SEVEN WONDERFUL YEARS

 

What is the difference between envy and jealousy? The Mirriam-Webster online dictionary defines it this way:

“While many people believe that jealous means fearing someone will take what you have, and envious means desiring what someone else has, historical usage shows that both mean "covetous" and are interchangeable when describing desiring someone else's possessions.”

And again:

““Envy means discontented longing for someone else’s advantages. Jealousy means unpleasant suspicion, or apprehension of rivalship.””[1]

 

Envy can fester inside a person like a boil that needs to be lanced. It can bring the worst out in a person. Envy is corrosive to the soul. Jealousy sets the human heart on fire. Covetousness. It is the Tenth Commandments: Exodus 20:17. It tells us not to covet any of our neighbours’ possessions.

At a personal level, I am not guilty of coveting other people’s cars or large houses, exotic vacations or business success. I have, however, been guilty of coveting other people’s health. For over 40 years, I have struggled with multiple sclerosis (MS). Large swaths of my adult life have been in wide-eyed fear of aggressive MS, as paralysis gradually spread. It put me in an electric wheelchair. Often, I wished I could walk like other men do. That’s envy.

My Canadian community has a hill at its center. One crisp Canadian winter day, I took my three-year-old grandson for a ride on my electric wheelchair. The fresh air was cold and clean. My little guy was toasty warm in his snowsuit and touque under a wool blank on my lap. We headed up the hill (my house its at he bottom of the hill). About halfway up, I stopped to watch another grandfather sliding down the hill on a toboggin with his small grandson about the same age as mine. His child squealed with delight. They tumbled off the toboggin into a cloud of snow and laughed more.

My grandson simply watched them from my lap. I was envious. I wished I could do that with my grandson! I wanted the health that that other grandfather enjoyed; there was no desire to take his health from him. I was envious not jealous. But as the good folks at Mirriam-Webster said, “…historical usage of both [envy and jealousy] shows that both mean “covetous” and are interchangeable when describing someone else’s possessions.” That other grandfather possessed health I did not have. I felt swindled by life.

To covet is a sin. That wintry day, covetousness gripped my heart and stripped me of my joy of being with my grandchild. Envy robs joy and contentment. 

Saint Paul said: 

“I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through Him who gives me strength.”[2]

 

I needed to confess my sin and be content with what I do have: life and love. With time I learned to stop looking back at the normal body I once had. After many years of paralysis and in an electric wheelchair, something unexpected but marvelous happened one day when I prayed to Christ before me in the Blessed Sacrament:

“Lord, if it be possible, raise me from this wheelchair, even for a short time, even if I must use a walker, crutches or canes. Let me dance with my wife, even if it’s only once. Make my atrophied legs bear my weight.”

 

I didn’t ask for a cure, only time. 

And then over the next few days, it happened! God did raise me (an old man) to walk again in late-stage MS. That was over seven years ago. We had been convinced my next address would be a nursing home or a cemetery! Everything turned around.

 

On a cold winter’s night, with the dim light of a fire's embers in our fireplace, my wife and I danced once again, just the two of us. I played the last song we danced to so many decades before: Once, Twice, Three Times a Lady, by the Commodores. I have walked for seven years. My wheelchair has been in a spare room gathering dust, and my wife and I still dance.

Now, my legs are growing weaker and tire walking more than short distances. I've developed a serious limp. Is it time to go back into my wheelchair? I don't know. If so, then let it be. I was given seven wonderful years. Thank you Lord.

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[1] Mirriam-Webster, ”Jealous versus Envy”  https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/jealous-vs-envious

[2] Philippians 4:12-13.