Sweet Friends, I need to focus on my family right now for oh so many reasons.  We are all fine but I have found that I am a little 0ff-kilter these days, spread too thin and feeling like who am I if my number one ministry is needing attention and I don’t give it?

So for the next two weeks, I will be publishing archives from long ago in “Mommy on Fire” history….

Peace to you.

The following post was posted on Friday at Internet Cafe Devotions….

It’s official.  Pigs have flown.

God’s been working on me for a while on this issue – ahem, pardon the pun.

It’s time to discontinue my subscription to a certain weekly, glossy magazine I’ve loved for a good long while.

Now this may not sound like earth-shattering news until you realize the relationship I once had with this magazine.

As a subscriber, there was a time when I was devastated if it didn’t arrive in my mailbox on Friday afternoon.  I might have called to complain if it was delivered any later than Saturday.  I also might have needed to get a life and reprioritize a bit…

Sadly enough, I vividly remember a time six years ago when my nine-months-pregnant-self was lying on the bed of our first home beached-whale style with feet propped high on a pillow and pouting because it had not arrived when it should have.

As any good husband would do with a wife about to give birth any second, he promptly “went out for a few things” and returned with the current issue even though it would be delivered to my doorstep two days later.

Idolatry, much?

Recently, as I’ve leafed through the colorful, glossy pages of who’s dating who and who’s wearing what, I found that truthfully, I just didn’t care anymore.

I didn’t care if Angelina and Brad were considering marriage.  I didn’t care if Kim Karadashian signed a major TV deal.  And I certainly didn’t care if the “celebrity du jour” was out nightclubbing with another young starlet.

I also might need to mention that it’s not personal – it’s certainly nothing against these people as, well, people.

It’s just that I’m filling myself up with this kind of stuff rather than filling up with good, healthy “food for the soul.”  Instead of reading my Bible or other quality publications, I’m filling myself up with who’s dating who in the Hollywood scene.

It’s like the difference between McDonald’s and Subway.

And it’s true that I have managed to read God’s word AND my ex-favorite magazine; however, after spending ten days in Ghana at the start of the summer, I quickly realized how out-of-touch the lives in this glossy seemed to be.

I found that I could no longer read the details of a celebrity engagement party complete with mules in $10,000 jeweled costumes when I met women who just wanted someone to help them pay the $50 fee for health insurance so they could deliver their baby in a hospital.

It seemed to be an unhealthy juxtaposition to see a photo of a young celebrity child wearing a pair of shoes that is more expensive than all of mine combined with the images of so many young children without a single pair to their name permanently etched in my mind.

You can’t unsee the seen.  And I’ve seen.

So after much research for a quality replacement, I’m bidding farewell to my former favorite magazine and moving on to publications that are true, noble, right, pure, lovely, and admirable.

I’m going to be eating more Subway.

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. – Romans 12:2 (NIV)