Everything is temporary.
In the year that I have had my phone (and the years I had an old school iPod touch before that) I have never deleted a conversation on my phone. Never once. You can scroll back to October 10th, 2013 when I got the phone and read the first text messages I sent saying, “I got a new phone!” if you want. It’s all there. (Granted it may take a lot of scrolling, but it’s there.)
I could work for the FBI the way I track things. I can refer back to something someone said eight months ago if it means proving my point or remembering something especially poignant. My iMessage app is a messy conglomeration of names and emoticons and messages spanning the last 11 months.
Why? Because words and memories mean so much to me. Every text conversation I have ever had is like a tiny little time capsule shared with someone. Nowadays, my generation is reprimanded for their excessive use of screen to screen conversation instead of face to face. I am the first to advocate the importance of face to face interaction, uninterrupted by screens. Too often, we hide behind screens. But there is something special about texting to me. Go ahead and laugh, yes I am about to romanticize text messaging.
Some of my favorite, deepest, and realest conversations have come through text messages. Because I am so word driven, I have been able to type out things that I never would have been able to articulate quite the same in person. Some of the most encouraging words, deepest thoughts, and most vulnerable moments have been born inside a little green messaging app on my iPhone.
So I save them. I save all those little texts, just in case. Just in case I ever want reread something funny one of my friends has said in our never ending group messages. Just in case I want to reread some little encouragement my best friend has sent me. Just in case I want to reread the words of someone I miss. Just in case…
So as you can imagine, when my phone recently went haywire and deleted every message and conversation, my heart sank when I opened up the app to see a white blank screen. Every name, every conversation, gone, as if they had never happened at all.
And for a moment, I panicked. I felt sick at the thought of never seeing all the words I had been collecting for almost a year. I felt sick never scrolling through the memories of my senior year, encapsulated in text messages. And then I begin to think about all the words I had said. All the deep thoughts, worried fears, helpful hints, kind words, shared secrets, and countless laughs that were all hidden away in my phone. Was I ever really going to go back and reread every word? And even if I did, then what? Was I going to copy down every single response and reply that had gone on in conversation for the past 365 days. Was I really ever going to do anything with all those words? Or did I just feel more secure holding a memory in a tangible way?
And that’s when I begin to wonder… Where exactly was I putting my relationships? Did I really believe that somehow being able to reread a message made it more real? Did I feel like having a tangible account of it made it more important? Was I really only secure in a relationship when the person sent me a little sound bite of a conversation? Did the loss of a text message really change the state of a relationship? Weren’t the people in my life more than the little blue bubbles I had reduced them to?
Was I focusing on the words on the screen… or the person on the other side of the screen?
Then it hit me. If not today, when? When am I ever going to let go of the moments and conversations I so desperately cling to, and focus on people again? That deep back and forth my friend and I had? I should have savored that conversation in the moment. That funny, witty exchange we had in a group message? I should have taken a picture if I really wanted to remember. And even then, what if I lost those accounts? What if my computer broke? What if my hard drive failed to back up? What if my house burned down?
Suddenly, I was reminded of a very simple truth that I often overlook.
Everything is temporary. No iCloud backup or hard drive storage or safe or bank or insurance policy can tether us to the things we so desperately cling to. Our lives are as fragile as year’s worth of text messages. Here one day, deleted the next.
Maybe that’s why Jesus said, “Don’t store up treasures here on earth, where moths eat them and rust destroys them, and where thieves break in and steal. Store your treasures in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy, and thieves do not break in and steal.” (Matt. 6:19-20)
Don’t store up your treasure on iPhones, where short circuiting and technical glitches can destroy them. Instead, store up your treasures in Heaven.
As a writer, it’s easy to get caught up in the fear of computer crashes and paper fires. Anything, (literally anything) can destroy the work I’ve done. But nothing can destroy the impact I make on eternity. When I remember that it’s not the text messages I save, but the real people I invest in that live forever, I am comforted. When I look at a text message containing an inside joke compared to the light of eternity spent with Jesus, I can’t help but feel foolish.
Because Jesus also made it very clear, whatever we are clinging to, whatever makes or breaks our day is where our heart is. “Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be.” (Matt. 6:21) Do I really want my heart invested in a few text messages from months ago? Or do I want my love and heart invested in the real people in my life every day?
Even as I write this, my iPhone is backing up to my computer, and I’m saying silent prayers that when I restore it everything will be back as it should be. But if it never restores, if my messages are lost forever, I will go on.
And best of all, I’ll go on a little differently. I really will put my phone down, and look around for the people in life who need a face to face interaction. I’ll invest in the right now, not in the yesterday. I’ll love my relationships for what they are, not what they appear to be over a text message.
And when I look at it that way, in the light of eternity, I have to be thankful for this little inconvenience. Because maybe an iPhone glitch is just what I needed to focus a little less on the temporary and a little more on the eternal.