The comparison game. I think this is women's biggest downfall.
I didn't think it was mine, but I am learning differently.
That thing that wells up inside me when I feel like someone is trying to do better than me.
feed their kids better. feed themselves better. better activities. more reading. less tv.
you know what I am talking about?
My heart leans into the critical. Some folks start feeling insecure, I just get angry.
Why does everyone think they are so damn awesome? Don't they see how BAD they are making people feel (ahem, me?)
And then I think about my own life, my own words, my own journey?
We share these tidbits of our lives, I think, because of the pride (not bad pride) that wells up in us we actually start making strides for good.
When God gives us what we need to be who we want to be.
And that's what I am fighting for today.
I don't know how we fight for these things without coming across judge-y?
I don't know how to receive someone else's victory without feeling condemned?
I think about my own spiritual journey into the Catholic church. How do I write among my protestant friends without sounding like I found what was right, and everything before was wrong?
But I am seeing, that one could feel this way? I hate that.
I hate it because I don't feel that way.
And so, I guess I want to say here, 8 years later on this little blog, that we are all in this together.
I am not better. Being Catholic is not better. I drink Coke sometimes. and eat too many cookies.
I care about health, but I am not always healthy.
at the end of the day, I am just a girl, in need of God's love, and begging the world to find some mercy in the way we treat and write and talk about one another.
I think life must have been easier, in some respects, when you lived on a farm, and didn't know what all 429 of your friends were doing, reading, vacationing, and eating at any given point.
thank you, facebook, for officially making us all generally unbearable:)
4 comments :
for serious!
Brooke, this resonates with me for sure. David and I were talking last night about improving ourselves and striving for what we haven't yet achieved. We agreed that with every move forward, there is fallout. We can't move forward without making mistakes, having bad attitudes, sinning, hurting others. But we have to just repent and keep moving and we'll eventually come to a spot where we can handle working on ourselves without making so many mistakes. Until the next time Christ calls us deeper, broader, better, up.
YES. Struggling in this with you. Thank you for voicing the thoughts that swirl around in my mind, even today as I had a friend pull out her own fresh veggies out of her bag at our lunch at Chick-fil-A....
Amen and amen. I'm tempted this week to design a t-shirt that says "I'm doing the best I can, and I'm smarter than you think. But in many ways I'm still broken and always in the market for mercy and grace." The ways mamas judge each other just gets more and more complex. It's been a week of taking thoughts captive, asking God to remind me whose I am, and reminding myself that I really am a good mama.
Even if I bought apple juice on sale this week and another mama thought that was horrid and took the time to tell me. The next time she saw me, I was buying two kinds of chocolate chips in the bulk section. I wanted to tell her that we eat sugar for breakfast and just skip the cereal entirely after that event. But she might have taken me seriously.
We mamas need each other. It's a real shame that we hurt each other so often. Thanks for posting this. I feel like I got to dive into a bucket of grace. =)
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