on a mobile hotspot, and by the time we pulled in to our vacation rental, my daughter and her fiancé were already there. We spent a good evening together, went to bed early, and woke up for a full day at Dollywood.
The next morning I did what I always do before my feet hit the floor. I reached for my phone. The screen stayed dark. I figured I had not plugged it in all the way the night before, so I unplugged and plugged it in again and waited. Still nothing. I gave it time to charge while we got ready for the park. After breakfast I tried my daughter’s cord. By the time we walked out the door it had not so much as flickered. I fished out my husband’s cord in the vehicle. Nothing. The phone was simply gone, with no explanation and no warning, which was both inconvenient and oddly personal. I decided I did not need it for the day anyway. We had Dollywood, family, and cinnamon bread waiting. The phone could wait too.
By that evening I needed it. I picked it up, pressed the button, and nothing happened. I pressed it again. Still nothing. I held it longer. Tried a different angle, as if the problem were positional. Plugged it in and waited. Pressed the button again. My husband said nothing. He reached into his computer case, pulled out a spare charger, and handed it to me without making eye contact.
Everyone else had a phone. Mine sat on the table in front of me like a piece of furniture. Turns out one dead phone is all it takes to start a screen detox nobody signed up for. I waited until everyone went to bed, pulled out my laptop, and caught up on everything I had missed except for text messages. The jitters were real. Not for long, but they were real.
What the Stronghold Actually Looks Like
Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 10 that we live in the world but do not wage war the way the world does. The weapons God gave us carry divine power to demolish strongholds, to tear down arguments and every presumption that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and to take every thought captive to obey Christ.
“We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” — 2 Corinthians 10:5 NIV
Most of us read that passage and think about the obvious battles. Doubt, fear, comparison, and the voices that tell us our work does not matter. Those are real. But strongholds do not always announce themselves with that kind of weight. Sometimes a stronghold looks like a rectangle in your pocket that you reach for before you reach for anything else. Sometimes it looks like the low-grade anxiety of not knowing what is happening on a screen somewhere while you are trying to be present somewhere else.
Whatever controls your mind controls you. For writers, that is not a small thing. The mind is where the work begins, and it is also where the work gets strangled before it ever reaches the page.
When My Kids Left on Monday
By the time my daughter and her fiancé headed home Monday morning, the jitters were gone. I had stopped reaching for a pocket that held nothing. I had stopped measuring time in notifications. I had started noticing things, like how much easier it is to carry on a conversation when nothing is competing for your attention.
Our carrier transferred my calls to my husband’s phone so nothing urgent would slip through. Nobody called. Nobody does anymore unless something is wrong or a doctor’s office is confirming an appointment. What I had spent days worrying about turned out to be a reality check that I can live without a phone.
God did not arrange for my phone to die. But He used the silence that followed.
Guard the Gate
Paul’s instruction to take every thought captive is not passive. It is an active, ongoing decision about what gets through the gate and what does not. For the writer who wants to produce work that carries weight, that decision starts before the laptop opens.
Whatever controls your mind controls you. Guard what goes in.
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What are you feeding your mind in the margins of the day? What fills the thirty seconds while coffee brews, the two minutes in a waiting room, and the last few moments before sleep? Screens and devices are not evil, but they are not neutral either, and what we let through the gate without thinking shapes what we are capable of thinking about when we sit down to write.
Rest and disconnection are sometimes the most obedient things a writer, or any of us, can do. It clears the ground so God has somewhere to put what He wants to say through you. That is not laziness or irresponsibility. It is stewardship of the calling.
I came home from that vacation without a phone and with more to write than I had when I left. The stronghold I had not named lost its grip after 10 days, and the difference was impossible to miss.
Take the thought captive before it takes you. Guard what goes in. The work on the other side of that discipline is worth protecting.
A note of thanks to Pastor Shannon Ford, whose May 4 devotional planted the seed for this post. The timing was not accidental.
This was excellent! Thank you.
Thank you.