Denial-Of-Service (DoS)

If you are unaware (not that you might actually want to be aware or feel that you need to be aware), Twitter, along with Facebook, and MySpace, was the target of hackers Thursday morning. According to Twitter’s blog and status page, they were defending against a “denial-of-service” attack, which had caused their system to shut down. Josh Quittener, of Time.com, explains (of a denial-of-service) that “the basic idea is to swamp a website with too much traffic, forcing it to go out of service.”

Ever felt like you were so swamped that you wanted to go out of service? Yeah… Me too. We’ve all wanted to shutdown on occasion, which poses the question: How do we struggle with denial?

I thought of this in a couple of ways, in relation to this post, and they are: 1) Being denied something; and 2) Being in denial about something.

When we are denied something that is a part of our “routine,” the emotions we feel often get us strangely frustrated. For instance, I learned Thursday just how much a part of my routine Twitter has become (that is the better way to name my addiction). Not being able to “tweet” was frustrating! So I had to stop and ask myself a question that gets to the heart of how I felt. For me, that question was: “What the heck are you thinking?!”

Crazy, isn’t it? How our humanness reminds us of our childish tendencies… We want it and we want it now! [Insert awkward laugh here]

No one likes to be denied the things they appreciate, whether those things are the chance to see a beautiful sunset, or the smile of someone you love, or to experience that perfect idea of the perfect day, or to eat cherry flavored Jolly Ranchers… But Twitter? Come on… What is happening to us?

Are we shifting… changing… emerging? Maybe that is where the second thought comes in…

Are we in denial about something? I’m not necessarily speaking exclusively in reference to society or culture, but instead about you and I as individual humans. Are there questions we are afraid to ask about ourselves because we are afraid of dealing with the emotional overload? Maybe we are afraid we might “shut-down” or “go out of service”?

In your quest for happiness and fulfillment in life, is the real you starting to come into view? If not why not?

Sometimes we are simply in denial about who we really are… But God wants us to look beyond our immediate posture toward the heart of why we might be behaving in a specific way -- what's got us here. We have to ask those deeper questions that reveal the source of our behavior.

Sometimes our feelings of system overload are not coming from outside requests but instead from an unwillingness to address our own insecurities. It’s easier to point outward toward other stressors (people, circumstances, the lack of something, etc.) than to look inward and deeper.

I am continually fascinated about the question God asks humanity to encourage that deeper exploration. In Genesis 3:11 God asks, "Who told you that you were naked?”

Another way to think about this question is to ask: What voices are you listening to that derail you, cause you to “go out of service,” and distract your focus away from God?

Hmm… Maybe I will tweet about this. :-)