Dear Green Eyed Monster

Dear Green Eyed Monster,
       Jealousy.  It's a challenge that I have tried to overcome for a lot of my life.  I have always wished for things, and a lot of the time those things are things which belong to other people.  I am not poor.  I joke often about "being poor" which is really not the case.  I have a lot of bills and a lot of debt, which is no ones fault but my own.  There is a long story behind some of my debt and a bunch of bad choices behind the rest of it. It doesn't really matter what the reason is now, the point is that it exists.  I see other people my age or at my same stage of life or people who have the same job as me and they have things I wish I had.  People are buying houses and sometimes I wish we were buying a house.  I see people going on nice vacations to places I would like to go to, and I wish I could afford to take my family to those places.  I see people buying new cars or toys or whatever and I wish we could afford to buy those things.  I wish I didn't have my debt and my credit was better and I had a surplus of money like some people do.  I wish I could put aside more for retirement or my husband made enough so I could stay home with our kids.  I look at other people and wish I could have things they have.  I have to stop and remind myself of the things that I DO have, rather than the things I do NOT have.  Someone is jealous of what I have.  I don't want to envy other people.  I have so much, more than I feel I deserve most days.  I have to keep reminding myself about all of the amazing things I have, instead of dwelling on the "stuff" I don't have.  In reality, that's all it is, "stuff."  I've got things that money can't buy. I have a man that loves me, children that love me and a God that loves me.   It's a lot more than many people.  I have friends, good friends, friends that care.  I have a job I enjoy.  I have my health. I have family(the family I was born into, and then another amazing family I married into).  I also need to remind myself that those people who have "things" might not have it all.  It's hard to imagine that those people don't have everything, or they could be struggling in some other way.  Sometimes I just need to remind myself that the grass isn't always greener on the other side, you still gotta mow that grass too.