I was trapped by my jealousy when I was young. I was jealous of my friend who has better grades than me, I was jealous of those who are talented than me. And The one person I was jealous of the most was my younger sister.
In my eyes, she was smarter, prettier than me. Not only she looked cute, but she was also a very playful and cheerful child, and she was under the spotlights all the time, literally. My sister was a natural on the stage, she took a few leading roles since Kindergarten. I couldn’t help to compare myself with her.
Though I wanted to be a good sister, I just couldn’t.
I wouldn’t let her play with my friends because I was afraid she would easily take them away. I wouldn’t share things with her. One time my mom asked me to share my bunk bed with my sister while our cousin sleeps over. I was so upset, threw a big tantrum and cried for a long time. In the end, I still wouldn’t let her come up to my upper bunk bed. Actually, my sister cared for me a lot. If she got a treat she’d always save me the best part. But I just had such a hard time accepting such a perfect sister, and it’s even harder to accept how horrible I was as the elder sister.
The relationship didn’t change until later on when I left home and study aboard on my own as a teenager. That was also the time I started to go to church. Thankfully I went to church, where I learned about God, and experienced the love from God’s family.
Back then, I lived quite far away from the church brothers and sisters. A few of them, without me asking, took turns to visit me after school: sometimes they drove me to get groceries, went to the park and read some bible, and sometimes they took me to their place for dinner. We spent lots of quality time together like a family.
A few years later, my sister moved in with me. Without seeing and talking with her for a few years, we felt like strangers to each other in the beginning. But this time, I was eager to fix our relationship. Basically, I took care of her the same way church brothers and sisters took care of me. I even turned to them for advice about how to show my love, one of them suggested me to call her everyday after class. Day by day, I felt I had a bigger heart to care for her. I wanted to cook for her, took her to school, chatted with her before sleep.
It was quite amazing that I learned how to love my family from God’s family. Besides, these years of having God by my side, I realize He loves me for who I am. He knows me inside out, but my imperfection never takes away any of His care for me. I found the key to release myself from the cage of comparison.
Without God and God’s family’s love in my life, I could not know how to love.