Can I be frank with y’all here?  I feel like this month, I’ve felt jealous of too many people in my life, and for good reasons.  I’m not proud of that, but there it is.  The truth.  The green-eyed monster has become very good friends with me, on  more than one occasion in the last few weeks.

I have several widow friends taking some pretty exotic vacations with their kids.  I mean, some have gone overseas to some amazing countries.  There have been cruises, and road trips, and the pictures  are breathtaking and gorgeous.  And the whole time I’m looking at them, all I can think is “It’s not fair.  How come they get…”  “Why can’t we have money to…”  “Why does everything in my life have to be so hard right now?”

I WANT to be happy for them, I really do!  I want to enjoy what they are getting to experience.  But my heart screams “NOT FAIR!”  Then my head reminds me that NONE of this is fair.  For ANY of us.  Not a one.  None of us wanted or chose this widow life.  None of us wanted our spouses to die.  None of us planned to be raising our kids by ourselves.

Then, my parent’s 50th wedding anniversary was this month and we celebrated them with a big party.  It was a beautiful event, and celebrating a wonderful occasion!  It’s a true testiment to commitment to God and each other.  Their pastor opened with a beautiful prayer, thanking God for the example this is to their kids and grandkids.  And the tears just started flowing, and I thought “how come we couldn’t get 50 years?  Why did we only get 11 years together, and celebrate 10 anniversaries?”  While our marriage wasn’t perfect, we loved each other completely and had the cancer not taken him, our commitment to each other would have given us many more years!  Stupid cancer, stealing my hopes and dreams and dashing them to pieces in front of me and my precious baby boy.  Jealous again.

Many of my widow friends are finding love again.  How wonderful!  “Where’s mine?”

Folks being blessed with houses and cars by some generous, compassionate people.  It’s such an amazing thing!  A beautiful story, y’all!  “Why not me?”

Ouch.  Selfish me.  There I go again.

So how do I stop this jealousy?  How do I get rid of the envy in my heart?  I dove into my Bible and started reading in 1 Corinthians.  As I got to chapter 13, I saw my word for the year:  LOVE.  “Love is patient, love is kind.  It does NOT ENVY”.  Oh boy.  It couldn’t be more clear if the words had jumped off the page and danced right in front of me.  My feelings of jealousy and envy are wrong.  I’m choosing to focus on what I don’t have instead of what I do have.  Instead of appreciating all that God has blessed with me, I’m seeing only what I feel is still lacking in my life.  Believe me, God has truly blessed me with so much, but instead of appreciating it, I’m here wishing for more.  It’s not that wishing for more is wrong, but what is wrong is that I’m not showing people love when I’m envious of them.

I keep on reading, “it does not boast, it is not proud.  It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.”  All of these things are the opposite of love, the LORD’s love for us as the example.  If I want to truly live out my word this year, if I want to show love to everyone, there are some things I need to work on, the first being the envy.  But it’s not easy to stop being jealous, especially when we are so poor.  It seems like everyone has it better and easier than me right now.

The chapter continue with “Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”  What a beautiful kind of love this is, the love that God has for us, that we are to show others!  I want more of this kind of love in my life!  This love that Jesus shows us is so perfect, so overwhelming, and an inspiration, as it should be!

So, how do I stop these feelings of envy and jealousy?  First, I must recognize that these thoughts are planted there by Satan to try and get my focus off God.  He is the father of lies, after all, and he will do anything he can to distract us.  So I start by rebuking Satan, in Jesus name, and commanding him to leave me alone and stop lying to me.  Then I turn to my Heavenly Father and seek His truth, His guidance in every situation, so that my thoughts are always on Him.  I ask Him to help my unbelief, and trust that He has my life in His hands, and He has a plan for me.  As Jeremiah 29:11 says “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord.  “Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”  I let Him guide me and my thoughts and choose to dwell on that instead of the envy and jealousy.

Paul also goes on to say in 1 Corinthians 13 that “When I was a child, I thought like a child.  I reasoned like a child.  When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.”  He recognized that the love he had described before that is a mature love, that CHOOSES to put self aside and focus on others.  It chooses to be happy for others even when our circumstances are dire.  That means a deliberate act of changing our thought patterns.  When a jealous feeling arises, we deliberately stop and say “I choose to be happy for my friend, family, etc.”  It means putting aside our own ego and seeing the joy that others have, and then recognizing how important it is, how much each of us, especially as widows, NEED that joy!  It means appreciating it for what it is, pure happiness!  Because once our thinking has changed, it is so much easier to celebrate with a truly joyful heart!  THAT is the kind of friend I want to be!

That mature love that Paul is talking about comes from a surrender to the Holy God.  It comes from a willingness to change our hearts to be more Christ-like, to not allow envy or rudeness to rule, but instead, being transformed by the conviction of Holy Spirit and the inspiration of Jesus love for us.  It comes from being humble, showing forgiveness for others, being kind to all those with whom we come into contact. It comes from God, from surrending our lives to Him and His plan for us.  When we are convicted by the Holy Spirit, we confess, and then go on to apologize and make it right if we have sinned against someone else.  It’s asking for God’s forgiveness and mercy on us, and then asking for His help to change our behavior so we don’t repeat our sins.

So, this is what I’m working on this year as part of really allowing God to use my love to show others His love for them.  I want to show my friends the happiness that I have for them, and I want them to enjoy their vacations and everything that God has blessed them with without any guilt!  I want to be joyful when my friends are joyful and celebrate with them when they celebrate!  I want to truly show them LOVE!

I leave you with a few lines from a song by KING + COUNTRY, The Proof of Your Love.  You’ll have to go listen for the rest!

“If I sing, but don’t have love, I waste my breath with every song.  I bring an empty voice, a hollow noise.  If I speak with a silver tongue, convince a crowd, but don’t have love, I leave a bitter taste with every word I say.

So let my life be the proof, the proof of your love.  Let my love look like you, and what you’re made of.  How you lived, how you died, Love is sacrifice.  So let my life be the proof, the proof of your love.”

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Sara Rupp

Sara is a mom, an animal lover, an entrepreneur and a servant of The Most High King. She and her son Tristan live in Dallas with their two cats, Smaug and Alley. Sara and her late husband Tommy grew up together as kids, and always felt something pulling them together, but God chose to wait to bring them together until a little later in life. They married on Valentines Day in 2015. Tristan completed their family in 2018 and they were thrilled that God gave them a son. In 2021, Tommy had a heart attack and subsequent pulmonary embolism, which lead to the discovery of a tumor in his pancreas that was confirmed to be cancer thru a biopsy. He fought for 2 years and 8 months, thru 12 rounds of chemo and a brutal Whipple procedure, before God called him home to Heaven. The last 8 months of his life, on hospice, were some of the best of their marriage, and Sara is thankful for the precious memories made in that time. Since then, God has been Sara's strength, her Firm Foothold. He has become a husband to her and a father to her son. God has provided for them, every step of the way, sometimes miraculously! Now He is guiding her into ministry with other widows, this blog being one aspect of what He wants her doing to encourage others with what He shares with her. He keeps showing her what He has planned for her and Sara is excited to be on this path now, despite the pain, the hurt, the sorrow, it is all for the glory of God! She is also very active in her church, often volunteering for different activities, and singing in the choir as often as possible! She is ready to share with other widows what God continues to reveal to her about just HOW BIG He truly is!

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