I don't think I ever posted this. I wrote it in a note on Facebook that I never published. I just found it again and I find it amusing/thoughtful enough that it deems posting for real here.

This was written August 27, 2013.

Today I learned a very big lesson from the virtual world. But talking about it is going to require some confessions to things I'm not so excited to share. So let's just get into it.

I struggle with materialism. In a lot of ways. It shows up when I have nothing to do ("I want to go shopping!"), it shows up when I have a job ("Ooh! Money for spending!"), it shows up when Stephen and I do budgeting ("Seventy dollars a month is not enough spending money for me!"), it showed up when we didn't have a budget ("Please can you buy me this dress??"), it shows up at Christmas ("I need to give the right gifts!"), it shows up when I try to downsize my house ("I cannot possibly get rid of anything else!! I've tried!"), and so on and so forth. It colors my life.

It even comes into play in my downtime at home. There's this online game that Disney created called Pixie Hollow. I joined it because I have always enjoyed writing fairy tales and the idea of creating my own personal virtual fairy to live in her own, Disney-caliber artistic fairy world appealed to me very much.

But when I joined, I learned that the Pixie Hollow game had very little to do with fairy tales and much more to do with earning enough points to buy clothing, furniture, and other things from their little fairy stores.

So I started doing that. I was enjoying putting together my little fairy home and fairy wardrobe. It was like getting my real life "shopping fix"--only it was free! Could it get any better??

And then Disney changed things. They introduced the paid "Membership" to Pixie Hollow. You could, of course, still do some things for free. But lots and lots of things that were previously free were now for "Members Only," including buying certain items from the stores. It outraged me. I couldn't talk myself into buying a year-long membership for something so juvenile, but I didn't want to stop visiting. But every time I visited and they added new restrictions (and they did keep adding restrictions!), more and more resentment built up in me.

Apparently others vocalized their feelings about the new restrictions, because later Disney introduced a concept called "Pixie Diamonds." This was an option for a one-time purchase of an amount of "Pixie Diamonds" that you could use just like money in the stores. No commitment necessary.

So I did that once. But then I kept finding other real-life material things to spend my "play money" on and let the Pixie Hollow game collect dust for a while. In the back of my mind, though, there was always the idea of, Whenever I next have a surplus of "play money," I'll buy some more Pixie Diamonds... In the meantime, I logged in every once in a blue moon so that my account wouldn't get closed.

Today was one of those days. But today at the top of Pixie Hollow I read a shocking statement: "Attention Pixies: Disney Fairies Pixie Hollow will be closing on September 19, 2013. ALL Fairies can log in and enjoy full unlimited access for free, from now until September 19, 2013. Thank you for everything!"

Just like that. Without so much as a warning. No more money needed. Nothing. 100% free for every single fairy out there, until they shut the doors forever.

It floored me. I could not absorb the meaning. It would've been one thing to just suddenly close the game altogether without a warning. But to suddenly let every fairy shop for free and give them a limited time to do so...

In a daze, I went into the game to see if what I was reading was actually true. I knew one thing I had always wanted for my blue fairy was a longer skirt. So I went to buy a dye to use to make her a skirt. And it let me buy a dye without spending any real-world money. So it was true.

On one foggy mental level, as I sat there with my newly purchased blue dye, I knew that I "ought" to have been heading straight into those stores and buying everything they had, no matter whether I liked it or not! I knew that was what probably hundreds of young Pixie Hollow members were doing.

But on another level, one thing was standing out to me so clearly that it completely obliterated my motivation to do so: The promise of "...until September 19, 2013."

I knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that my virtual life would be ending on that date. I knew on 12:00 A.M., September 20th, every "purchase" I made would be completely gone, with not even a database (at least that I could access) left of it.

There could not possibly have been a clearer way to send across the message to me. It was as if God, through this particular circumstance, was writing a personal letter to my heart that said, "Dear Stephanie: You really, truly cannot take it with you. Believe Me, your Father."

So it's shifted my entire perspective on life. I know something has changed in my heart. But I also know it isn't a permanent change. I'm still going to have moments where I fall back into materialism. I just know, now, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I can't fall as far as I have been able to up to this point of my life.

-Stephanie

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