Exposed

it all began late last Wednesday night.
I had stayed up too late watching too many episodes of Parks & Recreation.
I was heading to sleep, but decided to just give FB a once over. I was scrolling through the newsfeed seeing the usual, exciting things happening in lives of friends near and far, a picture of someone's lunch, a political post (or seven), a few pics of adorable children, and some inspiring Bible verses, when something caught my eye. And as I read it, my stomach dropped to my toes and has been there ever since. This terrible feeling began to rise and caught in my throat. A friend had posted that now all of the sudden, FB had taken once private messages between people and had made them public by publishing them to people's "walls".

Panic flooded me.

Ever since I had joined YWAM and began my crazy travels around the world, FB had become my primary form of communication. It was the easiest way to stay in touch with my friends all over the globe. This is the problem with having friends close to your heart but not close to your geography means that messages that spill your heart pour out though the keys and fly off to their destination digitally. Which meant....

I realized that some of my deepest secrets, my greatest fears, and the affections of my heart toward several boys over the past few years may, in fact, be visible to "the whole world" or 617 of my closest "friends".  I felt like I was totally exposed. Everything. My past. my present. All right there in plain view.

Immediately, I clicked on to my profile and began scanning. 2012? nope. 11? nope. 2010? oh... yeah..  yikes. 2009? Even more yikes. 2008? YIKES.  I followed the steps recommended by the poster to hide these messages. And then I began the journey over to close friends' pages. The same thing. More than an hour later, the panic still hadn't left me. That yucky adrenaline feeling was still in the pit of my stomach. I have to get rid of these posts!  I was exhausted, so I resolved that in the morning I'd write to all these friends, some of whom I'm on kind of shaky ground with now, and ask them to please do the same and hide these posts. Defeated, I closed my laptop and finally switched off the light.

But I couldn't sleep.
I still felt totally exposed.
my head wouldn't stop reeling.

so I picked up my phone. and after a quick check of timezones, I sent off a text. I knew this friend had a lot of personal FB messages as well. The reply I received mirrored my own terror. Friend was in class and asked me to check their own page to survey the damage. It was similar to mine. Some of the panic was relieved. We conversed about how terrible it was of FB to do such a thing. And then we decided to delete all of the messages we had exchanged. It was just too risky. Finally, I drifted off into a fitful sleep.
I was hoping I'd feel relief in the morning. I didn't.
Eventually, I found the words, and posted a status warning other friends about what had happened. They all found private messages posted to their walls. Ugh.
Exposed.
for the whole world to see.
And then.. in the course of the morning, a friend found this article where FB says they were all just old wall posts, and suggests that people may have been more forthcoming in "public" posts as the whole FB community felt (and actually was) much smaller. I'm not sure I believe all of it, (There are several posts I swear used to be in private messages, and other things I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have posted to a friend's wall.. but.. )

the whole debacle made me think. a lot.
How would I respond if every single "private" message I had ever written were suddenly made public?
what would the fallout look like?
how would I deal with everyone knowing and reading the details of the depths of my struggles of some of the most difficult seasons of my life? Would the ugliness of my brokenness be too great?
What have I said about people, friends even, when I thought they weren't listening?
Have I always spoken in love?
Aside from the personal aspect, I want to make sure I'm speaking, writing, texting, and in all ways, conversing in love and respect, that if suddenly all my conversations were there for all the world to see, I'd have nothing to be ashamed of.
how about you?