Stop Comparing...

Is it just a woman thing that we always compare ourselves to other women? I’ve been doing it since as long as I can remember. Now as a mom I find myself doing the same thing about either my parenting or how my daughter is doing developmentally.

Is it this inherit thing that lives within all of us or is it something that we learn from the world around us? Either way it is not okay. Being a mother of a little girl has wrecked me. I look at her and I am overwhelmed by how perfect and beautiful she is. It kills me because due to the world we live in; she could easily forget and not believe that truth--unless I do something differently.

I think the hardest thing about becoming a parent is that it points out all the faults we have. Ha. I remember hearing a saying shortly after Olive was born that went something like, ‘You don’t know how selfish you are until you become a parent.’ Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE being a mom. I dreamed of this day for so long. 

I knew that God created me to be a mother and I am pretty sure everyone around me knew that too. So when it was a really hard transition and I had way more difficult days than I thought I would, I immediately thought something was wrong.

When my husband and I went out to eat about 6 weeks after our daughter was born and he asked me, ‘do you think you dealt with some depression after Olive was born?’ As hard as it was for me to confess it, I did. I remember crying so hard thinking about how I just wanted to sleep and just wanted Olive to stop crying. I remember being mad that I had to feed her so often and I lost all sense of independence. Now as someone who yearned to be a mom, I felt so incredibly guilty. I felt like I was not at all the person I thought I was or the person God created me to be.

To this day, I am so incredibly thankful for my faith. I am thankful that we serve a God that encounters us in our mess and depression to shine light on the truth. The truth was that I just had a baby and my body and hormones were all out of whack, I needed to give myself a break and not have such high expectations on myself. This is difficult, when all you hear from other moms and parents is that ‘everything is going to be worth it’, ‘Isn’t being a parent the best thing?’, ‘Oh I wish my kids were that little again.’ I don’t think I felt any of those things the first couple weeks Olive was in this world, but now I look at her 6.5 months later, close to crawling, talking up a storm, and very independent and sassy (like her mother) and I begin to see some of what people were saying.

We are unable to see past our current circumstances sometimes to see the good and greater things in store. Therefore when I get these feelings of comparing myself to other people or comparing my child to other children, I have to stop those lies from becoming my ‘truth’.

It is a daily struggle in this world of social media and constant updating and posting. Parents love showing off their kids, people always want to be right, so when I do things differently, I immediately think they are wrong.

God has really been working on my heart when it comes to this aspect of ‘His Truth’ vs. ‘the world’s truth’. I was having this great conversation with one of my sisters, my nephew is just 2.5 months younger than my Olive, and we were talking about becoming moms and what people say about us and our children. 

And God just spoke to me—He said, if you are going to believe what the world says about you and your child, your child will grow up believing that too, but if you choose to believe MY truth about who you are and who’s you are, than your child will grow up in that truth as well.

As I continue to work on myself and my own issues, I strive to work on them so that my little girl and any other future children I have, will grow up knowing the truth about who they are--that they were intentionally created by their Heavenly Father. That they are perfect in His eyes and that when they obey and serve their Father, He will bless them. I want to teach them how to protect themselves from the lies and deceitfulness of the Enemy-that there is POWER in the name of Jesus. I want them to grow up and be warriors for Christ, but it starts with me and my husband and how we live our lives.

As we grow closer to God, we will grow closer to each other. Becoming a mom has been one of the greatest challenges I have ever been given. Olive has taught me more in these last (short) 6 months than I never thought I would learn. I have begun to understand God’s love for His children more and more. 

As I sit at my dining room table writing this, Olive is playing in her jumper, just smiling and talking at me. She is like no one else, God created her in a perfect, unique way…and He created me that way also. Therefore, how can I compare myself to anyone—there’s no one else like me. 

God's Encounters

I always have my most profound moments in very ordinary situations, but unfortunately a lot of them come in the middle of the night. Usually around the time my daughter wakes me up with her random noises she is making because she just can’t find a comfortable position or she just wants her nuk put in but she is just too lazy to do it herself. Well she is only 6 months, so I’ll give her that. Anyway, this time it was shortly after 1:30 AM so I got up and put her nuk in and she fell right back to sleep while I climb back into bed wide awake. I laid awake in our dark room going over all the things that literally keep me up at night, ‘What am I going to do about my job?’, ‘How are we going to save up enough money for a down payment?’, ‘Why did I spend some much money after Olive was born?’,  ‘What can I do make our lives better?’….me, me, me. So as I was making myself overly anxious and totally worked up, googling ways to make more money at home and where to sell things as consignment, God encountered and just showed up in my world. I usually think of him sarcastically talking to me like, ‘So Jordyn, how’s your life going with you in control? You seem to think you can handle it better than I could?!’ 

But this time it was different, God encountered me with a gracious, humble whisper of ‘PRAY.’

 In that moment, as I opened my heart to God, I was overwhelmed with the peace that surpasses all understanding. All those worries that were keeping me up faded away and the presence of God poured over me. Now it was the excitement that came with that feeling that was keeping me up. So I grabbed my headphones and turned on worship music hoping to join my daughter in peaceful and restful sleep.

Well it is now 3:30 AM, so clearly I didn’t fall asleep, but rather I was compelled to write. I just can’t get over these encounters God has been having with me over the last month or so. I would say that he has been changing me since my daughter, Olive, was born in February, but like I said, the last month or so has been different. In my many years of following Christ, I have learned when God is preparing me for a new and exciting chapter in my life, and right now that is exactly where I am at.

This all started with God’s abrupt breaking of my heart. It was the day that gay marriage became legal in the US. Now I am not going to get into a discussion of gay marriage, but God used this scenario to break into my world and show me His truth. 

He opened my eyes to show me that for quite a long time, I was living and believing in a manipulated truth. A truth that the world had twisted into looking like it was from God but really was of the world.

 I realized our society has gotten further and further away from God’s absolute truth and has replaced it with a wishy washy version where everyone and everything is good and right.

I realized that I have been living my life based on the world’s standards. The standards that tell me how I have to look, how to dress and act in a certain way, make a certain amount of money to be happy, have a house that looks like a Pottery Barn ad, etc. I was beating myself up because I wasn’t meeting these so-called standards and truths. And I didn’t realize how badly these ‘truths’ were hurting me. I was trying to find myself in all the wrong things, spending money just because it felt good, putting my family in a position that was not healthy or good for anyone.

I cannot thank God enough for pulling me out of the miry clay and setting my ways straight. I realized that these ‘truths’ and ‘standards’ that the world has can be a lot easier than those that God has set in place for us.

But what I have come to love about following God’s truths is that the reward is SO much greater. 

God opened my eyes to eternity, the purpose for the sacrifices and struggle. He says that this world and the pain is temporary, but His love and grace are eternal. 2 Cor. 4: 18. ‘So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal’.

So as I set out on this journey that God has for me, one that seems full of lots of sacrifices and potential hardship, I remind myself that it doesn’t matter what type of house we live in, what our jobs are, how fancy our stuff is, for all these things are ‘seen’. What matters is my relationship with my Father and how that impacts my husband, my daughter, and those around me. How am I living my life that is impacting eternity, both mine and others? Am I doing what I can to further God’s kingdom in my own world?

I cannot be more excited for what God has in store for me. I look forward to begin a life living for the eternal and reaping the reward that God has for his beloved children. Now whether that reward is given here on earth or once I get to meet God face to face, it doesn’t matter because I am choosing to live for Him and live in His truth either way. My prayer is that you can see this truth as well and begin to live your life for your eternity too. It may be a difficult decision to make and the sacrifices may be great, but know that God rewards and blesses those who choose to obey and follow Him.

Let God encounter your life!