A Dog With Two Bones

Once there was a dog who had a bone. It was a good bone, and the dog loved it dearly. He carried it around all day, and protected it fiercely. It was his bone and he was proud of it. It was the most important thing in the world to him.

One day, the dog strolled down toward the edge of a lake with his bone in tow. He looks out over the water and sees another dog with a bone reflected back at him on the surface of the water. Seeing the second bone, he ponders if it’s better than the one he has, and so he decides he wants it too. He opens his mouth to reach out and grab the new bone, but as he does, his bone falls into the water and disappears. It’s gone. And he is left standing there looking at himself, with nothing.

I paraphrased the story, and there are many variations on it, but I believe the original was told as one of Aesop’s fables. The moral is this: Don’t be jealous of what others have.

Jealousy can be either a simple or a very complex emotion. We see it expressed all the time. A kid can avoid a toy, not wanting to play with it, until he sees another kid playing with it. Suddenly, that’s the only toy that matters and he wants to play with it more than anything. Or perhaps, you see someone who has great athletic ability and you wish you had that ability as well. Maybe you are jealous of the way someone looks, and you think they are prettier or more handsome than you. Maybe they have more friends than you, or drive a better car, or live in a bigger house. 

I think we all feel jealous from time to time.

It’s so easy to compare ourselves to others and let jealousy creep in when we think we fall short or don’t measure up. We see other people who seem to have it all, and we think we need it too. The feelings of jealousy can be quite strong, but when you break them down to their most basic, those feelings are actually rooted in the lack of another feeling: contentment.

We find ourselves battling jealousy when we stop being happy with what we have or with what we are. “If I had what he has, then I would be happy. If I had the talent or skill that she does, maybe then I’d be content. If only I had just a few more of this or that; or a bigger and better one of those, then I would finally be really happy.”

Within the last year, I found myself dealing with jealousy. It has been hard to not feel jealous of people around me that are in happy, healthy relationships. With my own marriage broken and ended, it was quite difficult to feel content in this area of my life since being single again was not something I desired or had planned on.

At the same time, most of the people I know and spend time with are all happily married, so I found myself being the third or fifth wheel quite a lot. Or I would hear my friends talking about their spouses and their love for each other would flow out of them. Seeing them happy was a stark reminder that I wasn’t happy, and so jealousy began to try to fill my heart.

But thankfully, my heart was already given to God. And with His grace and mercy, jealousy wasn’t allowed room to grow. God did the heavy lifting, but I had a part to play as well.

Most of the time, when we find ourselves lacking contentment, it’s because of some unfulfilled desire in our hearts. Some hole or emptiness we have and we look for anything that can fill it. We see someone else who is happy and try to figure out what filled that hole for them, and maybe it can fill it for us as well. But nothing in this life ever really fills that longing completely. It might seem to for a little while, but in the end, we are never quite satisfied.

That longing in our hearts can only really be filled by God. He is the only one who can truly meet our needs. In Psalm 63, David summarizes it beautifully. He says, “My soul thirsts for You... because Your love is better than life.”

When I realized that I was fighting jealousy, I started to pray hard and asked God for help. I asked him to be enough for me. You see, that was my part to play. All I had to do was turn it over to God, to surrender those desires, and to surrender that unfulfilled hole to Him. And then He did all the rest. The jealousy gave way and I began to find joy in my situation.

I stopped feeling jealous of the happy couples I know, and I started rejoicing on their behalf. I am genuinely ecstatic for them, and seeing them happy and together really blesses my heart in a way that is hard to describe. I find myself praying for them, and I thank God for the joy they have, and I thank Him that they won’t have to know the sorrow I felt. And in doing so, my heart grew lighter.

God turned my jealousy into joy, but God is so amazing and loves us so much, that He doesn’t just stop there. 

You see, while God is ultimately the only one who can truly satisfy the deepest desires of our hearts, it doesn’t mean that the earthly things we long for are invalid. Love, companionship, friendship, success. These are not bad things in and of themselves. In fact, these desires are placed in our hearts by God. And He desires to see them fulfilled in our lives as well. The problem is that too often we don’t wait for Him and we try to fill them ourselves.

Turning over our desires to God, doesn’t mean that we let go of them forever and that we will never see those desires fulfilled. It is simply a matter of us saying, “God, I give this desire to you. You know better than I do about what I really need to fill it, and about when I really need it. I trust you.”

I don’t want to be like that dog in the story, and lose what I have because I am too focused on trying to get something else. I want to embrace being single during this time in my life. There is a purpose for it, even if I don't see it yet. So I chose to be content and not jealous. I’ve given God the desires of my heart to find love and companionship again. I don’t know if He will fill that need in my life tomorrow, two years from now, or twenty years from now. He might not even fill it at all. But I trust Him to know what’s best for me. And even if He never fills those desires, He is still enough for me.

If you are dealing with jealousy, or struggling with unfulfilled desires in your life. I encourage you to submit it to God. Trust Him with it. And though you may have to wait a while for His timing, and though the answer you finally get may not look exactly like you thought it would,  I promise He will take care of you. Jesus won’t let you down.

“Be Anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, and with thanksgiving, let your requests be known to God, and the peace of God, which passes all understanding will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”

Phillipians 4:6-7