Jealous—desperately Wanting What Other People Have - The Gift of Anger: A Guide to Follow Your Feelings in Prayer

The Language for Feeling Jealous

I see her. I am immediately triggered. I want what she has. I want her looks, life, influence, experience. I hate feeling this way. I can’t seem to escape my feelings of envy. It feels like poison in my bloodstream. It makes me sick. She makes me feel angry. Everywhere I go, I see her. I see her in my memory, in my mind, in front of me. It isn’t fair. Why can’t anyone else see what I see? Like a game that no one else is playing, I hold myself up next to her and compete. This feeling is eating me up inside. I feel jealous.

When jealousy consumes me, I am tempted to justify myself. I try to prove to myself that I am right and I should feel this way. I try to manage my frustration. If I can distract myself, I might be able to get away from it. But so often I fall into gossip or slip out hurtful comments to try to get some sort of reaction. I want validation. I become a victim of my feelings. Instead of fighting my feelings, I feed them. I live in a fantasy driven by power. I have been so angry. For so long I have believed that love is a limited resource, a zero-sum game. The more others get, the less there is available for me. If I wanted love, I had to get it. My heart has a disordered understanding of how love actually works. Feeding my jealousy is rotting my soul.

I let my feelings stay for a moment. Memories and images flood my mind. Painful past experiences press up against me. I am so embarrassed by my jealousy. I don’t want anyone to know how deeply I harbor these feelings. My feelings are telling me something. It is a painful reality. I am deeply dissatisfied with my own life.

I don’t want to live like this, but I don’t know what else to do.

A Liturgy for When I Feel Jealous

Breathe in—Jesus . . .
Breathe out—forgive me.

I feel jealous.

I feel it in my body, and it rots my bones.

God, I open my heart to You.

Expose my heart.

Though it is painful, my heart lies pried open before You.

I am wanting something that You have not given me, O God.

I am seeking affection and attention.

I am chasing admiration and attraction.

I am pursuing, desiring, and craving something or someone that is not mine.

In the absence of this object, I am left with an ache that gnaws at my heart.

Day and night, it gnaws at me.

My mind can’t seem to find an escape. My heart races. My spirit is wrestling. I can’t think straight.

I feel my jealousy now, but I have known it before. It has pierced me like a thorn throughout my life.

Reveal to me my real pain.

In what ways was I not loved the way I needed to be loved?

By my mother or father, God, how was I not seen, heard, or attended to?

The love I didn’t receive motivates me to grab for it from other people and places.

I don’t want to do this anymore.

I don’t want to live trying to get more and more love from something or someone that can never fill the hole I have.

Father, forgive me for the envy I have harbored in my heart.

Forgive me for using others or things to resolve the pain I have.

With You, I am made clean.

Reveal to me my heart.

God, I want another way.

Would Your Spirit fill my vacant heart?
Spirit, heal my wound. I want to be whole. I don’t want to grasp or grab for a life that is not mine.
Spirit, may Your love funnel into the lonely places in my story and bring restoration.

Remind me of Your ever-loving presence with me in the days and nights when my heart went unseen, unnoticed, and uncared for.

My life is a gift.

You saw me then and You see me now.
My life isn’t always how I imagined it.
It doesn’t always seem fair, but it is mine.
I breathe this air.
I have this body.
I am alive.
I share space with people who sharpen my need for You.

I feel exposed.

Yet even here, Your love is patient with me.
Your love is kind.
Your love is gracious.
Your love is gentle and leading me.

Lord, hear my prayer and my plea for help.

Even as my jealousy is exposed, I am also touched by Your grace. Yes, Lord, this is the place Your love greets me, pulls me in, and attends to me.

Envy feels off the path of goodness, but You have led me here to see the truth of my heart, that I may be made new, made whole, and made free.

Even when I want immediate change, I accept the slow growth You are causing in me.

This place I find myself is evidence of Your love for me.

For this, I give You thanks.

Living Word

I will listen to Your words of love.

1 Corinthians 13:4–7

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.