True Confessions of a Shopaholic - Kind Of

I love shopping. Most people don't think of me as a shopaholic - maybe because I tend to avoid malls . . . but more likely because I am kind of cheap. I would rather schlep around a laundry basket on a daily basis than spend hundreds of dollars on a handbag. Aside from finding the sometimes-vapid, often middle/high-school-demographic mall atmosphere off-putting, there's something about shopping that I really enjoy. I tend to slowly pick my way through stores. What appeals to me so much is the combination of being unhurried and also the social-but-antisocial quality of it all. At the end of a teaching day, well . . .

I guess, by the end of the day, I'm a big fan of being around people but not actually dealing with them.

SO, when I'm not shopping at second-hand/consignment stores (like I said, thrifty is my middle name), I deal with my typical love for "shop therapy" by doing the one somewhat-justifiable kind of shopping; I grocery shop. I mean, we all have to do it, right?

Except, for some reason when Matt first challenged us all to give something up, this was one of the first things that came to mind. So, instead of giving up certain foods, I gave up shopping for food and started trying to minimize other activities that let me off the hook from doing something meaningful with my time. I've been really convicted through this "fast". The tired pursuit of mindlessness, whether its walking through a grocery store or vegging out to several episodes of a TV show, is something that God's really been working on in me over the past 2 & 1/2 weeks. He is revealing to me how often I look to his creation to soothe myself at the end of a long day, rather than looking to him to replenish my energy and renew my spirit.

Today I started reading Jeremiah during my journaling/reading time, and when I got to chapter 2, verses 11(ish)-13, I was really floored.

I hate it when I read a passage and I'm just like Israel in my screw-ups! Reading this, I feel like God is really showing me how fruitless it is to pursue anything other than his glory. When I do the little relaxing things at the end of the day, they're not inherently bad or anything, but I am doing them to the detriment of my time with God, and so I'm minimizing the astounding glory of God; I'm trying to dig myself a well that can never hold any water to replenish me. Not only do I forsake God to spend my time elsewhere, but then I look to those activities I am choosing as something that should fulfill me when they never could.

I don't know if anyone else has been thinking along these lines, but I am becoming more aware of how easy it is to slip into idolatry in even the smallest or most essential of things when I use it for solace instead of resting in God. I am praying that God guides me, and all of us, to the rest and the life that are really only found in him.

~Abby