a six letter word

Ok, so today it happened. i knew it would sooner or later. i saw an amazing turqoise and ivory shell necklace at the latin festival. it was so beautiful and distinct....it was screaming at me- take me!! reason left me for a few minutes; i thought perhaps i'll buy it and say it's a gift for someone and let a year pass by and then decide to just keep it (devious how my mind works heh?). i guess you can say my achiles heel is unique pieces, especially if made by an artist (who i am usually willing to hunk up more change for)....so what did i end up doing?

i restrained myself - actually it was more like i ran for my life out of that booth. i knew if i'd have been there one second longer i'd have given in. it's pretty crazy as i think about it. desire...it's a small six letter word but it really is a monster. in a few moments i was seriously willing to throw out a whole month's worth of restraint (sad i only went one whole month, huh). but looking back on it now, a few hours later i can't help but think how crazy this emotion is. it overpowers you and makes you into a whole other person. reason and desire have no place being in the same sentence. my reason had totally left me, as it is any time desire comes in. one comes in and automatically throws the other out of the room.

why is it that we desire? where did this come from? i think a lot of you may say, well we desire because we're sinful people. true, but desire by itself isn't necessarily an evil thing. to desire world peace is not sinful. i think it's such a strong emotion because it comes from the heart. "where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

i know when i've been in other countries (let's say poverty stricken countries anyways) and spoken to people, i coudn't help but notice how desire was almost nonexistant in their lives, granted not all of them were the same. but they were content with what they had, and what they had was sooo little. when i asked them if they wanted to come to the usa, the land of "plenty," they responded no. they didn't want to go to a place that had so much and become people that had to have all that muchness and forget about those that had very little. i couldn't help but think that is such wisdom. i think because we live in such an affluent country, we are surrounded with so much, and it is absolutely the best out there, that we are constantly bombarded with ads telling us we need this and so we become creatures of desire, but we desire things- more, bigger and better things.

i don't want to be a product of the media, of advertisements or even of the culture. i don't want to desire a necklace, however beautiful it may be. instead i want to desire love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, yes definately self-control.