markmathis

I recently bought a house – i love it! It is 100 years old with a huge front porch and a railroad track behind it. I was so excited about it – until another house showed up on the market with a similar appearance and the price was half as much as i paid.

A strange knot began to form in my stomach and worked its way up into my throat and slowly began to eat me from the inside out.

We looked at this house and the reason it was half-price became apparent. I was cool, until the same thing happened a couple months later… This time I tried to fight the feeling by giving all of my friends the address to see if they wanted it – since I couldn’t get it myself.

This feeling is called in its primitive form as, ‘jealousy’. In its more advanced stages it is called, ‘jaelousy’. A subtle difference…

I freak out when someone else gets a better deal than I got. Why is that?

I can remember when I was 15, all the guys wanted to be the center of the girls attention. If there were 5 girls in the room, we wanted every girl to be paying attention to us – even if we weren’t attracted to them or we already had a girlfriend. I suspect it was for the same reason. We couldn’t stand to be ignored while others were being paid attention to…

My friend, Aswan, is teaching me how to break this by example. He has amazing deals being offered to him by record labels, but he is bending over backwards to help others first before he jumps. He is so secure in his identity that he is helping others be secure in theirs.

Insecurity is why I get jealous. You see, it’s not about whether I get the best deal – it’s whether I get a better deal than the next guy. If I don’t know about it, then it doesn’t bother me. As long as my identity is based on comparison, I get eaten alive…

Whether it is music, money, ministry, etc… this applies. Know who you are, it is contagious, my friend.