Jealousy

For more than 15 years I have been praying for a new home in the mountains, and to this minute it has yet to come to pass. My desires for a new home have been deterred by a shifting economy, an amazing influx of people with deep pockets moving to my state, ever-climbing home prices, long-lasting seller’s market, income to debt ratio, stagnant salary, etc.

Then I find out about a young couple who were given an excessive amount of money from their parents to purchase a home.

On the heels of that I learned a friend and her husband had loaned an exceptional amount of money, interest free, to their son and daughter-in-law to purchase a home in the mountains of Colorado.

And, yes, I did look up at the heavens and ask God if He had forgotten about me. I also have to admit that out of the cellar of my emotions emerged that green-eyed monster and I didn’t shove him back. He got pretty comfortable dwelling in the lingering negative conditions of my attitude.

Bridge

“I wish…” How often I have uttered those two words in my life…only to find out years later that though the word “wish” can be used in innocent ways to express desire or hope, on a deeper level it also has many negative definitions: hunger, longing, yearning, coveting.

Let’s face it. None of us is satisfied 100% with our lives, looks, possessions, status, job, etc. We’d all like to change something and, more often than not, we may have the desire, but we haven’t got the means. And, when you get right down to it, if we were given three wishes by that ethereal genie in a bottle, we’d wish for more than one thing to be changed in our lives.

We look at the celebrities, the hall-of-famers, the politicians, the rock stars…even our next-door neighbors, and we want what they have. How often in your life have you wanted something really badly, and you find out that one of your friends or relatives has just gotten EXACTLY what you’ve been praying for the past few days, weeks, months, years, decades?

In these situations, I find that I go through what parallels the grief process. Speeding through the shock and denial, I sit for awhile in pain, but invariably veer full bore towards the anger and depression, where I manage to bury myself until Jesus reaches down and pulls me out of that rabbit hole of misery towards hope and acceptance.

Blesson

One famous Bible teacher frequently uses the phrase, “Why, God, Why? When, God, When?” Mournfully, painfully, rebelliously, pitifully I have echoed those words. However, those words have been used to illustrate how we react to the frustrations we endure while in those periods of waiting, but how differently we view God’s timing and actions in our lives.

Through this mire of despondency into which I have allowed myself to sink further and further, God has opened my eyes to reevaluate my circumstances. I liken God’s therapy in my case to that of the famed “A Christmas Carol,” particularly as Charles Dickens marched Scrooge through the various chronicles of his life to expose his hardened heart to repetitive softeners.

God has continued to thrust me into situations where I have been faced with the lives of other people and can see how my life compared. In every instance He has used poverty, sickness, desertion, abandonment, loss, or helplessness to dispel any self-pitying emotions I have allowed to surface.

As surely as I believed that years ago I had forsaken all feelings of jealousy and envy, I am amazed at how quickly I can unleash that monster. More often than not, I have denied that it was actually jealousy I felt, but no emotion is uglier or more enveloping, and it is a chameleon that can disguise itself in an array of different cloaks.

When God’s grace finally enables me to reach the acceptance phase in these situations, He has reminded me that His plan for my life is unique, special, wonderful, and carefully sculpted by Him.