Tuesday Coffee Chat

My fingers have not touched the keys of my laptop in quite some time. Sickness hit our house, life happened, things got busy, and blogging was the first thing to go. It happens. At the end of the day I have either been too tired to touch the computer or not able to sleep but not wanting to talk about what was keeping me from sleeping.

I am hoping to do some catching up in the next couple of weeks. The kids have been busy doing some great things. And we finished our school year. And we have made some life decisions. I want to be able to look back on these days someday to see what we were up to in the Spring of 2017. Because all of these things are important, no matter how big or how small.

I can't think of a better way to get back into my routing of blogging than to participate in this week's Tuesday Coffee Chat with Ink Interrupted.


Today's topic: I'm not jealous! What gets you turning green?

There was a time when I lived in a constant state of jealousy. Everybody around me seemed to have all of the things I thought I wanted. But I was stubborn and wouldn't admit that I was jealous. Instead, I either tried to keep up or I became indignant about doing that thing the opposite way. It was kind of the "I'll show you the right way to do it" mentality, when really I was seething that I couldn't have it the way they had it. It was vicious, and the direct result of the living environment we had created trying to be people we weren't. As a result, I didn't like anybody. Nearly every person represented what I did not have.

But, deep down, I didn't really want those things anyway. You know, keeping up is exhausting and expensive! The constant competition between others is ugly! I didn't want to be that ugly person, but I was caught in the vacuum of it .. the big house, the right clothes, the appearance of having a perfect marriage and perfect kids, working out how everybody else was working out even if I hated it, landscaping, vacations, activities with the kids, looking perfect at church, etc., etc., etc.

I had to get out of that environment.

And so five years ago I did. We gave up our $400,000 house for a $30,000 one in my childhood hometown. We did some cosmetic work to it to make it homey and adorable. We settled into a routine of significantly less concentrating on family instead of things. Life and expectations slowed WAY down. All of a sudden all of those things that seemed to matter there absolutely did not matter here. We live in a poor community where people are really just trying to make it in the day-to-day. There is no competition to have more than someone else. It's a small community where everybody is just living life, where it's perfectly acceptable to just spend time at home enjoying a quiet evening doing nothing. Our kids are allowed to play sports they love without feeling inadequate because they are not striving at age 11 to go pro. We are surrounded with perfect imperfections. Everything is small and scaled down and minimal.

This life isn't for everybody, I get that. But it's for me. I really realize it's for me when I try to answer the question of what gets me turning green and I realize that I cannot think of one single thing. Five years ago I could have written a large novel on the topic.

Jealousy creates a life of chaos. My soul needs peace. I am so grateful that I have found it.