Starving SteinMart

"Temptation doesn't take kindly to being starved" (Lysa TerKeurst in Made to Crave). Have you experienced what it's like to starve temptation in any area of your life? How did it make you feel? For Lent this year, I gave up Steinmart. For more than 40 days, I willfully chose not to go to my favorite store in the world because I knew it was a place I wasted time and money, a place I went to for ‘retail therapy,’ a place that tickled my fancy and fed my ‘stuff’ habit. I wanted to use the time I typically spent shopping doing something more productive . . . like finding a place for all the stuff I had already bought at Steinmart and beyond. For the most part, it was not a difficult assignment. I found great pleasure in clearing out a couple of cluttered areas – the corner in my bedroom and the spare room on the second floor. The pleasure was not in the decluttering (the process always wears me out mentally and emotionally as I wrestle with what to do with what I thought I needed so badly that I bought it and brought it home). The pleasure was in seeing a clean spot in each of these rooms. But then I’d get a coupon in the mail, an alert on my smartphone, or an email in my inbox. The temptation started as simply as that. The higher the discount, the greater the temptation. But then I’d look at that cleaned out corner and smile. Nope, not going back there today. Can’t say ‘ever’ because I don’t know what tomorrow will bring but that day I didn’t go to Steinmart. As a matter of fact, I threw away the coupon, ignored the alert, and deleted the email. I focused on the end goal rather than the instant gratification. Fast forward to today and relating this to food issues (focus of Made to Crave). I love to eat. It is my sustenance, my comfort, my entertainment, my friend. It is to me all the things I say it shouldn’t be because I know in my head that food is fuel, and I really only need a limited amount of fuel to accomplish the tasks I have before me each day. And yet I eat. Starving physical temptations is difficult for me. I need to stay focused on the end goal and not be so caught up on instant gratification. Stay tuned. I've got a lifetime to work on this!