I don't think of myself as a particularly jealous person, but maybe I am since I have recently suffered from both mother and grandma envy. The reasons were that I am not geographically close enough to my daughter and my grandsons to do things with them as I might like, but other people are....hence my envy. I don't know what good it does to pine, and I know I should just make the best of the time I have with them, but still, it would be nice...
You never know, though, what the other person's life is like. Not very long ago, I told a lady I know I was jealous because she has better health insurance than I do. We both have RA, and I am soon to lose the good teachers' insurance and go on my husband's crappy management insurance. I could go on about why it is crappy, but that is another story. Anyway, this lady told me that she was jealous because I have two grandchildren. She has one daughter who is twenty-seven and not yet married. I got to thinking, and she was right. I would rather have the grandsons. Then her husband died. I see some of how hard her life is since she lost her husband at the age of fifty-eight and I do not want her life. At all.
So what makes me want the lives that other people have instead of my own anyway? I have been richly blessed. Someday I will blog about how I fell in love with my husband when I was thirteen and read S. E. Hinton's THE OUTSIDERS, but that too is really another story. I didn't meet my husband until I was nineteen, but how many people find the man of their dreams in that way? My son and I survived toxemia; he and his son both survived meningitis at six weeks unscathed. I know children who were not so lucky; one ended up deaf and the other brain-damaged. My daughter is finally free of an abusive marriage and appears to be getting her life together. I worked this job, which I had not sought, for four years, and I learned a lot about handicapped people which, I trust, will be useful in my future.
I guess the envy comes from the fact that, at least from the outside, the people that I envy appear to have something that I would like to have. My daughter loves me, and the fact that she can also make another mom feel loved should not threatened me. Any time with my grandsons is to be cherished. And any time with them is a gift; it is something that God bestows upon me, not something that I deserve.
Unfortunately, like Eve I want to be like God sometimes and know what He has planned for me. I want the best, and sometimes I don't like His best, even though intellectually I can grasp the fact that His best is better than anything that I can imagine. And like Eve, when I grab for that knowledge, the lack of trust that grabbing illustrates dims the knowledge of what I do have, in effect barring me from Eden.
I am human, and so I see through a glass darkly. I know that I will not lose this poor vision until I get to heaven. But I cherish the moments when I am aware of the blessings God has bestowed upon me.
For now, I guess I will have to be content with seeing the majority of them in the rear view mirror.
You never know, though, what the other person's life is like. Not very long ago, I told a lady I know I was jealous because she has better health insurance than I do. We both have RA, and I am soon to lose the good teachers' insurance and go on my husband's crappy management insurance. I could go on about why it is crappy, but that is another story. Anyway, this lady told me that she was jealous because I have two grandchildren. She has one daughter who is twenty-seven and not yet married. I got to thinking, and she was right. I would rather have the grandsons. Then her husband died. I see some of how hard her life is since she lost her husband at the age of fifty-eight and I do not want her life. At all.
So what makes me want the lives that other people have instead of my own anyway? I have been richly blessed. Someday I will blog about how I fell in love with my husband when I was thirteen and read S. E. Hinton's THE OUTSIDERS, but that too is really another story. I didn't meet my husband until I was nineteen, but how many people find the man of their dreams in that way? My son and I survived toxemia; he and his son both survived meningitis at six weeks unscathed. I know children who were not so lucky; one ended up deaf and the other brain-damaged. My daughter is finally free of an abusive marriage and appears to be getting her life together. I worked this job, which I had not sought, for four years, and I learned a lot about handicapped people which, I trust, will be useful in my future.
I guess the envy comes from the fact that, at least from the outside, the people that I envy appear to have something that I would like to have. My daughter loves me, and the fact that she can also make another mom feel loved should not threatened me. Any time with my grandsons is to be cherished. And any time with them is a gift; it is something that God bestows upon me, not something that I deserve.
Unfortunately, like Eve I want to be like God sometimes and know what He has planned for me. I want the best, and sometimes I don't like His best, even though intellectually I can grasp the fact that His best is better than anything that I can imagine. And like Eve, when I grab for that knowledge, the lack of trust that grabbing illustrates dims the knowledge of what I do have, in effect barring me from Eden.
I am human, and so I see through a glass darkly. I know that I will not lose this poor vision until I get to heaven. But I cherish the moments when I am aware of the blessings God has bestowed upon me.
For now, I guess I will have to be content with seeing the majority of them in the rear view mirror.
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