Outside In

We have always celebrated Valentine’s Day. Not in big, fancy ways. Some days it wasn’t even celebrated on the day. It was early. Or later.

Depending on the gig.

There was always a small gift and a few hours together. When Caitlin and Kelsie came along and everyone at school started celebrating, we would make sure that they both had a little gift to open so that they wouldn’t feel left out if their friends at school had been asked to be a ‘valentine’ or had gifts being given to them.

To this day, even though they are 22 and 17, and one of them is dating someone (who buys her very extravagant gifts in my opinion!), they will still get a gift from their dad.

I sniffed and snorted and objected to this year’s gift for them, but he didn’t pay attention to me and went ahead and got it anyway.

If you are reading this and thinking, “Awwwww how sweet. We don’t have such traditions. My dad never did such things.”

STOP.

Nothing ever is as simple as it looks. Or seems.

It’s so easy to look in from the outside and want what other couples do for Valentines

Day. Not just Valentines Day.

To look from the outside in and envy someone else’s life.

At some point in our lives, you and I have been on the outside looking in. Whether it was romance, careers, homes, parenting, cars, achievements, talent, skills, platforms and I’m sad to say, even religious or spiritual activities.

We have stood on the outside thinking, ‘I wish I had that.’ 

Or “That should be me.”

Our engagement. The diamond 'chip' fell off. I still have that ring. The 'chips' are lopsided after the store tried to 'fix' it.

Since I met Roland 30 years ago, there have been people looking in on our relationship and wanting what we have.

The reality is, if everyone knew what really went on in our (and other people’s lives), you would not be wishing for it.

We were just 2 ordinary people from an Indian township called Phoenix. We met at university, introduced by a mutual friend and fell in love. We had church in common. We had very little else.

No possessions of our own. No money. Just a hope that once we graduated and started to earn some money that we would eventually get married and build a life together.

We had no money for dates.

At some point in our lives, we could only afford the mash and gravy from KFC.

Not the chicken.

The chips from Nando’s.

Not the chicken.

Whenever Roland arrives home with a bag from Nando’s to give me a break from cooking, I think back to those times.

We travelled with public transport. Busses and taxis and we had the blessing of having friends with vehicles who let us borrow their cars or transported us to places they were going to, so we got to go as well.

Roland has also insisted I add in that we were street vendors. Which sounds so dramatic! It’s true. We were.

Rolands 1st car- which broke down in the sun and rain, winter and summer, leaving us standing on the side of the road, more often than we actually rode in it!

I don’t know what people saw looking at us then.

We were kids.

In the grand scheme of what people want, there was nothing we had worth envying.

Yet their behaviour towards us revealed that they did.

I do know that through the years, it continued, and many people have made various attempts to insinuate themselves into our relationship in the hopes of stepping into a role they thought they wanted to play, in what they had been observing from the outside.

If only they knew the battles that were fought and continue to be fought to keep this relationship.

If only they know the hours spent alone because he was on a stage somewhere. The missed school concerts, the missed ballet recitals, the missed awards ceremonies, the missed anniversaries, the missed birthdays. The arguments. Tough decisions. Boundaries. Tears. Upsets. Selfishness. Doctors’ visits. Sleepless nights. Counselling. Prayer. Hard conversations. More arguments. Parenting. Mistakes. Health challenges. More mistakes.

What I describe is probably not foreign to many of you. You have probably gone through it too.

What you see from the outside in, is one good moment in time and that is what they want.

That singular moment in time when everything aligned, and you appear to be thriving, you have a smile on your face, you managed to hold hands and take a breath.

And that’s the moment they get fixated on.

It reminds me of looking into a pastry shop. You see all these delicious breads and pastries and cakes. You’re salivating. Completely oblivious to the cost of ingredients, the kneading, measuring, sifting, waiting and cleaning that went into producing one loaf of bread. This phenomenon of wanting what someone else has didn’t start today. It started in the garden of Eden when Eve wasn’t satisfied with what God has promised her would be her future. She listened instead to a voice who implied that things could be better than what God had said.

She wanted more.

It continued with Cain who was jealous of Abel and ended up murdering his own brother.

Jacob who stole his brother’s birthright.

Joseph…… ummmmmm……… all he had was a colourful coat and his father’s affections. He got sold into slavery because his brothers envied him this.

Throughout the bible and throughout history, men and women have committed atrocious acts against other people – all because of envy.

True crime stories, books, court cases, movies. All filled with this storyline. Wanting what you couldn’t have. Longing for something the way it appears to be and not how it really is.

I know we are not the only ones who have experienced this.

Social media has not helped us in this struggle one bit. The wretchedness of envy has seeped into our children before they are even teenagers. We see reels that impress, pictures that are cleverly edited and fantastic moments that any sane person will tell you is not possible 24/7, 365. It’s a trap that many people still fall into every day.

The allure of what we perceive to be real versus the painful reality of what is.

I have watched people being so busy envying what others had that they have missed opportunities, they missed meeting relevant people, they have missed God-ordained moments, and they probably missed their calling simply by being blindsided by envy.

