Breaking the Cycle of Comparing Yourself With Others

God has brought me far.

Some may think I need to be farther along on this path of healing and hoping and growing.

But I believe I am.

I’m much farther along than I was before my life changed quickly and irrevocably.

I’m much farther along than the days before …

Before … after

So much is measured by those words.

Before

After

It’s the “…” that shook me to the core, but it’s the words that sometimes seem to define me.

It’s OK I think.

To be here … in the after place still pondering the before at times.

It’s OK to not think a whole lot about the “…” at this point.

That has been done and dealt with and forgiven and it is now in the healing stages.

But now I’m looking at the me before and the me after.

And, although there is so very much I would change about me, there are some ways that God has done beautiful things in me and in my life.

This morning God brought it to mind in a rather odd way.

Last night I hit my head so hard and caused such damage a woman near me actually yelled out … it made me laugh in my pain. It was one of those head wounds that swells to the size of a golf ball immediately and pours blood all over the place. It was quite dramatic … I mean if you are gonna do something, do it well, right?

Anywho.

It made for completely changed evening plans as I decided to sit still on the sofa … me and my throbbing head.

But God was so gracious and I had a wonderful conversation with my oldest daughter into the wee hours of the morning. Totally worth the lost sleep.

What I didn’t know was that my silly old lab would need me in the middle of the night and my littlest girls would each have bad dreams, and every time I rolled over my head would feel like I was rolling on a cinder block rather than a pillow.

Not a restful night at all, but amazingly I feel OK this morning. God is gracious.

Right after I turned off my alarm, I saw that I had a comment on my blog. I hit the button and read it.

Ouch.

Double ouch.

I have often felt compelled to accept those difficult comments … put them up and try to respond graciously.

But today I don’t know if I want to … not because I’m angry or hurt, but because I don’t believe it is edifying to anyone or helpful or even kind.

It did bring to mind something God has been doing in my life over the past several years though. Even something that He has revealed to me recently.

This comment was about comparison and name-calling … or maybe I should say “negative categorizing.”

I haven’t had a problem with calling others names, but oh have I had a problem with comparison.

Both comparisons that make me feel worse and comparisons that make me feel better … at least for a bit.

Recently I heard someone say that he was going to be out of town for the weekend and his wife was going to be a single parent for the weekend.