The Green Eyed Monster

Danny Ray over at Dream Big, Dream Often always asks the best questions.

Today’s question was Are you an envious person?. Feel free to go on over and give Danny your own take on it. I am not doing this as a reblog because I wanted to talk about my experience with envy.

When I was growing up I had was around -100 on the self-esteem scale. It didn’t help that I was my final height of 5 foot 9 inches by the time I was eleven, was a little overweight, clumsy, had braces and wasn’t by any stretch of the imagination “popular”.

I was envious of just about everyone and everything.

• Most of my friends were athletic and were on the swim team, track and field, soccer, etc., while I was told by my parents that I just wasn’t built for sports.
• I was not considered pretty – in fact, I was teased and called a “dog”. I envied all my friends who were thin, pretty and had boyfriends.
• I was super jealous of my sister because she was eight years older than me and used to get to do things I wanted to do. But there was payback because I got my ears pierced when I was 11 and she had to wait until she was 16 (of course at that time I was the jealous one of course).
• I started envying everyone for one reason or another because I just felt so inferior in every way.
• I think my biggest flaw has been about health. Why do I have to have so many illnesses? Why don’t the doctors believe me? Am I really a mental case? Why can’t I be “normal”? Why can’t I be like everyone else?

Am I still envious? I believe it is not something we can totally get away from – it is human to dream of having the greener grass. But I believe I have come a long way from those days when I wished I was anyone but me.

What changed? I am still the same person I always was and in some ways, you could say even more “inferior”. I have put weight back on because I am not as active as I was. My brain doesn’t work great so I forget things or am not as fast at thinking as I used to be. I am in pain all the time, which can make me grumpy and my fashion sense zooms in on loose and comfortable over stylish and flattering.

What did change is that I am happy in my own skin. I can accept all those things and don’t have to covet what others have better than me. Oh, I would be foolish to say I am not still jealous when I hear that another of my friends is a grandmother. I do still envy people who are able to work for a living and those that win a lottery. But those are normal things and not really harmful because I know nothing can be done about them so I accept them (and the fact I am envious).

Another reason for ditching the Green-Eyed Monster is, of course, my faith. There is no place for envy in the Lord’s House. The only One that we should be wanting to be like is Jesus Christ. If we live a life through Him, we are humble and thankful. But wanting to be like Him does not mean we strive for perfection. That is the only Christ-like quality we can’t achieve. And it has taken a long time, but I am quite okay with that.

Lydia!