Aspiration or Envy or Covetousness

In my wanderings this morning I was wondering about those particular relatives I was drawn to growing up in Oklahoma. Hang with me for a nostalgic minute. 

There was Blanche and Walter Grother.  Blanche was a younger sister of my paternal grandmother Martha. She was one of eight siblings, thirteen years younger than grandmother.  My grandparents had a very small house on West Katy in Cushing, Oklahoma. (Where I was born—the town, not the house)  When we visited, which was pretty often as a kid, lots of extended family showed up.  It made for a packed house. Overnight it was pallet to pallet on the floor.  Martha’s love language was cooking.  If you showed up and did not fill a plate, if she’d not been such a Godly woman, she’d have taken offense.  The Grothers usually stoped by.  What I noticed was how they dressed and the car they drove.  They were different, not in a haughty way, just different. They seemed to have class—again not in a proud way.  They were sweet, personable people.  I liked them.  All this said was in contrast to the Drakes, Pearl and Henry, who came ever so often from California.  Pearl was another sister of my grandmother.  Henry was a round-facing, heavy-set obnoxious teaser, tickler.  I cringed every time I saw him coming.  So I had opposite feelings towards Drakes and Grothers.  Yet Pearl was as sweet as they come. My dad liked Henry, no surprise. 

Then there was mom’s maternal uncle Vernon Oakley up in Kansas. There were eight Oakley sibs. Vernon and his wife Bee were similar to the Grothers. The Oakleys, pretty much all of them, were solidly middle class.  The Boohers, mom’s paternal side, were as well. In fact, Martha told me one time, “the best thing your dad ever did was marry your mom’. He married up (and she?) Vernon had been mayor of a town in southeast Kansas and a respected businessman.  He and Bee were hospitable folks as I recall visiting them in Topeka while I was in college.  They had something about them that I admired. 

Henry and Birdie Booher, my grandparents

Lastly, there was mom’s dad, another Henry, and his second wife, Birdie.  Henry had divorced his first wife Almeda Oakley after twenty-two years when mom was sixteen.  My hunch is he lived with that black mark the rest of his life.  Divorce records don’t speak kindly of him.  But I never experienced him in a fitful or angry way.  My conversations with Birdie also filled me in on what she’d heard of his previous marriage.  There are always two sides to a story.  My first thoughts after I heard what he’d dealt with was, “I’d likely do the same thing, divorce (even though I loved Almeda)”.  All conjecture of course.  Shoes rarely fit (if ever) as we try to walk in someone else’s.  

All this to say, Birdie’s marriage to Henry was good.  He had been a superintendent of various refineries and oil ventures in Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.  They retired to a few acres, a country store and gas station in Northeast Oklahoma.  Visiting there was always a fun place to go—woods close by, a barn full of hay, sheep and chickens and persimmons to throw at my brother and cousins.  In old photos, granddad was in his double-breasted suit and hat.  Birdie was dressed to the nines.  They were standing in from of a nice car.  (Popular to do back then). Again, they had something I aspired to.  Plus, I grew up being told often I favored my granddad Henry.  

All this being said, It sounds like it was all in how they looked—which was a part of it.  But mostly it was how they carried themselves, their persona, their character. 

As I wonder, those admirations, those aspirations were good.  They were not rooted in envy, just a desire to be all I might be able to be. These were examples of making it up the ladder a bit farther.  Having money and lots of it was never a driving force for me.  I chose social work/ministry as a career after all.  But as it turned out, I and Jeannie ended up in the wealthiest county in Tennessee although not in the multi-millions subdivisions. I am not bragging, believe me.  I know where I’ve come from. (I had not said but the Molloys were dirt farmers in the dust bowl of Oklahoma).

A few years back a young woman I’d been with on a mission trip to Cuba was sitting in our great room.  As I passed by she said, “I want your life”.  That was not the first time I’d heard that from someone.  I simply smiled and said, “ok”, thinking “you’ve got no idea of how it all came together”.  She was looking at me, my life, the trappings just as I did the Grothers, the Oakleys and the Boohers and hoping for a similar day herself.  I know one of the big ten commandments is thou shalt not covet.  The definition says ‘to desire what belongs to another , inordinately or culpably’.  There is an evil within covetousness, what I am willing to do to get.  Envy too implies a discontentment or resentment longing for what someone else has. Envy will never will take us to a good place.  It’s got a poor me, sour grapes stance.  So it is the attitude of my heart that distinguishes aspiration from envy and covetousness. It’s not about taking or stealing. 

I live in overthink. I have my whole life.  It is the disease of introspection.  As I overthink this, when it comes to my aspirations, I come down on the good side.  We do well to have a sense of aspiration, to imagine or to dream of what could be.  It’s been a good path for me—and many others who have created the lives, the culture we all live in the midst of.  

So I still aspire.  I still admire and hope—and ‘aspire’ that never changes. 

An orginal sculpure gifted to me years ago…aspiring. It too is in my study.