The feeling is as old as Cain and Abel; the first murder recorded in the Bible was caused by it.  Jealousy.  Jealousy has played a huge role in my life over the years.  I didn't even know that jealousy existed for me because it was so much like breathing that I couldn't identify it in my day to day life. I was in my mid-thirties before I has an awareness of what that feeling was inside me when I was not picked to do something, or when someone else had the spotlight.   I can point to many things that were beyond my own control when I was a little girl that set me up for the part jealousy and the attending brokenness would play in my life. I am not sure that is really important now.

 Alienation is something that we all, because of our human condition have to deal with and I believe it is closely related to jealousy, if not in fact, its author.  So, it isn't just me, it is a human, existential condition....this alienation and brokenness. This same brokenness is what caused the crucifixion of Jesus, it is the same thing that Jesus died for.... The religious officials and the government officials at the time were definitely threatened by Jesus' teachings because they ran counter to all that they stood for.  I think there also had to be a bit of jealousy in that alienation, they had to be thinking to themselves, "How does he rate all this attention? His ideas are totally against everything we stand for and people are buying this stuff".

The older I get the more I see that it is very difficult to change the way I perceive the world.  It is not from a lack of trying, I think it is my full time job and has been for many years to become more healthy, more whole as a human being.   I have made some progress in some areas, but in this very personal area of woundedness where I am most vulnerable, I have made little or no progress.  To be honest, it is such a difficult and painful topic that I have avoided it or have been blind to it for many years.

This year, during Lent, with the help of A Course in Miracles, I have made a bit of a breakthrough to begin  looking at situations in a different way.  That, is a miracle.... It is a very small and from the outside looking in,  insignificant change, but real change comes that way most of the time for me.  Suffice it to say I have faced a situation and I have been able to see it differently without ultimately feeling like I don't count or I don't have value, or that everyone is more important than me.  Just one silly little situation, but I have been able to grasp the bigger picture, to see that my worth isn't tied to what I am asked to do or what I am left out of.  Sounds so simple when I write it that way, but it is a big, big thing for me.  I am finally beginning to "see" the truth that my value does not lie in what others think about me, or what I do, I am beginning to see that I have intrinsic value just by being here.