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.