“Smelling a rose”, Waterhouse
Have you read Madeleine L’Engle’s Austin family series? If not, get to it.
One of the things the characters say to each other frequently is, “Comparisons are odious.”
And they are.
I remember before my transplant how I used to talk to my therapist and say things like, “Oh, all my friends are going off to get their masters or going to law school and getting apartments and I’m just stuck at my parents’!”
I felt so stuck. I was angry that I was stuck waiting. I wasn’t happy about it.
But.
In hindsight, I have seen that things worked out the best way they could. The best way possible, really. I have no college debt. I have my own place now that I love. As usual, God knew what He was about, but I, er usual, didn’t, because I can’t see what He sees.
One of the things I am glad has not happened to me is that I have not become bitter. We can “rage against the dying of the light”, but bitterness is poison that ruins your life. Comparison is a great way to let bitterness into your veins.
Your life is your life. It’s not anyone else’s. You have no idea what God is going to do with your life. There have been many times when I have been frustrated or angry, but those moments pass, and I realize that God knows the plan, even if I don’t. (Sometimes it takes a LONG TIME for those moments to pass!)
I wanted very much to be married and to have my own children. That has not happened, and I will never be able to have children. At least, biologically. This has been a cross. I talk about it in my book.
But if I allowed this to become bitterness and envy, that would poison me. It would make me less Christ-like and a worse Christian.
There are losses we have that should be grieved. There are things that happen that we cannot change, and we wish we could. It’s healthy to say, I wanted this, and it is good, and it will not happen.
BUT
To look at other people’s lives and say, I want what THEY have….is looking a book you know nothing about and not reading it. You don’t know what their marriage is like, what their kids are like, what their finances are like, etc. You only see the outside.
And you also have no idea what God has planned for either of you.
We will all suffer losses. We will all suffer pain. It’s life.
But God created you, and your circumstances, particularly to fulfill a special place on this planet. No one else can do what you can uniquely do.
I have seen a lot of bitter CF folk. They hate CF. They curse it. They wish their lives were different.
But to have a different life is….to not be you.
And I would never wish myself out of existence.
Even in the hard places, your life was created by God to do something specific in His plan.
As Galadriel said in Lord of the Rings, “This task was appointed to you, Frodo of the Shire. And if you do not find a way, no one will.”
In a vision, Galadriel helps Frodo while in Shelob’s cave.
Your tasks are appointed to you. No one else.
It’s fine to be angry and upset—but only for awhile. Otherwise, bitterness will eat away at you and poison you and those around you.
Envy is a deadly sin for a reason.
Remember that you can’t see everything. When I’m knitting and I start on a pattern, I don’t see the end. When I’ve been working on my cardigan there are times I’ve gone, this cannot be right.
But as the pieces come together, I see. I see what the designer saw.
Why do we trust knitwear designers more than God?
If there’s one thing I want people to get out of reading my book, it’s that darkness does not last, and even in it, Jesus is with you.
Don’t give in to darkness, to envy, to despair.
Have courage. And remember St. Thomas More, who wrote this to his daughter Meg shortly before he was beheaded on Tower Green:
