My Green Heart

I am struggling with envy today.

My sister Sonya just moved into an awesome house and despite the fact that there are still unpacked boxes in mine (like say, a huge dish pack box that is full of candles--who the heck needs that many candles?), I am already wishing our new house were a bit more like hers.

This is problematic on many levels. For starters, my sister is 12 years older than me, thereby giving her and my brother-in-law 12 more years of houses on me. 12 years ago they were in a 'fixer upper' in South Carolina so maybe that's 2 points for me. Also, my sister has 7 kids. 7. That was not a typo. So her needs for a house are vastly different than mine. I do not want 7 kids. On a regular basis I dream of killing our puppy and well, I practically worship Henry so I'm not even sure if I have enough love in me for 7 kids. Oh and it takes a team of doctors to get me pregnant, and then another team to keep me pregnant. (Lest we forget the start of this blog--on bedrest with my feet in the air, crapping in a bucket!) And as I type this the aroma of poo is wafting through the living room and I've decided that I'm too lazy to change the poo, so having 7 poopers around would be a real sanitation issue.

This is also horribly unfair to my uber-wonderful husband, Sloan. On the one hand, I love the fact that we have made the financial decision to let me stay home with Henry. And I readily accept the sacrifices that we'll have to make having made this decision. On the other hand, I really love my sister's handmade Mexican tile. (It is sooo authentic that you can even see where a dog stepped in the wet terracotta while it was drying.)

I am also convicted of the fact that I told Sonya that if her walk-in closet with built in hand made mahogany dressers were a man, I'd leave Sloan for it and marry it. Yep, I said I'd marry a closet. It's both funny and horrifying at the same time.

Envy rots my soul. It sends my mind into a frenzy of how can I get that? How can I be that? It builds giant gold cows and then sets them just out of my reach, when I earnestly believe if that shiny cow were just sitting on my mantel my life would be easy, my house clean, my husband constantly showering me with roses and diamonds and trips to Europe, and I’d have beautiful children who would always say Yes m’am and never disappoint me. And I’d be skinny. But the truth is, were I to work hard enough to buy that golden heifer and sit it on my mantle (which, by the way, there is no room on the mantle because with Henry walking and Lolly eating anything within reach, we now have to use it as a danged coffee table), it would need dusting and at some point it’d fall and break. Because that’s what things do. Things break.

Broken things hurt.

For me, even marriage is sometimes a state of constant discontent. Sure, the movies have these romantic stories of poor young marrieds living on nothing but love and Chinese take-out, when in reality—there is nothing romantic about constantly wishing we could go out to dinner, just the two of us, for once. And we’re not even poor. We’re not in debt. We don’t have bill collectors hounding us. We don’t even have student loans to pay back or car payments (thanks Mom and Dad.) I’m not frivolous—I recognize we don’t need a maid, (oh, but how I LONG for one!), newer cars, or name brand butter. But I am warped. I do need a new Ipod because the one I have is the size of a soda and they now are much smaller and have fancy little arm bands I could wear at the gym and look cool in. We do need new kitchen counter tops and a sink, because I cannot stand a stainless steel sink. Stainless, my heiny. We do need new curtains because the one the previous owner left behind don't match the color scheme I want to do. Which brings me to the fact that we do need to hire a painter to paint everything. And we do need a new 500 thread count duvet cover because I don’t like the pottery barn quilt I just had to have a couple of years ago anymore. I'm pretty certain that a new comforter and curtains and a beautiful bedroom painted "Mountain Mist" will bring me real joy. And that’s the rub. Even if I got all of these things, which would be fabulous, at some point they’ll need washing or dusting or I’ll spill coffee on them, lose the receipt and be unable to redeem the warranty I paid an extra two hundred to get in the event that such spilling occurs. Because what I’m really longing for is not things—it’s God. But I’m pretty sure God can’t be purchased at Nordstrom.

Not getting what you want hurts.

A lot of people think it is immature to get upset when you don’t get your way. And to some degree, I suppose it is childish to stomp your foot and cry when you said you wanted an omelet for breakfast and then you go take a shower only to find your husband sitting on the couch watching TV. Didn’t he hear me (I mean you) say I (I mean you) wanted an omelet? But if we are honest, does it bring joy to anyone to not get their own way? Maybe really pious people will say, “In all things, we are to rejoice. So I delight in my disappointment.” I think these people are lying. I think I can rejoice in the end product of suffering, in looking more like Jesus and gaining humility and all, but the suffering to get it really sucks and I just think if more people were honest about suffering it wouldn’t hurt as much.

Jesus tells us in Scripture that the work of the Father is to believe. To believe. And as selfish as I am, I find it much easier to give to the poor or even pray for my enemies dutifully than it is to believe that God is good, He is for me, and that even my broken warped heart is in the process of being redeemed for His glory. To believe that it is God that will bring me joy and fulfillment, not a new Ipod, Mountain Mist walls, or even that valuepack of 100% cotton panties I just saw at Costco, IS WORK.

