Envy

I've grown up as an envious girl. I've envied other girls' popularity, wardrobe, and ease in social situations. I've envied others' relationships with God, family, and friends. It's not pretty to admit, but it's true.

The most surprising thing God’s done as I've considered my envious heart is to give me a taste of envy’s opposite: love. Because of His love for me, I’ve become less insecure, and, therefore, less envious. He blesses me with friends who cheerlead me when I succeed—a rare, rare gift. Aeschylus says this: “How rare, men with the character to praise a friend’s success without a trace of envy.” One of my dearest friends, Sandi, embodies Aeschylus’ words. I can always count on her to rejoice when I make a book sale, or land a speaking engagement. Oswald Chambers writes, “Many will confide to you their secret sorrows, but the last mark of intimacy is to confide secret joys.”[i]

I wonder how many of us have Sandis, friends to whom we can confide our secret joys. Because she is secure in her relationship with Jesus, we are secure in our relationship. She understands Galatians 5:26—something I wish more Jesus-followers put into practice (including me). “That means we will not compare ourselves with each other as if one of us were better and another worse. We have far more interesting things to do with our lives. Each of us is an original” (The Message).

I want to be a woman who is confide-able, whose friends can tell her their secret joys. I want to shed my envious ways like a bulky overcoat in summer, once and for all. I can do that only when I realize we’re all terribly needy and messy and lost—that we all need the grace-whispers of Jesus. I want to live a life of gratitude for a God who dares to endure the prickles of envy and go to the cross anyway, for the likes of me.

[i] Chambers, Oswald, My Utmost for His Highest (Westwood, NJ: Barbour and Company, Inc., 1935), p. 155.