Facebook- Amazing, Evil or somewhere in between

If you've wondered why I haven't been so dedicated with my "deep thoughts" here is because I've been sidetracked by sound bytes on Facebook.

I was slow to love Facebook, but for about 10 months now, I've been too involved in it.

At first I was just excited to reconnect with my cousins but then it grew into reading about and getting sucked into the everyday drama of people. Sometimes it was like watching reality TV starring people I was "friends" with.

So is it an Amazing Tool or is it Evil? Or is it somewhere in between...

Facebook has been amazing because of reconnecting with my cousins, I love them and miss them dearly. I spent every summer of my life until I turned 14 with them. Some of my cousins are much older than I am and so I "grew" up with their kids. Some of them are my age, and some cousins I had not seen since they were infants, but through the miracle of facebook, I can "watch" them grow into the people they've become.

I get real weepy when I see some of the pictures, happy for the memories I have of them, and weepy for the memories we don't share. I remember our grandparents and the uncles (and one of my dear aunts) who have passed away, I think of how they would love my husband and children and I miss them.
Then I get all joyful thinking about how we are all sealed together through our grandparents and one day we will meet on the other side and we will embrace and have those tears of joy again.

I thank facebook for bringing my cousins back into my life.
I love to read what they are thinking and I LOVE to see the pictures.

One cousins, Nedra, posted a ton of pictures of us all when we were much younger. They looked like pictures my Grandma Bowden had in her photo albums. Some of the cousins, were frozen in time, and those pictures are how I remember them.

It's hard to grasp my head around the fact that they, like me, have grown into adults with children of their own.

My cousin Jamie posted family pictures. Realistically I knew she was the adult in the picture, but her daughter looked just like the Jamie I "knew" when I last saw her, and again I wept tears of happiness. My cousin shawna had two children when I spent one summer with her, they were Oriana and "baby" Rhett, Rhett was one that summer, he was adorable and Oriana reminded me of snow white, now Oriana posted pictures of their entire family, I couldn't get over how grown up they all were and how many more there are ---yet Shawna looked the same to me, maybe just a little more snow on top- My cousin Duane was always teasing me, just a few years older than me made me a target of his good natured fun. I always adored him and looked forward to his teasing me. He married a wonderful girl named Kelly. I knew she was wonderful because she married Duane, and my mom and aunts always had nice things to say about her. Thanks to facebook I've been able to see her positive attitude in action and look at their beautiful children and rejoice that we are all part of the same family.

So many stories I could go on forever.

So to sum up that, I am so grateful for the cousins I didn't know, cousins that came into the family through marriage or were born after my summers in Idaho were over and because of facebook I can know them.

I have a wonderful legacy and I'm grateful to be a part of it and I'm grateful to the facebook for helping me to get in and stay in touch with my family.

On the other hand, I found a lot of time wasted reading mindless drivel. I was recently "yelled" at by an old acquaintance because I was offended by her choice of language, I realized then that I don't need to add grief into my life by reading things that are not going to uplift, so I won't be "living" on facebook as much, If it wasn't for staying in touch with my family, I'd probably just shut the whole thing off, for now I will use facebook as a tool for doing good and to uplift and ignore the unpleasantness of the "global community"

And that also means, I will stop neglecting my old friend, the blog.

So to answer my question, Facebook can be very good, if used to bring about good and uplift others and it can be a source of Evil if it's used to demean, profane and belittle. Based on my teaching of Seminary last week and this, I agree with Mormon in Moroni Chapter 7 and that is we can judge what is right and wrong as easy as we can judge day from night, things are either good and bring you closer to God or bad and carry you away from Him.

I choose Good.