I know someone who was so busy envying someone else’s marriage she took her eyes off her own marriage. Which led to disastrous results.

Her behavior became more questionable the more she focused on someone else’s husband, rather than her own. She missed plenty of warning signs, which everyone around her saw.

The sad reality is everyone and everything else will get blamed. The spouse. The circumstances. The lack of support. Even God.

It will be a case of, “It’s not God’s will for me.”

When in fact, envy is blinding her eyes to what God has given her.

It’s called aggressive envy. Where your actions lead to hostility, lies, sabotage of yourself and others and aggressive, improper behavior towards people who stand in the way of you getting what you think you want.

There’s inert envy where you feel those feelings but don’t act on it. You remain unhappy without taking any constructive action either against the person you feel envy towards or for yourself -to get yourself to a point where you don’t have to envy others because you have achieved the same.

Spiteful envy is just a malicious sense of joy at others misfortunes. The envy gains you nothing, but you wish they would lose what they have.

Envy can be good. Well-technically.

It’s called emulative envy. It can be good if it stirs you to want to change the trajectory of where you find yourself. You want to change how you do relationships when you see others in a good relationship. You want to work harder to achieve certain goals because you have seen what hard work has gotten other people. You want to change your eating or exercise habits because you have seen how someone’s health has changed for the better when they did it. You want to serve others better when you hear about people doing things to change and impact entire communities.

It's envy. It’s not good but you’re not trapped in it.

Envy tinged with resentment. Now that’s another thing altogether. Resentment and envy lead to the conversations that go something like, ‘I don’t understand what they did to deserve that.’ 

Or the one we have all uttered, ‘But howwwwwww?’

“I don’t understand what he/she sees in him/her.”

“How did they pull that off?”

You get the picture.

For me, the potential for envy exists everyday single day and the only way to reel it in is to ask myself what the Bible says about it. It’s not pretty!

If you want to get really biblical about it, then the word is to covet or covetousness.

The Hebrew word is ‘hamad’.

Desire.

To have a strong desire or long for something. It is not described as negative or positive but in the context of what God commands, if this desire is directed to something that belongs to someone else, then it becomes negative.

Let’s start with the 10 commandments because coveting is mentioned, and examples are given!

Exodus 20:17 ESV

You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor's.

Your eyes see it. Your mind starts to admire it. You start to think of how you can get it. Having free will allows you to make that choice that you have to have it. Then your body moves in to acquire it.

Proverbs. If ever you want to check yourself, go read the book of Proverbs.

Proverbs 14:30 ESV

A tranquil heart gives life to the flesh, but envy makes the bones rot.

I don’t even think that this is a metaphor. I think that envy can physically make you ill. The NLT translation calls jealousy ‘like cancer in the bones.’

Heavy stuff to process. And not nice either. No-one wants to admit they experience negative emotions. We all want to shout from the mountain tops that we are loving and generous and kind and compassionate.

We all have the capacity to feel envy! And it’s ugly.

We move on to James.

James 3:16-17

For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice.¹⁷ But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. 

Peace seems to be a common word in these 2 scriptures.

Envy can cause disorder and every vile practice. Think about it.

You want someone else’s marriage – affairs start.

You want a lifestyle you can’t afford, corruption starts.

You want a priceless piece of art, theft starts.

You want someone else’s life -it has in some instances led to murder, robbery, lies, slander and hate.

There is no external factor that can be blamed for the actions that flow from envy. Not abuse, not that you were poor as a child, not bad parenting, not living in an immoral community, nothing. It’s all on you and me.

Mark 7:21-23

For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, ²² coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness.

²³ All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.

What else is there left to say after THAT?

One of the things that helped me get a handle on envy is understanding that God has mapped out His plan for my life before I drew my first breath.

Psalm 139 gives me great confidence that He knows every single thing that will happen. Good and not good.

I still have moments where I see someone has published a book and

think, “Whatttttt?”

Even though I have a self published book on Amazon and 5 book projects on the go........and I have you reading this right now!

Or someone has built an online following, and I think, “Sheesh kebabs, this person doesn’t even speak proper English!”

Even though my friend has been bugging me for years to do little videos to accompany my blog and I fail to do it.

Or someone wins R170m in the lotto and I think, “But I would do good with that money!!

Even though I also think about how I would re-do my kitchen with that money.

Sigh.

You can pretend you don’t have similar versions of envy in your day.

It takes too much energy to pretend!

Often, I need to go back and remind myself of what that Psalm says.

He knows my thoughts. He knows all my ways. He formed me. He knows every single day I will have on this earth.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to waste any of those days shrouded in envy. For things that are not meant for me in any event.

It's coming up in a few days. Have a good one. Whether you celebrate the day or not is immaterial.

For those who do, Happy Valentines.

You don’t have to do what everyone else is doing.

A cup of coffee here.

A chocolate there.

Some Nando’s with livers because love is sharing hot livers and a buttered roll and giving me a break from the kitchen.

He might even throw in some chicken to show me how far we have come.

Don’t be jealous now.

We have nothing worth envying. But we certainly have something worth working hard to have, working hard to keep, because love is hard work. And that's nothing to be envious about.