The Candyland game ended in hot tears.
One grandchild had lost, and his disappointment quickly turned into anger. The air became thick with accusations, arguments, and attempts to rewrite the rules. His younger sister’s shoulders drooped as the joy drained from her face.
I knelt beside him and said, “I hear your sadness about losing, and I can feel the heat of your anger. But as you argued and accused your sister of cheating, did you notice what happened to her joy?”
He grew quiet. A tender heart was taking it in.
The next time they stopped by, they played badminton. His younger sister scored a point after he’d lost several points in a row.
“Way to go,” he told her. “You made a great point.”
She beamed. And so did he.
He had moved from competing with her to celebrating her. He was for her, and she knew it.
I wish that shift always came so easily to me.
When Comparison Steals Our Joy
What happens when you and your colleague start careers at the same office, and she receives promotion after promotion, while your career remains motionless? When a friend travels to Fiji for a fabulous vacation, and your budget offers a staycation instead, do you feel the clamber of envy crawl into your heart? Your child applied to his top college choices and received no acceptances. Your neighbor’s child received acceptances, including recruitment from schools not on his list. Your book languishes on the shelf, while your writing-group friend’s book lands on best-seller lists. What thoughts do you voice or stifle when such moments occur?
Whatever the scene, competition and comparison so often creep in, making it a challenge to celebrate another person’s happy news.
As a writer, I love encountering beautiful words. I underline sentences, copy quotations into my journal, and marvel at the creativity God has given others. I yearn for my words to speak meaningfully to my readers.
Writers set aside time to create, challenging themselves to find the best way to convey their thoughts on the page. We persevere. We hire a book coach, invest in a class on craft, and join a writer’s group. We hope for the best for our words and their impact on the world. We employ editors. We seek agents and hope for publication. We want our words to be known and loved.
However, when another writer garners well-deserved accolades for their eloquent words, I sometimes feel a pouty twitch tighten inside me. I have fallen into the canyon of comparison.
Envy erupts. Insecurity begins its insidious whisper. Another person’s success starts to feel like evidence of my failure.
In your creative endeavors, when have you encountered the same sensations? At the local pottery show, your piece, well-crafted and quite innovative, sits quietly on the shelf, while your friend’s creation wears loud ribbons of recognition. A visual artist friend’s mixed-media craftsmanship sells faster than fireworks on the 4th of July. You sell a handful. You’ve developed depth in your gardening skills, your bread-making adventures, or your poetry, yet your hard work garners only a passing nod. You struggle with how easy it is to let comparison and competition win out over celebration.
How do we learn to celebrate when someone else receives what we also desire?
The Hidden Roots of Envy
If I keep up my pout, I become like a car with one flat tire, unable to move smoothly forward. I want what they have. Envy eats at me, and I don’t know how to shut it down.
In those moments, what I need most is to connect with God, to hear from Him intimately, to confess to Him, and to allow Him to rule and reign with His kindness, realigning my heart with His. My conversations with Him become places where I loudly lament and wrestle with both God and myself. I reflect on how I easily succumb to the world, the flesh, and the devil.
Yet, within the safety of the surroundings of the Trinity’s love, I can step into confession. I admit I crave what others possess. The Bible might say that love doesn’t envy, but I do, so what’s missing in my levels of love?
When I am envious of another person, I am not well-rooted in God or in my identity. The lie that seeps in says my worth is based on winning, producing, or possessing. I may not recognize it, but doubt is at hand. I don’t trust that God will provide for me. I feel overlooked. A lie, a myth, a motto, a vow, or a wound stifles me. I need inner healing.
Scarcity says there’s not enough to go around, so I’d better defend myself and grab what’s available. Envy makes another person’s joy feel threatening. Comparison leads to competition, where I seek to triumph over another. I am discombobulated at a heart level.
Yet Romans 12:15 invites me to rejoice with those who rejoice. How do I do that when I don’t feel like rejoicing?
Finding Our Way Back to Abundance
What I need is the gentle care of Jesus. I need to experience soul realignment. When I’m tempted to jeer rather than cheer, that’s a clear sign that I am not thinking or acting with a heart set on Jesus. Since I want to be like Him, I take time to slow down and reconsider what has me off kilter.
I kneel down and choose to be in the presence of Jesus. I experience His gaze of love, a gentle assurance that He sees me, knows my emotional state, and still loves me anyway. I ponder how He is for me. I settle into who I am as the beloved child of God. From there, I can appreciate the different gifts God offers others without feeling slighted myself.
What is it within me that thinks if you get a good thing from God, there’s nothing left for me? That’s not the God I know. He is generous. God is for me. I need to remind myself of His abundant love. I remember again that I am beloved. My belovedness shifts my perspective.
I recount the moment a green heron flew by as I walked by the lake. I listen to the laughter of grandchildren around the kitchen table. I retrace God’s kindness to me in specifics, and that helps. I move from grumbling to grateful. Abundance says there is more than enough, so let’s feast. God is for me. God is for you. Let’s celebrate.
Choosing Celebration Even When It Hurts
This week, I’ve been invited to a holy gathering I can’t attend. Boy, do I wish I could be there among dear, deep-hearted friends. There will be laughter, luminous lingering, and love at every turn. Longing bubbles up. I know worship will ripple through the crowd, and wise words will flow from the beloved speakers. The tug-of-war within me persists, yet I want to be the kind of person who can rejoice for my friends even when I’m not in the room where it’s happening. Celebration joins the party of joy.
Celebration doesn’t mean that I ignore my longing, yet it doesn’t let envy have the last word. It means I step into your joy, even when I wish I could have that same experience.
Contentment holds me close and whispers again the truth that I am beloved by God the Generous. I can tell Him what I desire and yet still trust Him when my circumstances aren’t what I desire. I honor God and my belovedness whenever I choose celebration as a way to say, “I’m for you, my dear friend.”
Living a Life That Cheers for Others
Philippians 4:4 reiterates that rejoicing is a way of being that continually finds its place in the life of Christ’s followers. As members of the same family of God, we are invited to build one another up, not tear one another to pieces. Isolation says I’m on my own. Community says we are in this together.
-
- Celebration says this story is bigger than I am. Competition says I am all that matters.
- Celebration is other-centered. Competition is self-centered. One expands joy. One stomps on it.
- Celebration boosts another. Competition boasts of itself.
- Celebration runs on the fuel of compassion. Competition runs on the fuel of comparison.
When I step into the celebratory party, it ultimately instills in me a stance of humility. I remember again that all gifts come from God. He has done great things for you and for me. Celebration becomes an appetizer, a foretaste of the wonders to come in the new heaven and new earth.
How then can we let another person know we are for them, even when we wish we were the ones receiving what they have? We courageously step into celebration, which helps us say, “I am for you.”
Let’s choose to cheer for one another. Relish a friend’s creativity. Leave a generous comment. Send confetti to rejoice over your friend’s milestone. Treat someone to a celebratory lunch.
As we congratulate those who are rejoicing, we suddenly find that our capacity for joy and celebration also increases.
Ask God to loosen your grip on scarcity. Watch how God offers you abundance, as evidenced by His celebratory love for others. Celebrate that God is for you and God is for your friends. Let joy be the music of the moment.
I keep thinking about my grandson on the badminton court.
“Way to go,” he told his little sister. “You made a great point.”
She beamed. And so did he.
He was for her, and somehow, her joy became his, too.
