Birthday Party: So Cruel

In this compelling episode, Shirah Chanté weaves together personal poetry and biblical wisdom to address the destructive power of jealousy. Through her raw and honest poem "Birthday Party," she shares a cautionary tale about how insecurity and jealousy can destroy relationships. Diving deep into Song of Solomon 8:6, "jealousy is as cruel as the grave," Shirah provides practical spiritual guidance for teenagers struggling with self-worth and relationship challenges. This episode offers valuable insights about genuine friendship, authentic self-love, and the importance of building security in one's identity.

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Transcript

Draw near to God , don't fear. Draw near to God. Don't fear.

Welcome. Welcome. Welcome to teens draw near to God. Poetry podcast. I am your host, Shira Shantae, relationship artist, blessing God's people with music, art, and poetry and helping God's people with their relationships. That was my mandate for many, many, many years. And recently, Last, is it last year, 2024, it could have been 2023.

God told me to bless his people. I think it was last year. It was. And so that's what I'm doing. So I am here. I hope you're blessed by this show today. Welcome teenagers, parents of teens, youth coaches, counselors, Pastors, directors, anyone who works with teenagers, teachers, especially, I remember being a school teacher and working with teenagers.

Yeah, quite a task, quite a task, especially those younger teens, because they're coming into age and,  having all sorts of feelings and emotions and, kind of the in between stage of life and beliefs and systems. And so this is a very tender age to be attacked by evil. And so that's why I felt led to do a show for you teenagers to help you, to guide you through this turbulent season of life.

But it's fun. It's fun also to be a teenager and to start gaining more responsibility in life, more of your own.  Thoughts and mindset concerning what you've been,  taught or what you have lived in your previous years, one through 10, one through 12. And so, I was baptized at 12. So right before I became a teenager, I was baptized,  when I accepted the Lord Jesus Christ into my heart.

So that, those, Yeah, those are special years. They were kind of dark years for me, but I hope they're not dark years for you. I want them to be filled with light. Light is good. Light is happy. Jesus is the light of the world and he has given a light to each of us who have accepted him into his heart, that now we are the light of the world.

So as the light of the world, I want to disperse light to you, a brilliant light. And. What we do on this poetry podcast is I read an original poem. I'm reading from my book, John Disview, desire, love, hate religion. It's on amazon. com. If you wish to buy it, Jaundiced View by Shira Chanté. Today's poem is from the first chapter, Desire, and it's called Birthday Party, Bir thay Party.

So I'm going to read the entire poem, somewhat a little longer.  Last week we talked about Just the One, Made for Me. If you haven't heard that one, go back and listen to that podcast. It'll bless you. It'll clear up some things in life about dating and finding the one. So we're going to move on this week with birthday party.

I'm going to read the entire poem. Then we're going to go back line by line to see how the words in this poem can help us draw near to God, get closer to our heavenly father, get closer to God. That's what we want to do because when you're close to God, Life is good. It's not always easy, you know, but, whatever you go through, he makes it easy.

 His burden, his yoke is easy. His burden is light.

So get connected to God. Birthday party. That party was for you. I know your friends weren't there. I was just a fool denying your prayer. My jealousy of girlfriends. Destroyed your birthday party and our love. Won't go nowhere. But out the door, flying pictures, broken glass. On the scene, everywhere. I tried to clean the damage, but I cut myself.

On the hand, and now I have this scar to bear. It's so ugly. In the emergency room, sew it up, clean the wound. I'm healing slowly. I'm healing fine. I'm healing without you on my dime all the time. Well, it's time to put those things behind. I can see you and I don't rhyme in bed, but head to the paper and write all about me and play your bass guitar.

I'm feeling free. Draw me all you want while I'm showering. I'll just wash my evil thoughts. And do those things that I always dreamed I would. And to you, I hope your birthday is feeling good. Emily and Karen swear, and Mary please for you to go with her anywhere. And do those things I used to do. Like snorting and smoking and drinking too.

But now I'm through. Your birthday, it's all taboo. Your birthday, next time I promise. to invite your friends to your birthday party. Your birthday party. And that is the poem. Birthday party. Okay, so let's go back to the beginning. That party was for you. I know your friends weren't there. I was just a fool denying your prayer.

