We put a lot of pressure on ourselves to have everything together. We tend to compare our successes in parenting and life with others, trying to measure up to how we did compared to them.
We look at a mom who has lost all her baby weight just a week after having her baby and wonder why its been 2 years and we still have 30 extra pounds from our pregnancy. Or we see a mother shopping with her kids behaving so well while our kids are kicking and screaming because we wont let them have something at the store.
We compare and compare and compare.
I bet if we tracked it, we compare ourselves to other people at least a dozen times a day. And what we don’t realize is every time we compare ourselves to someone else, we devalue the person God made us to be. We aren’t meant to have everything together and be perfect. We wouldn’t need God if we did. God made us differently to face the different obstacles we all have in front of us. And we’re only seeing a small sliver of peoples lives. Maybe the lady at the store has kids that behave but you don’t see that her husband is abusive and beats her when he gets home at night, or yeah that mom shrunk back to her pre-baby weight but she’s on the verge of losing her house and filing for bankruptcy. Just as we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, we shouldn’t compare our lives with others. We don’t know the road they’ve walked or the struggles they’ve gone through.
We weren’t designed to be the same so why do we strive to be similar to others? Why do we feel like we have to compete and compare ourselves?
We learn to compare at a very young age. When we are younger its about the clothes we wear to school and things we have that we feel determine our worth with our friends. As we get older, the comparison starts to be about how well we do life or how many accomplishments we have.
For me growing up, I wanted so badly to fit in, that I would stress over what others had that I didn’t and I would miss out on opportunities of joy and happiness. With my mom being a single mom with 3 kids, we didn’t have a lot of money. She tried her best to give us the things we wanted, but the money wasn’t always there. I would get upset sometimes when she would buy me a shirt from Wal-Mart and not Abercrombie because I knew by comparison, I wouldn’t measure up to the standard I thought I needed to fit in. In reality, it was just a shirt and shouldn’t have been a factor to determining my worth.
Comparison is a battle to see whose truth – ours or His –
we will allow to rule our thoughts and actions– Nicki Koziarz
We decide what type of life we live. Do you want to compare your life to others and be disappointed and unfulfilled or do you want to live out the life filled with His joy and blessings? It’s our Choice, But if we let God guide our life and focus on His path instead of what others are doing, its far easier to be content with what God has blessed us with and enjoy the journey ahead of us.
And it’s not going to happen overnight. It’s a process that takes time. Lets choose to focus on What we have not what we don’t.
Perfection is not a cure for unhappiness– Steven Furtick
