I have often heard people say, I would love to have her life. She has everything the way she wants it. It is easy to look at what someone else has or how their life seems so seamless and perfect. Especially when we compare it to ours. I wasn’t the prettiest girl nor the smartest growing up. I had issues. I doubted myself and my worth. Even though I had talent and did some amazing things, I still felt inadequate compared to others I knew. I thought that money would solve all my problems. If I had been born rich, that would have been the key to fix everything that was wrong in my world. Wow, how naive I was. Observing people now many years later I see with mature eyes that money cannot really bring happiness. Oh, it can make you feel secure, but it cannot stop you from being ill, or your parent from getting Alzheimer’s disease, or cancer. It cannot make someone love you enough to stay with you until you grow old together. And it cannot replace someone you have lost to death. When we take the time to dwell on what someone else has that we want, or to look at their life longingly, we cannot see what is behind their doors. Who really knows what they have gone through. Some of the saddest bitter people in the world are wealthy beyond my imagination. If you were to ask one of these say a Steve Jobs who had more money than he would ever need. I think he would tell you that it is more important to be happy with what you have with family and home and friends. All the money in the world could not stop his life from ending. He deteriorated over time to a mere shell of a man he had once been. No board room decisions, no money changing hands, just waiting on death. We think other people have it better than us and we let ourselves become obsessed with trying to find a way to be happy. But is the grass really greener over there… in that house, in that church, in that family? Whether it is or not, we cannot live our life with those questions. Once I turned my life completely over to God, I stopped being restless, seeking happiness in other ways. I had found the source of true happiness through Him. We all must come to the realization that life on our side of the street is fine. It could always be better, but when you have everything, you need, and God is in your life you are most rich.
