4. Envy

“Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

Envy is a doozy. It is one of the 7 deadly sins in the Catholic church. Proverbs says it "makes the bones rot" (14:30). 

I wish I could say I was like Teddy. I'm not. Social media creates this false window into others' lives that portrays them as absolute perfection. Even as I scroll through the pictures of my own life, it is full of smiling faces and beaches and plates of farm to table goodness. Happy missionary surrounded by beautiful black faces. I appear to be healthy, happy, well-traveled, even tan at times, cultured, adventurous. You don't see fatigue, despair, sickness, fear, or the burdens of missionary life in the photographs. You can't see pressure or performance anxiety or worry. 

When I see friends who chose a different path than me; married and had babies, envy awakens. I see chubby cheek babies and envision walking them in carriages down dogwood lined streets, gossiping (Is that one on the list?) with friends in the middle of the day. I see immaculate houses with Dupoini curtains and a curry simmering in the Le Creuset. Their lives look lovely and fulfilled and never lonely, never afraid. They don't have to bear the burdens of the poor kids or life in the dirt or being single. They have running water. They have air-conditioning. They don't sleep alone. They have Target. They have someone to take care of them when they are old and someone to mow the lawn. It is so easy to envy them. Ten minutes in Carla's house with four once chubby cheeked babies brings that vision to a screeching halt. The babies fight and cry and scream and wake up all hours of the night. The babies poo and wet the bed. The babies need food and constant attention and the curry is burning on the stove. The babies father's who I could easily envy as being a romantic, charming, compassionate, and an affectionate addition to life, also have a whole myriad of flaws that we all know well. 

The Christian martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer who stood against Hitler said, "God's truth judges created things out of love, and Satan's truth judges them out of envy and hatred". Wowzer. I sure don't want to be like Satan. If I am judging out of envy and not of love then I kinda am. Despite the perceptions of their perfect life I cannot envy. So how do I look at their lives and their smiling babies and handsome husbands and not envy? LOVE. All day long, hippie crazy wild love. I love them. I love their lives and their blessings. And when I begin to love them and throw the envy away, I can see my own life and think a little more like Teddy. The pain and the difficult are what make our lives so beautiful. Their lives are full of pain and difficulty that I do not see. I would not trade my hardships for anything. Out of my hardships have come my greatest treasures. 

So during this time of Lent I want to keep my heart full of love and not of envy. Writing this one upon a my heart: