it's all relative

I am so jealous of your life,

of the way it is captured on film;

the smiles and hugs and kisses.

The way the sun looks in the morning or the candlelight off your skin.

I am so jealous of your life and the way it makes you smile.

Even when I know that sometimes you’re hurting.

Even though you’ve had your share of heartbreaks,

you somehow keep trusting.

I am so jealous of your life and how I see myself in it.

How so easily I could have been you,

the happy, crazy, beautiful smiling one.

How somehow, along the way I let life get to me when I could have been happy.

I am so jealous of your life and all the love that is has given you.

How you have something to wake up to every morning and a kind word to be spoken.

How he looks at you when you smile

and how he holds you when you’re broken.

I am so jealous of your life, or at least of the way it seems.

But then again, I guess some people are jealous of mine;

though they don’t really see a thing.

So maybe I’m not so jealous of your life, but just the way it’s captured on film;

of the smiles and hugs and the kisses;

and yet the tears that aren’t revealed.

I look at this poem and I think about what makes one life different from another. What causes one to be happy and one to live under a dark heavy weight? Things in life just happen to us. Who knows why, really only God does. Often it is frustrating and heartbreaking. We can’t believe that God would ever let that happen to us. How could he do that to me? How could he let them leave me....

But somewhere down the road we have to realize that we aren’t responsible for what other people do, and really, we can’t hold God accountable for it either, as much as we can blame him for letting us make a stupid decision. In the end, we all know that it was our decisions that lead us to where we are. I think that happiness is circumstantial. It depends about what’s happened, what’s happening, and what’s going to happen. But as soon as something bad comes along to mess that up, we fall into this pit of despair. But joy, joy is a choice we can make, we just have to choose it, and choose it often.

I have spent a lot of my life wondering why God let certain things happen to me. I spent a lot of time being angry and depressed and living life in despair. I knew despair in his broad outline, and oftentimes I wish that despair and I hadn’t been so close. And so, as a result, I was really jealous of people that seemed happy; of people that seemed to be able to open up and make friends easily; of people that could connect with others on a real level. I have never been that person; I have always been guarded, hiding behind social formalities or sarcasm. Only in special cases have a gotten really personal with anyone; there are still things about me that not a soul on this earth knows.

This is kind of ironic right now, considering that I have a blog on which I tell the general public a lot of personal things. But it’s almost safer this way. I don’t really bear any repercussions here. My blog is not highly frequented, I don’t have avid readers, to be honest, and I write more for myself that for anyone else. But yeah, getting back from that tangent... I’m a pretty private person concerning the real nitty-gritty stuff. I think a big reason for this is because I am afraid of being judged, as if somehow my situation will be twisted and turned on me. I think I have seen myself as some sort of victim of life; a passive victim and never an active participant. But I guess I’ve faced that fear, because now I know that I’m not just a passive victim of my experiences.

It’s taken me a long time to realize that God doesn’t make the mistakes – I do, and other people do too. It’s a lesson I am still learning, I still go through situations where I’m like, “really, God, you couldn’t’ have stopped that?” But I guess it’s part of this whole humility thing I’m going through: learning to hold yourself accountable for your mistakes, but also realizing that you can’t hate yourself for the decisions you make. Really, hating yourself is even more unproductive and destructive than hating someone who has hurt you – it just gets everybody nowhere, doing nothing.

So what’s the alternative? Well, I’m guessing it would be joy. But how do we become joyful? Knowing God is a start. After that, I’m not really sure. But through building my relationship with God I have definitely become less sad and angry. My spouts of despair don’t last as long. I make myself get over things faster. It’s had a toll on some of my friendships. I’ve had to let go of people that I cared about because the relationship was too painful or one sided. But in the end it’s helped me learn a lot about myself. And honestly, when you surround yourself with the truth of a loving God, and with faithful friends, you feel a lot better about yourself too.

In reality, I do have people whose lives I look at and feel a bit jealous of them. But I know the power of my God, and I know that in relation to where I was three years ago, I have a bigger sense of joy and peace about life and about myself than I used to. So, for that I am really thankful. Besides, it’s all relative, right?

photo via (we heart it)