I know you. I’m with you. I took twenty-nine selfies this summer. That’s going from nearly zero halfway to sixty in three short months. I wasn’t a selfie taker until a friend said to me this past spring, “I want to see more pictures of you in the orchard. Please show us what you do on your farm.”

Often I work alone, and even if I am working with someone, I don’t want to bother them with taking a picture, so here we go…

While I take my selfie, Santos is up on his ladder picking apricots. Oma and I pack the fruit and then I’m off on a delivery. But right now I’m just standing here in the orchard grinning all by myself for the camera while Santos works.

And here I am taking a selfie while Scott works…

We also did selfies on our date nights in the orchard. Scott even has a selfie stick on the back of his phone (teachers learn this stuff from teenagers, you know. Actually Scott just informed me it’s a pop socket) so it’s easier to hold your camera in that awkward two feet out in front of your face position. Hopefully, your arms are at least twenty-four inches long. At our age, you want to hold that camera as far away as possible to minimize your wrinkles. Kids don’t have this problem. That’s why you see teenage tonsils in selfies.

The other day I was washing dishes and decided to snap a selfie. I reclined back over the sink like Kim Kardashian, trying to hit the pose where I’d look just right when my phone went rogue and jumped out of my hand into the sink of soapy dishes. I think my iPhone has had enough. I don’t think the iBaby (this is what I call my phone these days because I treat it like a baby) is impressed with me trying to pose like Kimmy K for selfies. I heard Kim is under doctors orders to take no more selfies until her wrist heals. Maybe I can stop wearing my picking bucket until my back heals.

So I’ve had my human babies fall into swimming pools before. Of course, I rescued our beloved children right away. Just like I screamed and dove into that sink full of dishes to deliver my beloved iBaby from selfie death. One of my sons screamed too because he thought I’d hurt myself in the kitchen. “I’m okay,” I called out to my boys doing homework over at the kitchen table. “Just dropped my iPhone in the water.”

“Did it drown?” One of the boys asked like my iBaby was a living creature. “No, I think it’s okay. I pulled it out fast. It’s still beeping.” It only took a couple of hours to dry out so I could get back on the selfie bandwagon.

Okay, honestly, I have to come clean. I wasn’t trying to take a Kardashian selfie when I dropped my phone into my sink of dishes. I’m not that far gone yet. I was chatting with my mom, trying to get my work done while checking on Oma. My mom loves to visit on the phone. I have endless chores to do so I try to talk with Oma while I’m working. What I really need to invent is a selfie iPhone necklace where your phone hangs on a long chain around your neck so if you drop it, you don’t drown it in a sink full of dishes or cast it off a cliff in Yosemite while you’re taking selfies or on the phone with your mom.

But do I really want to wear my iPhone around my neck? Maybe I can invent an iPhone baby wrap like mommas wear their babies in these days. You wouldn’t even have to take it out of the wrap to take a selfie, but I’m going to need an engineer’s help to invent something like this.

Yesterday, I accidentally left my iPhone at home because I was in a rush to get to an early morning dentist appointment. I went all day without it. Imagine that. The first hour was confusing. I kept reaching for my phone in my purse. Maybe I wanted to take a picture of the crown on my tooth that needs to be replaced. This crown has been hurting me off and on for years. Don’t all my social media friends want to see this crown in my mouth and know it’s been making me suffer, especially this summer? Try picking peaches with a sore tooth. Fortunately, my tooth didn’t hurt every day, but most days it did. But you won’t see that in my orchard selfies. I grin and bear it in all selfies. Remember selfies are your highlight reel. All the fabulous things you are doing with your life. How great you look in that new outfit after losing two pounds. How amazing you are climbing Mount Kilimanjaro with one hand because you need your other hand to take your selfies.

My new dentist asked if I want to keep all my teeth for life. Of course, I do! Selfies aren’t pretty with missing teeth. But honestly, do I really want to keep taking these selfies?

I’ve always been a late bloomer. Our older kids and Scott have been snapping selfies years before I joined them recently. For the most part, they are kind of over the selfie craze. And I’m getting over it too because I’m realizing while the camera is turned on myself, I’m missing other things I value. Like humility. Focusing on others. And good old-fashioned common sense. While taking a selfie in the orchard, I about knocked myself out on a tree branch. I didn’t see the branch because I was messing with the camera. At least I still have a sense of humor and laughed myself silly holding onto the bump on my head.

But truthfully, selfies can be addicting. Pretty soon you’re wondering if you should take a selfie of your toes because you just washed the orchard off your feet and painted your nails. Maybe you’re the only farmer who paints her toenails in Sutter County. Maybe this is newsworthy on social media. You find yourself thinking about your looks more often. Did I brush my hair this morning? Should I take my hat off for a selfie or leave it on? Definitely leave it on. Haven’t washed my hair in four days. I probably could have picked forty more pounds of fruit today if I hadn’t stopped to take a selfie, and I should have washed my glasses before snapping the picture. My reading glasses are filthy because I use them in the orchard so I don’t poke my eye out on a branch while picking.

But darn it, I picked up the Bible this morning and it said, Christians aren’t supposed to be lovers of self. In the last days, “People will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy” 2 Timothy 3:2.

I’m not sure if we’re in the last days, but I think we have a serious selfie problem today. I know a lot of Christians ready to rush right out and try to save the world, but they have no desire to save time to read their Bibles. No conviction about overcoming their own sins. No desire to really pray for God’s will to be done in their lives and the lives of others.

All too often, I find myself praying for what I want: a happy life, a happy bank account, a happy family. I know I’m not the only one here with a selfie problem. Maybe the root of all this selfie business is unbelief. And an unwillingness to live for Christ and not ourselves.