How Comparison Is Holding You Back

Growing up, I thought that there were two ways that

God could speak to you. One was if you were

alone and you were either praying or reading your Bible,

and two was if you were listening to a sermon.

But you know, as I have.

Grown in my faith, and as I have began to

notice God all around me in the small parts of

my day, I realize that if I surround myself with

the right people, God can speak to.

Me through them.

Now this is not like a like, don't go all.

Crazy on this.

This is not like a Holly, I have a word

from the Lord for you.

Usually that doesn't come from a friend.

Usually that just comes from like some random person.

Okay, I'm talking.

About when my friends God around me one day and

we were in a meeting and they started saying, Holly,

you need to write a Bible study for the way

of our church about being.

A godly wife.

That was God speaking to me through them. When I

was talking to a friend one time and over a

crying baby who told me that I was a good mom,

that's God speaking to me through my friend. When a

friend told me not to give up, or a friend

who is just there physically present listening to me. Process

through a very difficult situation. If you don't think that

that's God in all of those times in your life,

you've got God all wrong. These women were not reading

their Bible and praying when the Angel appeared to them.

They were together doing something. They were there and the

angel asked.

Them a question.

I think this is such an interesting question. The angel said,

why do you look for the living among the dead.

This got me thinking about dead places in our friendships,

places where we can go that harm our relationship rather

than help them. One of those dead places is when

we compare. Comparison is a funny thing because it comes

in two ways, because you can think I don't compare,

but you might be comparing. Let me let me explain this. Okay,

So maybe you're on social media. Maybe you don't have

social media, but.

I'm assuming most of you do.

And you're scrolling through and you see one of your

friends and she makes these beautiful lunches and those little

lunch boxes that like have all the little compartments, and

you think, oh my gosh, I'm.

A terrible mom because.

I don't do the little grapes and crackers thing. In

all honesty, I'm just gonna tell you guys. I tried

that the little box thing, and we kept forgetting about

the boxes and they would stay in my kids' backpacks

and they get so disgusting and moldy.

That was not for me.

We're more like a brown bag kind of family.

We have bunchboxes too, but the.

Other So, the one side of comparison is I'm not

as good as her, right, But the other side of

comparison is, you know, have you ever thought, well, at

least I don't feed my kid's fast food. I mean,

we go to Chick fil A in a pinch, but

we would never go to McDonald's. Since I'm talking about comparison,

I have to tell you a funny story. It doesn't

really have that much to do with anything, but anyway,

I was working out on my Peloton bike that my

husband got me for Christmas. And if you don't know

what a peloton bike is, it's basically a death machine

for your home and also known as a stationary bike

with this like cool like monitor where you can actually

take spin classes and so on this particular day, I

was really going for it.

Now, I'm gonna be honest with you.

There are a lot of days that I get on

there and I don't exactly do what the instructor tells

me to do, you know. She says turn it up,

and I'm like, eh, I'm not ready.

And but this day I.

Was trying to beat my best, you know, and so

the instructor had told me to add one or two

to my resistance so many times that my legs are

just like churning through mud. Okay, And I did not

I did not look pretty. I did not look like

this when I was on my bike.

Okay.

I paid someone to do my makeup tonight, just so

you know.

I was.

I was pouring sweat and I don't really even sweat

that much.

I was pouring sweat, and.

My glasses were like kept sliding down my nose because

I'm like hunched over, you know, and noep pushing my

glasses up. And my heart rate, I am, this is

the truth. My heart rate was one seventy seven, which

I think is like just shy of a heart attack.

And so of course the instructor has barely broken the.

Sweat and she's smiling like her fourth class that she's

taught of the.

Day, and so Graham comes up.

Graham's my ten year old son, and yeah, I'm I'm

just you know, dying. And Graham looks at the monitor

and he looks at me, and he says, why don't

you look like her?

Because compared theon is.

A dead place and I am not a spin instructor.

So we compare, and then that can sometimes lead us

to compete. Have you ever been around someone whose story

is always better or worse than yours. I had lunch

with a friend the other day who has been through

a really tough separation with her husband, and she said

that the worst thing throughout her separation was when people

would try to comfort her by telling them how much

worse their situation was than hers. We compare, and we compete,

and then sometimes we get so tough, hired of playing

this game that we just check out. Now, this is

a really dead place to be. I mean, I know

dead is dead, but checking out.

Is when you have just you've just given up.

Maybe you were betrayed by a friend you told her

something in confidence and it got back to you, or

maybe you were let down just one too many times

from some of the women in your life and you

just decided I've been hurt enough, and well, you know

what I have my husband, and he will just have

to be good enough, or or maybe I'll just throw

myself into my work or to my kids, And then

we wonder why we're lonely. Do we have to risk

having relationships with other when we have relationships with other women,

Absolutely we do. Could we get hurt, Absolutely you could

get hurt. But if you build your support system right,

the reward is so much greater than the risks. The

other dead place that is so dangerous is when we

begin to compose. We live in a world where it

has never been more easy to pretend that everything is okay.

And we can even have we can even create.

An entire persona that no one ever has to know

the truth. No one ever has to know that I

have an anger issue, no one ever has to know

that I have an eating disorder, or no one ever

has to know that my marriage is falling apart.

No, this is not how it has to be.

We do not have to compose, because your support system

must be founded on honesty. If you're going to build

this thing right, you've got to build it on honesty.

Look at these verses in First John, First John, chapter one.

It says, this is the message that we have heard

from him and declare to you God is light, and

in him there is no darkness at all. If we

claim to have fellowship with Him and yet walk in

the darkness, we lie and we do not live out

the truth. But if we walk in the light as

He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another,

and the blood of Jesus his Son purifies us from

all sin. Did you catch that if we walk in

the light as He is in the light, we have

what fellowship? We have fellowship with one another? How can

I support you through your struggle with infertility if I

don't even know that you're wanting to have a baby,

that you're trying to have a baby. How can I

pray for you in your marriage if you're always acting

like it's perfect and you know what see isn't just

about the things that are going wrong in your life,

but sometimes if you don't share, like if something good happens,

so how could I even celebrate with you? If your

child has a good behavior report, if I didn't know

that he was even not doing good in school. My

friend Julie says, I love this line. She says, shame

like mold grows in the dark.

When you bring your thank you, when you bring your

life into the light with the right people, I guarantee

you that you will not only find love, but you

will find hope, and you will find help, and you

will find fellowship. If you surround yourself with the right people,

your relationships will not only deepen with honesty.

They'll grow stronger.

But you see, the enemy wants you to think that

it will make you look weak, and he wants you

to think that if you're honest, it's going to weaken

your relationships. But it's not true. A couple of weeks ago,

I was talking with one of my friends who has

been walking through a difficult season in her marriage for

over a year, and we were reflecting on how timely

her relationship was with this other girl. Let's call the

other girl Lisa. So Lisa had been through a similar experience,

and Lisa had opened up to her E group and

shared about a struggle that she.

And her husband were going through.

This was eighteen months before my friend went through her struggle,

and she told me that when she received that news

on that day, you know that day, like, if you

live long enough, everyone will have that day. That day

they got the call from the doctor, or that day

when their husband confessed to them, or that day when

you lost your job. Okay, so she was in that

day and she said, I don't know what I would

have done or who I would have called if Lisa

hadn't shared her story in our group.

You see.

And it was eighteen months later that she remembered, this

is the person that I need to talk to if

we walk in the light as he is in the light,

bring it out into the light.

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