In The Trash

As a teenager, I decided to not read any of the fashion or tabloid magazines and especially not waste any money on buying them. The only time I divulged into those pages was when I went to the hair salon for my hair appointment. I would read the People Magazine because my mom taught me that was the only credible one to actually believe and I would flip through the hair magazines. I was always changing my short hair style so I loved getting ideas.

I think this helped me tremendously in life back then and still today. I put enough pressure on myself to look a certain way without staring at perfectly polished and air brushed body images to put in my mind to compare myself to.

Not to mention, the filth they write about it in those fashion magazines leaves me feeling dirty. Occasionally, I have flipped through one while getting my toes done and I feel disgusted afterwards. Like my mind has been corrupted, my spirit assaulted, my heart muddied.

I am probably more sensitive to this stuff because I have not allowed it in for so long. And you know what? Once you start a habit, it’s easy to continue. It is not difficult for me to not pick up those magazines. Even if I think, I just want to see what the style is this season. Then my mind is fixed on everything I don’t have on the Must Have Lists for the season! I can look around the stores to get that information!

The old cliche is so true, garbage in, garbage out. It’s like feeding yourself doughnuts and ice cream every day and wondering why you have so much extra fluff around your waist! So if we feed our mind these unrealistic expectations of how we should look and read the ungodly advice on how our marriages should be doing, it’s a no wonder that we are going to be unhappy with ourselves and our husbands. Or even when we fixate on how a certain movie star looks perfect and says her love life is perfect and has all the money in the world to buy anything she has ever wanted.

It leaves us with a deep sense of dissatisfaction in our lives. It breeds discontentment. It is not what we should be gorging on. We should be filling our minds and hearts with the Word of God. We should be concerned with the things of God and consumed with doing the will of God.

Those magazines represent everything I am not, everything I should not want to be. Why the allure, the attraction, the intrigue? Ahhhh, it’s as old as time.

“Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world- the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does- comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.”      1 John 2:15-17

Those magazines should be put right where they belong, in the trash.