Pruning Time!

In John 15:1-11  My all time favorite speakers is speaking.  To paraphrase Jesus says that He is the vine and the Father is the vinedresser.  God takes away the branches that don't produce fruit and prunes those that do so that they may produce more fruit. Ultimately Jesus tells us in verse 11 that all this pruning and abiding is happening, "that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full".  I want full joy.  I want heaping amounts of glorious Jesus joy!!!  I mean really, who doesn't want joy?

Well it's time for some pruning in our family. George and I took a look at our lives and asked:  What are the things not producing "fruit" in our lives and our children's lives?  Galations 5:22 tells us that "the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfullness, gentleness, and self-controooool" (the extra oos are not Biblical but necessary for me to remember the verse in song;)  Well that's the "fruit" we are looking for.  So we started making a mental list:  TV, movies, facebook (pruning hurts people, it's done with shears!), magazines, internet.  In short, secular media.  So we're whipping out the shears.  Everything MUST go!!!!! 

Ok, so were kinda giving ourselves an out.  We're calling it an "experiment."  We're going to cut these things for the next year.  During that time I'm going to keep a journal of our observations to review and blog (or write?!?!?) about later   Our start date is August 1st!  Monday!!!!

What do we hope to gain by this craziness? 
1.  Better relationships with God!  (FRUIT)
2.  Better relationships with each other.  No media= more time together talking, playing games, reading, playing, etc.
3.  More real and better relationships with family and friends.  If we want to know how someone is doing we will have to ...........wait for it...............CALL THEM!
4.  A better appreciation for the types of media that we should use.

Now before you panic we do have some exceptions:
1.  In order to be on board George required that a Phillies/Eagles clause be written in.  There was much negotiation but ultimately we agreed that these things would be ok and used as family time. (at all other times the TV will be unplugged)
2.  Email.  We literally NEED email.  It's the way our adoption agency communicates.  Also, we will use it to send pics to family and friends.
3.  AWAA yahoo group.  The information in our group is just too invaluable to give up.
4.  This blog!  We're going to stick to blogging about our adoption.  There are so many wonderful people who have invested in our adoption and you deserve to know what's going on!
5.  Christian Media: ie: focus on the family:)

So there it is.  Our crazy one year UnMedia Experiment. 

One final note.  If your concerned about staying connected and our main form of communication is facebook please email me your info and I'll be sure to keep you in the loop:)