Christmas is coming. The "I wants" show up every year at this time. I may have mentioned before what my kids sound like when they have a case of the "I wants". Say "I want" 10 times fast. "I want, I want, I want, I want, I want, I want, I want, I want, I want, I want". The Moderately Minimalist 4 year old has a serious case of the "I wants". He asked me how many gifts he would be opening on Christmas. I said 4. He started to cry. He says he wants 10 gifts. He has only asked me for 3 things. He wants Batman legos, Spiderman legos, and Spiderman paint. I asked him, what 10 things do you want? He named the same 3 things. I pointed out that he only has 3 things on his list. He couldn't name anything else. His heart just wants. But he has no idea what it wants.
Last night the Moderately Minimalist Family went to the mall. We went to see the mall decorations and eat an Auntie Anne's pretzel. Nintendo was camped out in the center of the mall demonstrating video games. The Moderately Minimalist 10 year old had a blast trying them out. The Moderately Minimalist 4 year old cried that we didn't get to take them home. We browsed through the Disney store on the way out. The kids got to watch part of a movie in there while coloring a picture. The 4 year old asked, "Can I buy a toy?" Did you catch that phrase? "A toy". But he didn't say "that Toy Story toy" or that "Inside Out toy". Any toy will do. The "I wants" were there again. Wanting, but not even knowing what he wanted.
On the way home he began to cry again. He said he wanted to open 10 presents on Christmas. I again asked him what he specifically wanted, to show him that there were only 3 things on his list. But this time, fresh from the mall, his list was much longer. He named everything he had just seen. My heart fell. The mall had given his "I wants" names. Now he had named all ten of them. Now that they have names, they will be harder to do battle against.
The problem is not the mall. Neither is the problem TV. We will continue to avoid them both because they make the battle harder. But the "I wants" were there before we pulled into the parking lot. The mall just gave them names. The true source of the "I wants" is in our hearts. I am not so different from my four year old. Give me 20 bucks and send me into the Container Store or Barnes and Noble, and I will come out with a purchase. My heart is wanting also. All of our hearts want. The source of these wants runs deep. It runs all the way back to that Garden where Eve and then Adam choose to eat that apple that they were told not to eat. They wanted it. And we have all been wanting since. The only cure for the empty place in our hearts came to earth, born as a baby, living the perfect life and died so that we can be whole and complete again. Only in Him will all of our wants be filled. Not temporarily filled until next year when we have new wants. But a forever filled of all the wants, both the ones that have names, and the ones that don't.
