Leave the phone at home 

Have you ever tried a ‘phone fast’? Me neither. But right now I need to go into a phone fast, because few things are causing me problems like this my phone!

From telling those frequent so-called ‘white’ lies effortlessly, to sending and receiving messages during a Sunday sermon and even playing the occasional game of Candy Crush in the middle of the fellowship, my phone habits are becoming overwhelmingly bad.

And the sad part is that I don’t know how to simply put it aside. I envy people who never have their mobile phones nearby; every time you call them it is next to impossible to access them, because they are always in different rooms from their phones. Why can’t I occasionally be that way?

Have you noticed how easily a phone can creep into your prayer patterns? You enter the prayer closet and as you launch deep into prayer, the phone starts beeping, vibrating, winking and calling unto you. Before you know it, you are reaching for it to check if it is an urgent message you need to attend to, and once you allow yourself to do that, you break the cruise or vibe you had attained in the prayer.

A score for the devil you were trying to hit. I have even absently opened X (for- merly Twitter) in the middle of prayer, simply because lately my phone seems to be an extension of my hand. I am tired.

So, that is where a phone fast comes in. I am gearing up to wean myself off this menacing gadget for a while, although even the thought alone seems to give me palpitations!

For someone who lived the better part of her life without even a landline, I do not remember how I ever survived without a mobile phone. Well, I plan to explore that. Soon.

The problem is how to handle all the whispers about possible missed deals and opportunities that may come by phone during the fast…

Maybe I will start by deliberately leaving it at home on Sundays and keeping it out of my prayer closet. Step one: I uninstalled the Bible app, because that is where all the chaos starts from; I would take the phone out to read a Bible verse and somehow it would never make it back into the purse until the service is over. Now I carry a physical Bible again.

Anyway, as I gear up for the big phone fast, let me try leaving it at home on Sundays. For practice.

malita@observer.ug