I’ve got a confession to make.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve battled with envy.
Envy is the desire to have what someone else has.
Envy is a sly tactic that the enemy uses to separate us from the beautifully unique and blessed life that God has prepared for you and I.
Envy is one of the oldest tricks in the enemies book, to the point of being called “one of the original sins” in the Catholic theology.
From the outside looking in, you wouldn’t assume I am envious. Even from the inside looking out most days, I would say I’m not an envious person either.
This my friends, is how the enemy gets you. He sneaks in, and plants seeds, that overtime turn into weeds. Those weeds cover the truth, suffocate the good fruits, and distract you from the gifts that God has placed within you.
For me, envy would show up when I would see others who had something to show for their work. A builder, a chef, an artist, a writer, a musician. The common thread between each of these callings is that they have something to show for it.
What I didn’t know in my earlier years, was that I did in fact envy these people. The envy was masked as self doubt and the replaying lie that I wasn’t good enough to produce anything.
Over time, those lies became so loud that I believed them.
Envy, as with any sin, has the potential to grow into the extreme. What can start as a subtle resentment has the potential to grow into an episode influenced by the Cain and Able story.
Thankfully, despite the enemy trying to control the narrative, he is not the one who wrote the story.
God is.
“It’s not important who does the planting, or who does the watering. What’s important is that God makes the seed grow.”
The good news is that the enemy isn’t the one who controls the gifts we do or don’t get, God is.
So I started digging.
Literally at first, in the garden, clearing weeds out of an old bed to prepare it for Spring. There, with my hands in the soil, weeds being plucked, I could see the progress I was making.
The act of digging in the garden, pulling weeds, and pruning started to play out in my inner world as well. There in the garden, away from distraction, God was working on me.
Those moments in the garden led to me noticing the difference between the fruit from the weeds.
The work that started in the garden began to produce fruit in other areas, too. When the world would get too loud, or those feelings of self doubt would start looming, I’d move to somewhere quiet to sort them out.
Quiet time with God became the healthy environment I needed for the gifts he’d planted within me to grow.
Soon, I started to notice that I was producing! I started to see that the gifts I‘d had all along were worth something.
“Come near to God, and God will come near to you. You are sinners. So clean sin out of your lives. You are trying to follow God and the world at the same time. Make your thinking pure.”
Closeness with God, and the desire to grow near to him did not come naturally. First came the self doubt, the lack of confidence in my ability, and then the realization that it was actually envy.
I fell weak to the grip sin had on my spirit, and in that weakness, God found me in the garden. He nudged me to dig in.
My hope in sharing this holy moment with you is that you don’t surrender to suffering. May this be the nudge you need to take quiet time for yourself this week.
What once lived in me as overgrown envy, has now turned into abundant admiration for the beautiful gifts that live inside of me.
I stand in awe of you too! I’m praying that these words encourage you to dig in to what God’s given you and strengthen you to weed out what no longer serves you.
Peace be with you, and your spirit!
Makenna Curtis
Local Pulse Community Writer
Holy Moments
