Thursday, November 5, 2009

Green-eyed monster

I am an almost 40-year-old woman. I own my own home, have a job, a car, and can buy everything I need and most of the things I want, but I fall prey to the “I gotta’s” Have you ever experienced those? I see someone with something and “I gotta have it…” or I think I do. It can be an advertisement on TV or a post on someone blogs, or mercy, someones shoes I see at church and that green-eyed monster rears it’s ugly head and I buy into the fact that if I just have that I will be happy. Lies. All lies from Satan. Satan in advertisement? Yep. I’m taking a hard line on this one. God will provide for all our needs, but how much do we truly need and how much do we just “think” we need and why am I writing so much in quotation marks?

I can remember being a child growing up and there was a certain brand of tennis shoes that everyone else had (yeah, right,) but hey, in my world everyone else had them and my parents refused to buy them for me. I was growing so fast and money at the time was not plentiful. I had a perfectly good pair of tennis shoes, I didn’t NEED another pair and I certainly didn’t need a pair that cost such a high amount just for the label but in my mind, it kept me from fitting in. But I was the one who kept myself out of the “in crowd”. I was intimidated and overwhelmed and I believed the lies that I wasn’t cute enough, thin enough, funny enough, and most of all, not rich enough to belong to that crowd. Talk about being a self-fulfilling prophecy. I became obese, I became depressed, I became poor, not only in finances but also in spirit.
In the past 20 years I have discovered something very interesting. One of the girls I admired, who I am now close with, had the same insecurities that I did. I wanted so much to be her friend but just didn’t know how to do it. She has shared with me some of her own foibles and fears that wonder of wonders; they were so much like mine. It was just all in how we responded to those. She has always had a confidence and a sense of style that I have looked up to and I admire the woman she has become and consider myself fortunate to count her as a friend and I cherish the times we get to spend in our back porch conversations.
The friends that I did make in school, they are still around, but very distant, and that makes me sad. But God has brought women into my life that I don’t share a past with but I do get to share a future with. Women who are smart, beautiful, funny, inspiring, amd every single woman, no matter who she is, comes with battle scars, comes with insecurities, comes with her own set of fears.

It makes me wonder sometimes if when Eve ate the forbidden fruit, and we became separated from our Heavenly Father, did we trade our compassion for conceit, did we trade our joy for jealousy, and did we trade our concern for contempt? Harsh words, but we did lose paradise. For me paradise would be where everyone would feel love; not only from God, but also from each other and where women wouldn’t have to work to overcome the walls we put up, but would instead build bridges to connect hearts to hearts.

3 comments:

Nanners said...

--and now I envy your ability to put words together that express ideas in such a clear, rational way--you make such "good sense" of The Word. I read and I learn from every post.

and when is our next back porch visit????

Love you, Nancy

Anonymous said...

Hey... Where did you find that picture of me??? *j/k*

All of our needs are not wants, all of our wants are not needs, but you are both to me.

I am blessed having you in my life.

(WH)

Anonymous said...

WH
Say that is your picture? Looks like you were always the ladies man!!
Love you son,
Mom