2026.07.12 | I've Been Holding Onto Something I Know I Need to Let Go Of. It Just Feels Too Expensive.

I have three kids, a full-time job, a husband I love and don't see enough, and approximately zero margin in my week.

Which is why 10PM has become sacred.

Not in a good way. In a I-finally-got-everyone-to-bed-and-now-this-is-mine kind of way.

I pour a glass of water, sit on the couch, and open Instagram. And then forty-five minutes disappear. Sometimes an hour. Other people's vacations. Other people's houses. Other people's bodies six months after having a baby. Other moms who seem to be doing everything I'm doing but with better lighting and a cleaner kitchen.

I know what it does to me. I wake up the next morning feeling behind before the day even starts. Behind on the house. Behind on my body. Behind on my marriage. Behind on my faith. Like everyone else got a memo I missed.

I've told myself it's rest. Decompression. The only quiet I get all day.

But I know it's not rest. Rest doesn't leave you feeling worse.

David Ord preached Acts 19 on Sunday and I sat there thinking about my 10PM couch ritual the entire time.

He opened the passage about the new believers in Ephesus who came forward after seeing God's power on display. They confessed their practices publicly. And then they gathered their sorcery books, the things that had held power over them, the things they'd been going back to, and burned them.

All of it.

David Googled the math. A denarius was a day's wage. 50,000 of them. Roughly $17 million in today's terms. They burned $17 million worth of books.

And then he said the thing I couldn't shake: they didn't sell them. They didn't donate them. They didn't box them up and put them in the garage just in case. They burned them. Because they realized they valued God more than they valued what they'd been holding onto.

My scrolling habit isn't worth $17 million. But it costs me something real... my peace, my contentment, my ability to receive what God has given me without immediately measuring it against what he gave someone else.

I've been treating the comparison as harmless because it doesn't look like sin. It's just Instagram. Everyone does it. There are worse things.

But I know what it produces in me. And I know I keep going back to it at the exact moment of the day when I'm most depleted and most susceptible to believing I'm not enough.

David said the Ephesians realized they valued God more than they valued their books. And I had to ask myself honestly: do I value those forty-five minutes more than I value what God is actually trying to do in my quietest hour?

Because that's when he'd have me. Genuinely quiet. Kids asleep. The day done. And instead of bringing that space to him, I've been handing it to an algorithm.

He also pointed out what happened right after the bonfire. The word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily. Surrender made room for something. Full surrender always does.

I don't know exactly what 10PM looks like without the phone. Probably uncomfortable at first. Probably a lot of sitting with thoughts I've been scrolling past.

But I've been doing the wrong math. I've been calculating what it costs to let go instead of asking what God is trying to do with what I'm holding onto.

This week I'm putting the phone down at 10.

Not forever. Not with a dramatic announcement.

Just tonight. And then tomorrow night.

And I'm going to find out what God does with the quiet when I actually give it to him.