Jealousy

My whole life I grew up going to church and I have always considered myself a Christian. I haven't really started living my life wholly and completely for the Lord until maybe the last year. I started slowing working my way towards this complete devotion to God ever since I got a divorce about five years ago. It has been a process, a journey, a roller coaster, and eventually a transformation, thank the Lord.

I have had a hard time struggling with the fact that I feel like I have wasted 30 years of my life doing everything WRONG! I can get bogged down asking myself things like: what was I thinking, how could I be so blind, didn't I see and realize how lost I was? Obviously I didn't at the time...But you can't understand the utter joy of being found until you have been truly lost.

A young married couple in our church is planning on moving to the Middle Eastern country of Lebanon and doing missionary work there for a number of years. I so admire their bravery, complete faith, devotion and assurance in what the Lord wants them to do so radically with their lives that I can't help but be jealous. I would love to say that it is the “godly jealousy” they talk about in the Bible but I don't think that it is exactly.

When I lived in Los Angeles and met a friend of mine for the first time she was a model and came over to the house I was living in to do a modeling shoot with a photographer friend. She was absolutely gorgeous with dark hair and dark eyes and had an air of mystery since she was quiet and shy. My two male roommates were completely enamored with her and were following her around like love sick puppy dogs with pleading give me attention eyes. I had also invited over a young movie director that I had met at the Denver film festival when I had hung out with him non stop for the 3-4 days of the festival since a friend was doing a bio-documentary on him at the time. I formed a crush on him that ended with us fighting on the last day and I decided it was best for us to be friends. (honestly, he said something that made me really mad so he lost his appeal)

So I found myself sitting at a circular table with the glossy haired, dark-eyed model Martina, and my three guy friends were absolutely drooling, tongues lolling out of their mouths, and just begging like puppy dogs for the treat of her attention. As I was looking at each of their eager faces I had the absolute and complete epiphany to not get jealous of this stunningly beautiful girl. Though every instinct in me told me I should be jealous of her since she was so dark and lovely and all the guys were panting for her, I realized what really was there to be jealous of? I did not want the affections of any of the three guys. If I did not desire them and their attention then why should I care that they were giving it all to another?

And more importantly she was so polar opposite of everything that I am, I should only want someone who wants and appreciates me. I don't want to compete with someone, I want someone to want me and me alone. If they aren't interested in me, then I am not interested in them and I shouldn't have to try or vie for their attention. It was such a freeing thought, I have never had much of a problem with jealousy but whenever it creeps into my thinking I think of sitting around that table and realizing that what I wanted wasn't there so why be jealous because someone else was in the spotlight. Everybody deserves a chance to shine, why not let everyone have a turn. It's not always all about me.

Where I have big, frizzy hair, big energy and a big mouth to match, my new friend Martina, was cool, calm and quite. We were so different and instead of wishing I were like her and wanting to be her, I realized that any guy interested in her would not be into me, so it was like we were not even in competition anyway, so why bother wanting to be like her and then have to compete with her. I had cornered the market on loud, obnoxious, blonds so why try and enter in the running with the silent, sleek brunettes.

So this one time in Lakeland after being lost for about an hour and a half I finally arrived at the new outdoor venue for the church meeting stressed out and frustrated. My group of ladies found seats in front of a wide busy aisle full of kids and people walking to and fro which I found to be distracting in my current frazzled state of mind. Since I was having trouble focusing on worshiping there I wanted to walk closer to the stage and join the crowd bunched around the stage and two of the other ladies joined me.

I have been going to rock concerts forever so crowd navigation is a honed skill that I have perfected where you move into the gaps and try not to step on any ones toes figuratively and literally. It wasn't that I wanted to be on the front row but I just wanted to get to the place that felt right so I kept restlessly zig zagging our little group through the crowd. I knew I would know the right spot when I found it and nothing had felt right yet, either the guys were to tall in front of us, or the ladies were wildly dancing or somebody smelled funny so I kept moving on.

Finally all three of us arrived on this little rise with lots of open space and a nice breeze blew and I thought,”Ahhhh this is where we are supposed to be.” The restlessness ceased and I smiled peacefully at the other ladies. After the anguishing hours of driving around lost, this is where I am supposed to be, I am finally right where I want to be. I was just so happy to be there under the cloudless sky with my arms stretched towards the heavens and the music pounding through my chest and I was just praising the Lord.

And then the Holy Spirit repeated to me, “You are where you are supposed to be.”

All my torment over wasted time, wasted years, being lost, it was all as it should be to bring me to where I was and to where I am. I am not the dark and lovely Martina, I am not being called to Lebanon, I am Me and that is exactly who God wants me to be and where I am in my walk with Him right now is where He expects me to be.

I am not some spiritual giant. I don't know the Bible backwards and forwards, yet. I can not change the past but I can work to have a better, brighter future. Lord please help us not to vie for other people's gifts and spiritual abilities but let us instead seek to improve what you have already endowed in us and let us rejoice and encourage others in theirs.
Let us thirst for more of You in every area of our lives and ask for more gifting, more abilities, more capabilities, more desires, more drive, more hunger, more leadership, more responsibly, more accountability, more anointing, more of Your awesome presence in every way, shape, and form of our existence. Lord please, please Lord, more, more, more!!!

"For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. When I awake, I am still with you." Psalm 139:13-18

Heaven Helped Me 7/24/08
Love Always,
A*