What? Shiro, why would you throw a party and not invite the friends of the person you're throwing the party for? Well, if you don't like somebody, you don't invite them. So my jealousy of girlfriends destroyed your party and our love won't go nowhere. Now, this is really interesting to go back and read these poems in light of the revelation I've been given about love.

And, that revelation, once again, go back to just a one made for me. And you'll hear that. But this guy, he really wasn't my boyfriend. This is my college years. So, I'm giving you a heads up so you can prevent. Some of these things from happening in your life. And so, I had given my friend a party. We dated kind of off and on.

I really, it wasn't any, it really wasn't love. It was just, I needed to be with someone and he was there and he needed to be with someone and I was there. It was just, it was just a, a need based relationship. So my jealousy of girlfriends destroyed your party and our love won't go nowhere, but out the door, flying pictures, broken glass on the scene everywhere.

So I want to talk about this. My jealousy of girlfriends. That's what I want to talk about today. Today the title of the show is called So Cruel. So Cruel. So cool. And I want to read a scripture to you from the book of the song of Solomon. Solomon was one of the greatest Kings ever to richest man who ever lived according to the Bible.

There was no one who, who was richer than King Solomon in his day. So, I have to see if that means like throughout eternity. I don't know, but, I know for a fact it says no one was, had, was wealthier than him. So he wrote a song and Song of Solomon, chapter eight, verse six says, set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm.

For love is as strong as death, jealousy as cruel as the grave. Its flames are flames of fire, a most vehement blame. Jealousy is cruel as the grave. Love is as strong as death! Woo! Those are those crimes of passion. Where you just, where a man just gets so jealous for his wife or he thinks she's cheating and he kills her or he kills the person who he thinks she's cheating.

You know, we heard about that with OJ Simpson. It's a crime of passion. I'm not saying he did anything, he was not convicted for that, he was actually exonerated. However, I'm just saying, that's the sort of thing, it's a crime, it's like something that just comes over you, it's a passion, just, remember I talked about passion and how it's an emotion, it's something that, that comes quickly and it leaves just as quickly.

Many people who get into these passionate, modes, they don't remember what they did or they're like, wow, how could I do that? And it's because, love is strong as death. Jealousy as cruel as the grave. I want to talk about jealousy today. Jealousy. That's when you just, you don't like somebody because they're prettier than you.

Maybe they're dating the boy you like. Maybe they have more money. You think they have a better family than you. I remember I was jealous. And a lot of jealousy comes from insecurity. I, that was where my main jealousy came from insecurity. As I said before, I didn't really like this guy. I mean, yeah, I liked him because he was someone to be with, but I wasn't in love with him.

You know, so why was I so jealous? It was more of an insecurity of thinking someone's better than me, or I'm not good enough, or I'm not pretty enough, or my family background isn't so great. All of these things that can cause us to feel inadequate, feel insecure, feel like we're not worthy, have low self esteem.

Self esteem is what you feel about yourself. It's how you view yourself, how you look at yourself in your own eyes. Do you love yourself? You know, I, I always end the show, love God, love you and love people. Because if you don't love you, if you don't love who you are, you're, it's going to be very hard for you to love someone else, you're going to give them the same amount of love that you would give to yourself.

And if you don't value yourself, if you don't value your own soul, you're not really going to value anyone else either. And so my jealousy of girlfriends destroyed your party. And our love.

This party was a mess. It ended up being just horrible. I don't want to relive it and I won't. But I'm just telling you, it just, it wasn't fun at the end. And this is what jealousy does. It causes a lot of anguish and pain in life. It says jealousy is as cruel as the grave. That means jealousy could cause someone to kill another.

Cruel as the grave. The grave is death. You're not going to get any lower than that. You six feet under degrade, degrade, killing someone because of jealousy, because of whatever reason, you just don't like this person. And what I found out in my study over the years on jealousy is that it doesn't even matter.

Like you would think that if someone had more money or they had a big house or they. Had a nice car or whatever they thought they needed to feel like they were worth something in the world, which external things should never make you feel worthy because that has nothing to do with who you are inside.

I mean, it has, you know, it can vouch to your ability to make money or have a kind of a job. That's fine. Perhaps that was a goal of yours and you reached it. So good. You reached a goal. But it's not who you are. It has nothing to do with your, your core being. And so a lot of people, unfortunately, base their worth on outward things, the outward appearance of man, of woman, of what you have, and because of that, it causes a lot of inner turmoil.

