Cheek Bruises

I got pinched today.  Nothing was pinched from me, thankfully, but I was pinched hard.

Okay for those of you who have lived this side of the world and know that pinching can be drastic let me inform you quickly this was a facial pinch by a female neighbor.

She reached in through the window of the car and grabbed my cheek, all of it, and twisted.  Hard.  I, with lady like quick thinking yelped.  Loud.  Then I laughed reached through the window and took a big chunk out of her cheek.

Naz (the cheeky neighbor) is a piece of work.  I think we aren't that far apart in age but she is already a grandma.  She is not someone to take cultural cues from.  She marches to the beat of her own drum.  Her daughters tell her to pipe down half the time.  At first my sinful heart rose to hate her pushy, annoying ways that always took and took and took.  Now I actually, by God's grace, love Naz.  I like her.  She cracks me up.  I crack her up.  But Naz struggles with jealousy.  She wants all that I have, all of it.  Including my car (which isn't my car anyways but who is splitting hairs when I am driving it around).  So according to a more reliable cultural source she pinched me in jealousy.  It hurt.

Jealousy pinches.  It tightens and tightens around your heart till there is no laughter in your heart or eyes. Jealousy suffocates, destroys, steals joy.  Jealousy kills and eats at the soul of a person.  I pray for Naz to be saved from its destruction.  I pray that she will desire the one thing that I prize more than anything else.  I pray that her jealousy will lead her to that which I can share.  

This picture is not of Naz or anyone else related but perhaps it shows the cold loneliness of jealousy.  The futility.  The eating away.  There beside you an open gate, above the warm sun but yet you are cold.

Pictures compliments of Hubster.