So what does this birth of belief and death of envy even look like? So far it comes back to me having to preach the Gospel to myself everyday. Of remaining in touch with men and women who love me and who also know the truth so they can remind me of it. I was crying to my dear friend Joanne about this. About wanting more and feeling guilty for not bringing in more money. For pursuing Mommydom, volunteering at the Church, and writing rather than a stable paycheck. She reminded me that I’d applied for more jobs and that if God intended me to work 40 hours a week behind a desk, he’d have given me a desk. She also reminded me that Sloan and I are one flesh and that we each bring into our marriage different gifts. That God knew this when He designed us to be together. So I shouldn’t feel guilty about what my gifts aren’t, but praise Him that I know what they are. She also wisely told me that if Sloan had wanted a wife with a corporate career who brought in big bucks, he wouldn’t have married a girl in Seminary with the lifelong dream of being a stay at home mom and a writer. But even still, I sometimes don’t let Sloan wash the dishes at night, not out of humility or a desire to serve him, but out of guilt for not being the breadwinner. (Sloan would like to say that this doesn't happen all that often, so sometimes my laziness overtakes my guilt. Which sort of makes me feel guilty...)

Essentially I feel guilty for being who God called to me to be. Lord, forgive me. Forgive me for being enslaved by false notions of who I am supposed to be and what I am supposed to be. Forgive me for being more concerned about what my big brother believes about me than what your Word promises you believe about me.

When I taught PreK there was a crew of three boys who tried to kill me. Both literally and figuratively. Literally, one of them threw scissors at me, another tried to strangle me, another one hit me in the face with a Candyland box. Luckily I had two girls, Ainslie and Sierra, in the class who were quiet, only speaking up to tell me I was beautiful or had princess hair. Sometimes these boys did things like lock themselves in the bathroom and unroll an entire roll of toilet paper to mummify themselves, or try to flush a plastic gorilla down the toilet, or cut their hair, or tell me I was stupid and ugly and their parents thought so too. It didn’t help much that they were some of the smartest and cutest boys in the class. They had the most personality, could make me laugh so hard I’d want to pee in my pants; I adored them. They were the kids I would’ve befriended and gotten in trouble with at their age and I’m certain that were I in their class I would’ve been practicing to write Mrs. Jacob McCown before knowing how to spell Elizabeth Johnson. These boys made me feel like a horrible teacher, incapable of controlling a classroom. They wore on my patience, confidence, and ability to think straight. I was constantly speaking with their parents who oddly enough, had never witnessed any of these behaviors at home. (Big shock seeing as none of them had twenty three other five year olds at their house cheering them on.) I was always trying to engage them in challenging things, shower them with praise when they did the right things—all the things a good teacher is supposed to do. At home, I’d pray for wisdom to know how to love them and patience to put up with the trials they set before me. I was constantly repenting of wanting to scream at them or just leave them locked in the bathroom. But towards the end of the year, I could see a real maturity in one of the boys. Sure, I still had to ban him from scissors for cutting his hair (but thankfully he cut his own hair, not someone else’s). I sent a note home to his folks to let him know how proud I was of him. Sometimes I could see the other two boys planning some sort of riot and there was Peyton, looking at them and then looking at me. I’d tell them all to make wise choices and more often than not, Peyton would choose to listen rather than to be disruptive. I was amazed at this five year old’s ability to do the right thing even though his friends were plotting my demise. One day he cuddled up to me as I mixed cornstarch and borax to make goo. “Miss Elizabeth, I’m trying really hard to be good.” “I know,” I said and winked, “I’m proud of you, Peyton.” He looked down at the gloppy mixture and began poking at it absentmindedly. “At night,” he said, “I pray God will make me like Sierra. She never gets in trouble.”

My heart broke. All of my encouraging him to do the right thing had caused him to believe that I didn’t love him for who he was. That I wanted him to be different rather than just behave differently. That as much as he and his friends drove me absolutely batty, they are the ones I still smile about years later. "There's a gorilla in the toilet" is a common phrase in the Phillips household for when things go awry. (It is said a lot!) I never wanted another Sierra in my classroom, I just wanted Peyton minus the block throwing.

And God didn’t make me to be like the Joneses—so why should I worry about keeping up with them? I’m not going to get to heaven and hear Jesus say, “You really should’ve been more like your preacher’s wife. You really should’ve been more like your sister.” If anything, he’ll say to me, “I wish you’d understood how much I love you. How I delighted in making you unique, and giving you gifts that I gave to no one else. I wish you hadn’t been afraid to be more like Elizabeth. She’s beautiful.”

But God would probably also admonish me for not changing my son's diaper. The stench has become unbearable. But that's life. You pray and pray for a baby and then it craps in its pants.