Over-exposed

I have always been a news junkie. Obsessed with knowing what’s going on around me, I started reading at a very early age. Although I used to have amazing retention of current events and geography, over the years I seem to have lost that ability. Now, I just really, really like to check my news apps.

Something started happening to me, though, when I became pregnant with my daughter. That year, someone killed their infant daughter via microwave. A microwave. I remember a rage filling me, like I’d never known. After Hannah passed away, such stories of abuse and neglect became fuel for my anger against God: “Why didn’t You step in? What’s Your point, God? Where are You? Why do those people get to have healthy pregnancies, and I don’t?” I was so furious, and heartbroken…At that point, I began to self-filter my news feed.

Over time, that need to filter began to wear off. The anger began to be proportioned with sadness; although I still have a lack of understanding, I don’t cling to it like I used to. I found myself able to read the news with a certain detachment; I don’t believe that was necessarily an improvement. I think it was more of a survival mechanism…and then I got pregnant with my son.

The anger returned.

Throughout my pregnancy, stories of rampant sexual abuse have plagued the headlines. From the Boy Scouts, to the priesthood, to the Paterno scandal—I literally could not click on the news without hearing, in lurid detail, stories of children being abused. For someone with a vivid imagination, it is too much. I feel like the news should come with a rating system—it’s too heavy of a burden to bear by anyone, much less young eyes that may be reading over your shoulder.   But we’re a society that feeds on scandal—we feed on details, on descriptions, on knowing things we shouldn’t know. We’re a curious world, and we are drawn to disaster.

There are diary entries that are revealed…things such as the Arias trial, where words and phrases are uttered and repeated during prime time that shouldn’t even be discussed afterhours…There are photographs of death and destruction that shouldn’t be displayed. 

Hey, world—that’s a person. That’s a human being, and their life has been wrecked. Why are you salivating over their pain?

Somewhere, there’s a mother who grew that baby boy into a human being. She cuddled him; she loved him, and now he’s an adult. Now, he’s been injured or hurt—and there’s his picture on msnbc.com, waiting for you to click on the headlines and hear the graphic details of how he died. Somewhere, there’s a mother who has to deal with the pain of losing a child on a national level.

Somewhere, there’s a photographer who’s taken a picture of a father’s face as he realized his daughter isn’t coming home.

Somewhere, there’s a reporter who is shoving a camera into the face of a child who has lost their innocence.

And somewhere, millions of people like me will click on their story.

Over the last few months, I’ve been more and more affected by what I see in the news. It’s because of that beautiful little face that I kiss every morning…how can we raise him, in a world like this, and keep him innocent? How do we keep him pointed toward Christ, in a society that goes in for the kill? I read the reports, and I’m deeply angered by those who end the life of another—that could be MY son, or YOUR daughter. We lived in Lexington, KY for a year—do you know the difference, between Lexington and St. Louis? In Lexington, we were actually SURPRISED to hear of a shooting.

In St. Louis, people die by gunfire every. Single. Day.

The unfiltered media bares stories of malevolence on a voracious level. They celebrate it, and they advocate it by the way the broadcast it. Celebrating violence and sadness magnifies it. It glorifies it, and it breeds it. 

In the wake of mass destruction, whether by natural disaster, or by deranged lunatic, I find my heart breaking more and more. When it’s the result of a human decision, I find myself struggling with rage. I want to see the perpetrator’s name stricken from the news, but to see them publicly executed. I realize that makes no sense. When it’s the result of a natural disaster, I find myself struggling with “why?” I picture myself hiding out at the feet of Jesus like a child, looking for comfort and refuge. 

None of this stuff makes any sense to me. I don’t know why society has reached the level of violence that it has reached, or why natural disasters have reached the levels of destruction that they have reached.  I do know that our media’s glorification of sadness has reached an unprecedented level. Nothing can satiate our appetite for misery in the news.

As a mother, I have to stop. My news obsession has already been filtered…I almost feel like I have to withdraw from watching the news altogether. It’s just too much.

I can’t bear to look on the news sites and see another pair of eyes that reflect so much sadness or madness. I don’t want to click on the stories and observe what’s going on like it doesn’t affect me—it does. That could be, my mother, my husband, my father, my sister, or my son. That could be you, on that headline.  I don’t want to be insulated, but I do want to find the balance between overexposure, and living in oblivion.

There has to be some kind of balance, somewhere…The average heart was never designed to be exposed to the level of pain we see in the news every day. 

I believe in the Rapture. I hope it happens, sooner than later.