Note 2: Not long after I posted this, my parents bought me a new violin. They understood that a new violin was not–is not–the point of this post, but they did it anyway. The photos here are pictures of the instrument I have now. It is not an antique, but it is lovely.

On Envy

It is my pleasure, in the back of the second violin section in our church orchestra, to share a music stand with Emily. Emily is my dear friend, and it was she who encouraged me, sometime during the summer of 2004, to get my violin out again and join the orchestra. And although I play badly (Badly), I will always think of that encouragement as one of her many Great Gifts to me, because I enjoy playing the violin So Much.

My parents bought my violin for me when I started taking lessons at age ten. It was a school instrument, used, not of anything like High Quality. But it served. It served for seven years, waited seventeen, and is serving again. It is a brightly lacquered thing with an orange hue and a pinched tone. Not a rich sound, not a beautiful instrument. But I am used to it, and it Works.

Emily, on the other hand, has a beautiful violin. Hers is an antique. Hers is not shiny, and the wood is grained in rich browns and yellows. And its sound? Well.

One afternoon during rehearsal, Emily had the bright idea that we switch instruments. Just for a little while, she said. Just to try it.

I did not want to. No. I knew what would happen.

But she was grinning like she does. She thought it would be such fun. Here, she said, holding out her precious and antique violin to me. Here.

We couldn’t have continued the swap for more than a minute, maybe two. I didn’t play her violin for long. But oh, I enjoyed it. A violin like hers just feels different in the hand: softer somehow, as if wants to be played, as if it intends to conform itself to the player and help one make magnificent music.

And her violin vibrated differently. The sound wasn’t just something the violin made; the sound was something the violin embodied. It bore the sound with its whole, soft self. It was wonderful. Those few minutes were proof of something I already knew: her violin is Much Better than mine.

I wish I had a violin like that.

* * *

The house I live in is not large, but it is, in many ways, charming. It is far from perfect, but I love it. It is all I want in a house, and I am vastly contented in it and deeply grateful. When we first bought it, I was ecstatic.

One afternoon I enjoyed the visit of Kathy Russell, wife of one of our pastors. She is, by gift and hobby, an interior designer, and she was delighted to let me show her our house. I showed her the closet space, I showed her the bedrooms, I showed her the bathrooms, we discussed paint chips. And I said to her– as I’ll say to most anyone– “Isn’t God good to give this to me?”

She and her husband and their five children were living in a tiny house at the time with, she told me, no storage space. But she looked at my house and admired it and was quite simply happy for me. Her answer to my delight, to my overjoyed question of God’s goodness, was simple and direct: “Yes,” she said. “And isn’t He good not to give it to me?”

* * *

I think sometimes we get it all wrong. I think sometimes we look at what we have, and at what others have, and we look too hard at the Thing Itself. We compare our homes, our violins, our bodies, our hair, our talents, our virtues, and we are quite plainly Dissatisfied.

And that is because we are looking at the wrong thing. We are looking at the Thing We Have compared to the Thing That Belongs to Someone Else.

We are not looking, as we should be, at the Hand that holds Our Thing out to us, the Hand that gives it, in absolute kindness and perfect wisdom, and declares it to be ours.

We are not looking past the Thing to the Hand itself, nor are we looking carefully into the hand– we are not seeing the Scar.

The post On Envy appeared first on Rebecca Brewster Stevenson.

That might not sound like a big deal to you but, Believe You Me, conversations with friends are Few and Far Between these days, seeing as I’m at work All Day and then busy with children until they go to bed and then either doing school work or falling asleep until bedtime.

In fact, Lynne called this evening when she had six minutes to spare, and I didn’t get to talk with her, as I was getting Emma Grace from the bathtub and drying Emma Grace’s hair and reading Emma Grace a story so that she would be All Tucked In as close to 8 p.m. as possible.

But I did get to talk with Tworivers this evening, and that was Nice. Never mind the fact that, as I was talking, I was changing sheets on the bunkbeds and restacking books in their bookcase and jamming costume things back into their costume box. I was having a conversation with a friend, and that was Nice.

And I was sharing with her things about my life. Yes, I was. I was being friendly, and giving her News and asking her about things and, yes, telling her things.

Suddenly she paused, and then she said, “I can tell you’ve been spending a lot of time with high school students.”

And I thought, Why yes, yes I have.

And I thought, Of course Tworivers knows this.

And I thought, Oh dear, this Means something.

And I thought, What Does This Mean?

“Whatever do you mean?” I asked her.

“I can just tell you’ve been spending time with high school students. You’re not talking to me like you usually do.”

“How do I usually talk to you?”

“You’re not being your usual, erudite self,” she said, mildly. And yes, she did say it mildly, though it did not fall on my hearing in a mild sort of way. It was not mild to my hearing. No.

“How am I being?” I wanted to know.

But here she failed me, as Other People in relating Other Conversation so often do (and this is a Real Trial I have, believe you me. But not everyone is a writer, I suppose, and so not everyone Pays Attention to Detail or, if she pays attention to detail, not everyone is Able To Relate It, and I find this Very Trying). She was unable to identify exactly how it was that my conversation had changed. She could not pinpoint the alteration. But she did, indeed, say that I sounded like I was spending a lot of time with high school students, and that I did not sound like, and I quote, my normal, “erudite” self.

Yikes.

How, I ask you, is one supposed to correct such waywardness if the problem itself cannot be identified but is, rather, Vaguely Described?

I cannot quit my job. No. I can’t.

Furthermore, I won’t.

I will say, in my own defense, that I Very Frequently use words my students do not understand, at which point I must needs define them for them.

I will add, furthermore, that I have been complimented on More Than One Occasion for the clarity, sophistication, and eloquence of my speech, and this has occurred since and even while I have been spending the majority of my time with high school students.

And I will additionally add that, just recently, I have added the words jejune and chary to my vocabulary, and I told Tworivers this, and She Had To Look Them Up.

So there.

I guess “so there” is a rather childish thing to say, isn’t it?

But now something else is occurring to me. Tworivers might have a Vested Interest in sparking within me such insecurity and fear. She might have a Keen Desire to get me to think that I need to spend More Time with adults: We are all invited (all the members of the 66 Dogs Book Club) to spend a weekend away together in the middle of May– just the book club members. And today I told Tworivers that I didn’t think this outing was going to work for me and my schedule. So now I’m thinking that Tworivers wants me to be on this outing and wants me to think that a little protracted adult conversation is Just The Thing I Need.

Clever.

Or maybe my speech hasn’t changed much at all. Maybe tonight, after I taught for several hours and rehearsed a play and spent several more hours grading papers and writing lesson plans and made dinner and did laundry and bathed a child and changed sheets and did laundry…. Maybe after all that, I was just a Little Tired.

I hope that’s it.

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