I Love Free STUFF!!!

I get pretty excited about FREE STUFF!  So much so that my friends like to imitate my catch phrase, "free stuff!"  Packets, samples, piles of junk on the side of the road, you name it--its all so exciting!  "Treasure!  We might find treasure!" I often think.

I'm not sure what the intense, magnetic-like pull is all about.  Maybe it is because I like gifts so much.  Don't you love it when people are generous with you?  Maybe not, because it is pretty humbling.  But there is really nothing like it.  Right?  Giving things away for free just doesn't make logical sense to us, but in reality I suppose we are simply imitating our Maker who gave all things to us freely.  (What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?  He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Romans 8:31&32)

I never have been able to shake that free stuff obsession and never has it been more obvious of an obsession than it was today.  As we were leaving the library and passing the last of many hand sanitizing stations that are scattered generously throughout the entire 6 floor library, I suddenly realized that an involuntary war had been going on within mind ever since I had seen the first dispenser of free nectar on the Children's Floor.   I realized that on one side of my brain I had been thinking about how I hate hand sanitizer.  I have been repulsed by it completely ever since I heard that it can create "super germs".  Its not even a "love-hate" relationship.  It is simply "hate-hate".  Like, "I hate the fact that they make my kids use it before eating lunch at school."  I always worry that they might ingest a bit of it.  I feel like I don't need the stuff and am better off without it. I also think that I am irrationally convinced that there are many other unknown side-effects the aromatically abrasive and poisonous lotion might contain.

But the other side of my brain had been thinking about how much I LOVE free stuff.  All of those hand sanitizing stations seemed like giant, neon "free stuff stations" that were calling to me like Sirens and I really, really wanted to be the recipient of their overly generous gift.

When I finally realized what was happening within me, I laughed at myself; turned up my nose to the beckoning hand sanitizing station with an imaginary "Pppft!" and an "I don't need you, but I still love that you are free" glance; took a picture of the kids in front of the library; and then purposed to tell you about it.  You know, just to get it off of my chest...

Next time I go to the library, can you please tie me to the mast of a ship so that I'll still be able to hear the call of the Sirens, but not be swept away with my passion for all that is free?  Because that was a close one!  I may need some accountability.

Thanks a bunch!