And even if a person seems like they have everything in the world, they can have. They could still be jealous of someone who has less or who doesn't seem to be really as financially wealthy or as pretty, or it doesn't matter because if they feel bad about themselves inside, jealousy is as cruel as the grave.

They're going to be jealous. It will cause you to be jealous of others when you're not secure about who you are. Another thing that could cause jealousy is if you are in a situation that you know you got into wrongly. Like maybe you stole someone from their wife or their husband. You manipulated them and you took them away.

And, but you know that they didn't come with you because They really loved you, but you did something to them to make them believe that you were the one instead of the person they were with before. Something like that, or even a friendship. If you manipulate, I've seen this happen in high school with someone just come in and totally manipulate a friendship and so that they could be their best friend instead of this other person.

Just lie on them and just. So subtly that distance gets less and less between these two friends. And all of a sudden this person takes their place. It's a very subtle, evil, snake ish act. And I've seen it happen over and over. I remember it's because of jealousy. This person is jealous of the relationship of these other people and they want to come in and they.

Do it. They manipulate. They deceive. If you're not aware, you allow someone to do that. I've never allowed anyone to do that because I'm, I just, I can pick up on people very easily. That's just a gift I've always had. And I even prayed to increase that gift. of discernment, to be able to see who people really are.

And, if you give it a little time, you'll hear what comes out of their mouth and you'll get to know them. You'll get to see who they are. A lot of people just don't wait or they just hear what they want to hear instead of really hearing what the person's really saying and really hearing their heart.

However, I remember. When I was older, attending church and I was in a choir and I had a friend. She was my best friend at that time. We were both in a choir. We both had no vehicles. So we were both buzzing it and out here in Los Angeles and we were pretty tight. We were close. And another girl just came to our church and she started hanging around us.

And pretty soon it's like, she took over our friendship. Yeah. It's like, all of a sudden she came in and she wanted to be with my friend and was trying to take her everywhere, do everything with her so that she couldn't be with me because she was jealous of our relationship. And so I noticed it right away.

I was like, eh, I'm not going to deal with this. I just kind of distanced myself from the matter because. If someone's really and truly your friend and they really love you, they're going to be that way forever, no matter what happens. I didn't, that was not something I wanted to really fight about or even discuss, or even really had the energy to work with.

It wasn't, to me, it wasn't that important because I felt like the bond that me and my friends shared was greater than the jealous. It's conniving actions of this girl who came between us or tried to come between us. I'm still friends with my friend today and that goes to show if you are a genuine person, an honest person, you're going to create those bonds for a lifetime and it's just going to happen.

I have friends. I have friends from childhood. I have, because I am genuine, honest person, as much as I can be. I'm not trying to toot my own horn or make it seem like I'm like, Ooh, so perfect. I'm not. Yeah. I made many mistakes. I told you this point shows you, I was jealous.

I'm telling you, but it was for the wrong reasons. It was because I was insecure. It wasn't because I love this person. And so jealousy can happen like that. And I just want to pray for you teenagers because it's cruel as a grave. You don't want to have murder in your heart. You don't want to be jealous of someone so much that you want to kill them.

That's not right. That's totally wrong. And it's kind of psychotic to me. I yeah, I don't want to make a scene, but it seems like, yeah. During this party, I was pretty psychotic. I can say that about myself. I can be honest. I can have an honest, valuation of myself. I was acting kind of psychotic.

I mean, I ended up in the emergency room as you see toward the end of this point, because I cut my hand because of broken glass because of a fight. This is crazy. All because of jealousy. Lord God, in the name of Yeshua, your son, Jesus Christ. I pray today for these teenagers, for anyone listening, that they will develop the self worth inside that they need to not be jealous of another individual, another man, another woman.

In Jesus name, Amen. That's our show today. Thank you for being here. Thank you for listening. Remember, you can get my books on this view. I also have a blog, shirashantae. com, and I'll add this blog to the I'll add this poem to the blog this week. If you go to shirashantae. com, you can subscribe, and you will be able to know when I publish new blog posts.

And when I publish the poem, it'll come directly to your email address. And remember to love God, love you, and love people.