I am going to bare my soul for these next several lines and be brutally honest with you, whoever you are. I have struggled with jealousy for years. It was a much more destructive and toxic quality in my youth, when I was too immature to appropriately handle the nagging demon. Now, for the most part, I have learned to discern what is just my flesh being prideful, what is actually a legitimate reason to feel a spark of jealousy, and what is Satan slithering in between the crevices of my skull, trying to break through to the deepest and darkest parts of my brain, and insert his lies.
What I have also learned, is that in my most insecure and desperate moments, the jealousy I feel has its origin in a comparison I have made. A comparison of my life to someone else's, my body to someone else's, my circumstance to someone else's, etc. Always something of mine to something of someone else's. Nevermind context or influences, just a blunt and brutal comparison. Sometimes, comparisons feel good. Sometimes, I can take someone's lowest point, compare it to my best point, and come out feeling pretty good about myself.
But most of the time, comparisons hurt. They destroy. They deteriorate. They take all the efforts I am making in my life to do what is right and be the best me I can be, and they throw all of that out the window and leave one thought behind: I am not good enough. They take all of God's promises and His affections and they hide them from my heart. They leave me on my knees trying to put back together the pieces.
"I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well." - Psalm 139:14
If you are a believer, you have heard this verse hundreds of times. Mostly directed at teenage girls trying to make them feel beautiful. Maybe you once read it to make yourself feel beautiful or worthy. But maybe you have heard it so many times that it means nothing to you now. Because if it meant something to me, I would not have spent today crumbling under the anxieties of what I cannot control. If it meant something to you, you would not question if you really are loved or wanted. Are we even listening to the loving promises of our Father, who is trying to scream above the sounds of the world?
At the end of the day, and at the end of our lives, no one and nothing can make us feel satisfied with ourselves. If you are dating a supportive and loving human being, he/she cannot ultimately erase your insecurities and heal your deepest scars. If you have loyal and trustworthy friends, they cannot singlehandedly make up for the other times you have been hurt. If you have a encouraging and caring family, they cannot even fulfill the needs of your heart. Only the one who knows your every thought, your every anxiety, and your every need can satisfy your thirst completely.
The Lord made every single human in His image, and it cannot be His will for us to look on a fellow creation in spite and envy. How deeply it must wound God when we are cruel to ourselves, when we wish to trade who we are for what someone else was carefully given. Do we realize that so much thought and tenderness has gone into crafting you, by the same hands that made the moon and the stars, the deepest oceans, and the tallest mountains?
Do not do yourself the injustice of wanting someone else's being, because when you do, you are disgracing yourself and, more importantly, your Maker. It is truly wonderful to be fearfully and wonderfully made, and let us not forget it.
