Stop Shopping

            It’s hard to stop hunting for couches.

            Daily visits to the Skagit Valley, Seattle, and Bellingham Craigslist pages have been part of my routine for so long that I’m adrift without any furniture to look for.  I dreamed of and searched for reclining loveseats and small sectionals with a chaise lounge.   But in the end, I ended up with a floral couch from Habitat.

            Had my budget been unlimited, I would have gone microfiber.  But practicality won, and I finally saw a couch I could live with at a price I could afford. 

            I do not like the word “covetous,” and, naturally, do not wish to consider myself in that light.  Yet the months of searches tell me how easy it is to derive meaning from wanting.  All along you think that if you can just find the perfect item, you will be satisfied.  And then, finally, you find it (or a reasonable substitute) . . . and then there is a blank space where the endless searching or shopping used to be. 

            Instead of browsing Craigslist, I want to delve deeper into what truly satisfies:  relationship with God through Christ.  But it is harder to lay aside the looking and the coveting than I thought.  There are more idols and more cover-ups, more ways of escape than I had realized.  The only way in is through discipline, not nearly so appealing as soul-numbing-shopping but infinitely more rewarding.