Taming Your Own Green-Eyed Monster

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Are you a green-eyed monster sometimes?

Isn’t it crazy how the green-eyed monster of envy never really leaves us completely – no matter how old we become? At times I feel like I am still that little girl lusting after my neighbor’s new pink bike with the banana seat. I feel this way when I see her.

 

You know her, too, I bet. She is that mom you see who walks past you in the grocery store dressed in the latest fashion with every hair in place, leaving the most amazing smelling perfume trail in her wake. That mom has the most beautifully behaved children and a cart full of all the delicacies you only wish you could afford even with a coupon and a sale.

It’s like she is moving in slow motion, that mom, and you just can’t take your eyes off her as she radiates everything you are not in that moment.

It’s about the time that one of your kids screams and smacks a sibling that you are jerked back into the reality in which you live in all your rumpled two day old yoga pants, spit up covered sweatshirt, frumpy hair, baby poo scented glory.

This is where you live, at least in your own mind, since you have now seen everything that you wish you were wrapped up in a beautiful looking and smelling package. Yep. She is all that with a cherry on top.

If you are like me though, there is some truth to what I described I look like in the grocery store, and you almost always end up seeing someone like her at that very moment in time. It’s about that time that you wish you could just crawl right under a rock. A very large one since you are still carrying around 20 pounds of extra baby weight.

Your she may look different from my she, but she is, has, and does, everything you wish you were, had, and do. Maybe she’s the one who shows up to Bible study every week with her Starbucks fancy coffee in hand while you have your own Folger’s in your travel mug. Maybe she’s the one who hasn’t cleaned her own house in decades, if ever, while you clean not only your own home every week, but you also make some extra money cleaning houses just like hers.

Maybe she’s the one who leaves on vacation, without her kids, to some glorious place that you drool over in magazines not once, but four times a year only to also take four fun-filled family vacations with her kids every year, too. Maybe she’s the one whose husband “works” only a few hours a day in the family business and is home the rest of the time to help with the meals, the clean up, the baths, the story times, the fighting, the tornadoes, and the bedtimes every single night – every single night!

We can’t stay there though.  In that dream-like fantasy of wishing we could have her life, because the truth is, there will always be a she.  I would put money on the fact that your she has a she of her own.  The one she that she wishes she could trade lives with.  And wouldn’t it be something if that she was you?!  She very well could be.

Maybe this she who radiates beauty wishes she didn’t always have to fit into the mold she feels forced into or maybe she is tired of having a husband who is married to his work instead of married to her. Maybe she is tired of kids who only seem to want to have anything to do with her when they want some material item from her, which is all the time since they know they can afford whatever their heart could ever desire.

I cannot possibly come up with every scenario possible for who your she might be or for who her she might be, but I can guarantee that there are more than enough shes to go around as we all have them at times – even the best of us.

I can also guarantee that no matter what your life looks like, there are plenty of women who would have you for her she. She may be the mom who is battling cancer and can’t go to the grocery store, she may be the woman who wishes she smelled of baby poo since she has no children, she may be the mom who has no house to clean, she may be the mom who just buried her child, and the list could go on and on.

The point is, though, that when you can’t seem to escape the green-eyed monster of envy while focusing on your she, remember that you are someone else’s she, maybe the she of more than one person, and that there are those who are facing battles that you will never have to face.  Not even a little bit.  And you can be so thankful that these battles are not your own.

Open your eyes to the blessings that you do have all around you, including the fact that you have been given one more day to live life to the fullest, and you will find contentment there.

It seems like a basic concept, this finding things to be thankful for so that we can find happiness, but it is so much easier said than done.  The green-eyed monster is real, and it appears in the lives of everyone at times, just in different ways.

However, the green eyed monster does not have to be around for long if you are willing to sweep it to the curb as soon as you see it again while finding the joy in the life you live, even if you can’t ever seem to get out of those two day old yoga pants.