Blessings of Being "Friended"

by Kerry Blair

I have a good friend who is totally anti-social when it comes to networking via Internet. She uses her computer every day to work, explore areas of interest, and even shop. She will not, however, give out her e-mail address to anybody she knows personally. The mere mention of Facebook makes her blanch. My friend believes strongly that while the Internet was ordained of God to expedite temple work and allow the Church to put up a website, all the e-mail, blogs, comments-on-news-articles and, especially, networking sites like Facebook were insinuated into the Web by Satan to fracture our society of saints and lead us to perdition. Thus, anyone who wants to communicate with her must write a letter, show up at her door, or—on a good day—call her on the phone. (Some days she mistrusts even the telephone. Certainly cell phones are evil, and you don’t want to get her started on texting and/or Twitterpating.)

You have to admit she makes some valid points. I’m not convinced I have 500 friends in the whole world, let alone on Facebook. Also, that site can be quicksand into which hours disappear without notice or fruition. Furthermore, I do too often send my friends, and even my kids, an e-mail rather than going out of my way to speak to them. (Heck, I’ve been known to IM my daughter to avoid walking all the way down the hall to her room.) Worse (?), I do communicate more with people I’ve never met in person—or maybe only actually seen once or twice—than I do talking over the back fence with my neighbor. (And I love my neighbor!) It’s also true that many of you know me much better than anybody in my ward.

That all seems pretty bad, but is it? Are we becoming less responsive to the people around us because we put so much time and effort into people “out there” in cyberspace? By use of the Internet, are we cultivating friendships that can’t sustain us in this life, nor enrich us in the life to come? Should we turn off the computers and turn toward the nearest “real” people we can find?

I was struggling with those questions—or at least considering them—before last week. As you may recall, seven days ago I had a total (and rather embarrassing) meltdown right here before your eyes. Simultaneously, I was telling anyone who asked me in person that I was “Fine. Really. Just fine. Thanks.” I admitted this to my friend who promptly pronounced it the stupidest thing she’d ever heard in her life. (For what it is worth, I think I hold positions two and three on that list as well.) But, you know what, it turned out to be one of the smartest things I’ve ever done. I’ve felt better this week than I have in months, possibly better than I have the last couple of years. At first I couldn’t understand it, and then, with the aid of the Spirit, I could. Elder Maxwell often said that “prayer is the most efficacious thing one mortal being can do for another.” Don’t deny it, people. You prayed for me, didn’t you?

While I do believe that praying for people we don’t know has some value—hence the prayer rolls in the temple—I know for a fact that pleas offered up on behalf of a loved one, whether family or friend, can alter the course of a life. I have no doubt that the faithful prayers of good-hearted, intuitive people like Julie and Jennie helped to protect my youngest son in Iraq. He experienced miracles that could not have come about without someone, somewhere seeking divine intervention in his behalf. I know, too, that my life has been blessed beyond my current comprehension by people I have come to cherish by way of “social networking via Internet.” By you in other words.

I also believe that the Internet sometimes allows us to reconnect with people we knew and loved in the before-here. Almost a decade ago, upon publication of my second novel, I received an incredibly nice e-mail from a fellow Covenant author who lived in England. I wrote back. She wrote back. Weeks passed. It turns out that after a lifetime of yearning for a little sister, I had one! (She’d unfortunately been confused at birth and therefore ended up on the other side of the globe.) I’ve loved Anna forever—I know I have—and how incredibly grateful I am not to have had to spend mortality without her in my life.

I feel the same way about a few others. I have a circle of sisters now. Only a couple of them happen to live in my state. (Although one has come miles and miles and miles to visit. Today! I’m so excited I can’t stand it!) These women couldn’t be any dearer to me if we attended the same family reunions or lived on the same block. I am equally grateful for the brothers-of-the-heart the Lord has sent into my life through the miracle of modern communication. (Even if one of them chooses to remain mostly anonymous, one of them knows everything, and another tends to whine and wheedle for casseroles. Now that I think about it, a fourth is great at commenting, but not so great at coming through with that book he promised me a couple of years ago; also he stands me up at really important events.)

Anyway, while I probably haven’t made 500 friends, the fraction who haven’t given up on me are cherished. I’ll tell you a secret. Every single Friday for the past year I’ve either gritted my teeth to blog—or else studiously avoided the computer on one flimsy excuse or another so I wouldn’t have to “face” you. The truth is that being here makes me feel like a fraud. Every Friday I tell myself that I either need to slink away or ask the gang to rename the blog. (Something like Five LDS Writers and a Frog and a Fan of the Aforementioned would work.) But I haven’t done it because I’m frankly too selfish. Leaving the Frog Blog would be worse than moving away from an area I love. I have so many friends here; people who teach me and inspire me and make me laugh—often all at once. People who pray for me. People who come all the way from Yuma and Utah and Hawaii and Idaho and even Germany (!) to stay with me. That is real friendship, any way you define it.

Still, I don’t have to have spend actual physical time with Sandra to know I’d love to go shopping with her. (Hats!) I don’t have to look into Marta’s, Karlene’s, and Sheila’s eyes to know their hearts. I don’t have to be in a weekly writing group with Anne, Tristi, Annette, Stephanie, Alison or Heather to be deeply influenced by their gifts. I don’t even have to know LT’s or UTMomof4’s names to know I’d love to live next door to them. Hmm. I think the only person who left a comment last week that I’ve missed thus far in this blog is Rachel/Margaret, and her I do get to see at family reunions!

Please know how deeply grateful I am for all your comments last week. (I’m trying to respond personally and privately, but I’m slow—especially at finding e-mail addys.) But before I get back into Internet communication, I think I’ll send a snail-mail. I want to print out this blog and mail it to the well-intentioned woman I mentioned in the first paragraph. She obviously has no idea what she misses by keeping her circle of friends within arms reach. Thanks to the Internet, and to the Father of us all, we don't have to touch to be touched.