Spare change

I am a shopper. I am in debt, and still I shop. It started in high school, in looking forward to a move away to college, in the collection of sheet sets and bath linens and other grown-up things to lessen the agony of how far away moving day still was. Maybe even before that, in collecting CDs that were to provide my comfort in the darker days of my youth. It worsened in college, as every day I passed by record stores and boutiques and fancy grocery stores in my usual route between classes. I was surrounded by people who had things, and it made me want. It continued in the lean years after college as I drifted between cities and jobs and bought things to cope with feeling so lost.

And most recently, even after finding myself unemployed for half a year, after cutting up the credit cards, I still found ways to justify the collection of things. I don't go to the mall anymore, and when I do, the price tags disgust me. But I'd go to Ross weekly "just to look" and walk away with several bags in hand. Well, my work shoes are falling apart. The house smells kind of funny, so I can justify purchasing a vanilla candle. This sweater? On clearance? I can't pass that up. Or I'd visit the consignment shops. Abercrombie sweater that I wanted last year, but now at 1/3 the price? Yes, please. It seemed okay because I was sacrificing my wishes for new things in order to buy things that I could afford.

But that's not really the point, I've come to discover. While my spending has ebbed, I'm still not being responsible to myself or to those I love (or to those I will someday love), or to my church (as I toss the $5 into the basket instead of the $20). I'm not being honest to anyone, including myself and God. I make excuses for my behavior, and I listen to the whispers in my ear that tell me "It's okay to buy things because things are important." No, they're not.

Things have never made me happy. Why I never realized this before, I can't tell. I look back on experiences I've had, and I can remember feeling artificially good about dressing up in nice clothes, about buying a round for my friends, about getting a better phone than my coworkers; but I still have to lump all those experiences together as the period of time in which I was lost. The B sides to those tapes are songs about being lonely and desperate and heartbroken.

This is how God is changing me. It happens rather gradually because I am stubborn. And I am fortunate that he sticks with me and keeps putting truth in front of my eyes. Jesus says in Matthew 6: 19-21 “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." I passed over this passage a few times in the last couple weeks while thinking that's not really what I do. I don't really treasure the things I have on earth. But I read over it again and again. And I was really made to see that it was speaking to me.

And so I am changing. And so I am grateful.