So I’ve been talking about friendship the past two days, and I’m giving away a copy of Shelley Hendrix’s book Why Can’t We Just Get Along? because it’s been beyond helpful recently with some friendship struggles!! Click over here and be sure to enter to win!!

My roommate and I graduated college together and then decided to be roommates in graduate school, too. We both moved from our small college in Macon, Georgia to the big University of Georgia in Athens the summer after our senior year. With our newly earned degrees in early childhood education in hand, we started looking for teaching jobs. That summer there weren’t many. So we both ended up teaching at the same school – 45 minutes away.

Our lives were pretty much identical and because of circumstances, we were mostly inseparable. We rode to work together in the mornings, saw each other in the hallways during the day, rode home in the evenings, and then went to night classes.

But there was one big difference. She had a boyfriend who she’d dated for years. I wanted a boyfriend.

I remember the Monday morning she came into the teacher workroom after a weekend at her parents. I was at the copy machine making copies for the week. I knew what I was going to see when I turned around. I don’t remember how – I knew just that I knew. I think she might have even told me the night before on the phone.

I turned around, and she put out her hand. It was big and shiny and emerald cut. It was gorgeous. She was getting married.

I could barely look at her.

That is my most vivid memory of deep-seeded, rotten jealousy within me. Later I cried. I apologized. I asked for forgiveness. But our friendship was never the same.

Fast forward many years, and jealousy is still the fastest way to kill a friendship.

I want to tell you that it’s not between friends in the church, “Christian friends”, and that it only exist “on the outside”. But from my present experience there’s more jealousy, envy, competition between my Soul Sisters than between other friends. And guess what it’s over of all things . . .

Ministry.

Who’s involved in the most ministries at church, who’s in the “cool church group”, who’s a leader, who has the godliest husband.

And it’s in blogging ministry, too. If you’re in this big world of online ministry you know it’s rampant.

It’s there. And it’s sad. And it’s killing friendships.

The killing is very subtle. I’m not sure that we Soul Sisters even know we’re jealous of each other. But it comes to the surface through the slip-in comments that are only slightly cutting so no one recognizes them or the asking of question after question, not out of genuine concern, but to have more information to compare and get jealous over.

I guess this post is a kind-of-pleading to my Soul Sisters and maybe it can become a pleading to yours, too.

We have to stop killing our friendships with jealousy.

And maybe yours isn’t over ministry.

Maybe it’s over your friend getting married before you or having the baby you want or going on date-nights once a week or fulfilling her true calling.

You know those friendships that just kind-of dissolve and you’re not real sure how or why? One minute you’re praying together, spending time together, carrying each other’s burdens, and the next minute you realize you haven’t talked in months?

Usually that’s because of jealousy.

You may not even recognize it, but something deep within your souls created a wedge. You forgot that we are the Body of Christ – all different parts working together. You forgot that we are each fulfilling our own specific purposes for God’s kingdom. And you forgot that Satan is having a hay-day by separating us.

So friends, today, let’s look at our friendships. Examine our hearts. Ask God to search us (Psalm 139: 23-24 ) And ask Him to forgive us for our jealousy. Then let’s makes some phone calls.

I’ll be doing the same.

How has jealousy affected your friendships?