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There's this store I shop at. I have a love/hate relationship with it. I love this store because it's huge and has everything imaginable. I hate this store because it's huge and has everything imaginable. You know the kind. You spend twice what you ought because you see all these things you didn't even know you needed until you see them. You also get your day's workout getting diapers in one corner and then walking half a mile to get potting soil in the other.

Well, this store, like most, has a spot with stock that rotates with the season. It's especially noticeable around the holidays. Right after Halloween, this spot becomes the baking supply center. Brown sugar, pecans, corn syrup, chocolate chips, canned pumpkin, shortening, almond bark, and loaf pans beg to be taken home. "It's the holidays! It's the holidays! If you don't bake and over-eat, it's not the holidays."

Being the good Southern girl that I am, I fully agree with their plea. I get everything I need for lots of caramel corn, chocolate chip cookies, pumpkin bread, and Kentucky Derby pie.

Christmas comes and goes, and the eating season ends.

When I visit this store on January 1 to stock up on wrapping paper for next year, I walk past the ever-changing island. I expect to see the dregs of baking goods at clearance prices. But no. Oh, no. Instead the shelves have been remodeled, refreshed, and reloaded with every diet product imaginable. Low-carb bars and high-carb bars, sugar-free candy bars and weight loss tonics, jump ropes and bathroom scales now replace the fat and sugar that have been there for the last 2 months.

The change was dramatic. It was like when black-headed Cher bleached out her hair or when Madonna transformed her image when she became a mother. I couldn't help but notice and think "there has to be a spiritual truth in that."

And I think I know what it might be. It's not just enough to say "I'm going to get rid of the bad." I'm going to stop smoking, or stop nagging, or stop drinking coffee, or stop eating candy, or clear out the baking center. We have to replace the old with the new, the bad with the good.

Instead of nagging, we should praise our children (or husband) for what they do well. Instead of drinking a pot of coffee, we should drink a nice, healthy pot of green tea. Instead of a Heath bar, we should have a health bar.

I watched Oprah this week. She featured a man who had stopped smoking, but replaced that bad habit with another habit: chewing enormous amounts of nicotine replacement gum (and leaving chewed pieces all over the house). Hum, so maybe just "replacing the old with the new" is good advice, but not entirely sound.

There's this passage in Romans that I love. I have it written on note cards, and have kept it in front of me at times when trying to change an old habit:

"So, dear brothers and sisters, you have no obligation whatsoever to do what your sinful nature urges you to do. [nag, complain, eat, worry] For if you keep on following it, you will perish. But if through the power of the Holy Spirit you turn from it and its evil deeds, you will live. (Romans 8:12-14, New Living Translation, brackets are my addition.)

We can't just replace the old with different. We have to let the Holy Spirit help replace the bad with something God--with something from His Word that brings true satisfaction. Faith for worry. Peace instead of smoking. Praise instead of complaining.

So it's "Out with the bad, and God brings in the good."
That's advice I can live with.

"'Winging It" from Stan Smith

Washed by the Water of the Word