Her husband obviously adores her. Mine doesn’t seem to notice me unless his sock drawer is empty.
They are another vacation (eye roll). They either have better jobs or amazing credit.
She really seems to have everything going for her. It must be nice for life to be so easy.
Comparison bites. Comparison creates discontentment and leads to envy. Envy consumes all joy. We can call it the comparison trap because it feels a little more righteous than the real battle I may be facing…lust. Lust isn’t just a sexual temptation; it most definitely is not primarily a man’s battle. Before you think I’m dreaming of your husband, hear me out.
We often associate lust specifically as sexual desire and temptation, but as women, we can battle lust just as strongly, but differently. Merriam-Webster defines it as: (verb) to have an intense desire or need.
If I were to post an ad of many of us after meeting real life, it might look something like this…
SF: positive outlook, goal oriented, high expectations with sky-high dreams meets a life of let-down, disappointment, and unmet expectations. Sure, she’s learned many valuable life lessons along the way. It’s great that she’s positive, but with each disappointment, she rebounds with more intensity than before, driven to the object of her lust (intense desire or need).
I was that SWF the other day, having a little pity party as I do once in a blue, blue moon. I fly high and fall hard. I was analyzing the reasons why my intensely desired writing goals that I’d loftily established a year earlier were still out of reach. “Reach for the sky, and you won’t come up with dirt,” I always quoted.
While there are a lot of beneficial characteristics to this mindset that has helped me as a female warrior in life’s battles, I recently read David’s story. (Why am I always shocked at the ratings in these Bible stories?!) I found the drama of his sight of Bathsheba bathing on the rooftop interesting, and then horrifying as I read the details of David’s strategically planned murder of Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah after he’d slept with her.
I didn’t find the drama very applicable until after this man whom God called “a man after his own heart” was sent a message through Nathan. Nathan told him a story about two men; one rich and one poor. The rich guy (with lots of sheep and cattle) took the one and only ewe of the poor man’s that had been raised and loved as family. He cooked this special ewe for dinner made for traveling guests. David got all hot around the collar, and said the rich man should die! Nathan told David he was the man in the story. He wasn’t content with Saul’s palace, his gorgeous wives, and all of Israel and Judah. Nope, he wanted more. He wanted the one beautiful woman soaking in the tub that he couldn’t have. He lusted after more when he had already given so much.
That’s when it hit me. We’ve been given so much. We’ve been so blessed. Don’t we relentlessly repeat that phrase?! Maybe to help us believe that little truth to cover the lie we believe-that we are truly content.
But lust (the intense desire and need of something or someone we don’t have) brings discontentment and sucks the joy from all areas of life. Comparison and envy are a result of that particular definition of lust. I see David’s desire differently than before and now I can really relate. Do you ever find yourself longing intensely for something God hasn’t given you? That desire is often not wrong, but the object of our desire can be when it becomes life’s focus, idolatry.
Not that I speak from want, for I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am. Philippians 4:11