Have you ever sat there and thought to yourself “I wish I had that life”? Maybe you haven’t thought those exact words, but at least something similar to it. I don’t know why but for women it is so easy for us to compare ourselves to everyone around us.
Maybe as women we have such an attraction to beauty that our eye gets stuck on those beautiful engagement pictures on Instagram. And then we can’t help but think, “Man, I wish I had that.”
If those thoughts have never crossed your mind, then I applaud you and you probably don’t need to read this post. But it seems like for me I always find myself in this dark pit where all I can do is hold my life up to someone else’s and see if they’re the same. Time and time again, God has to cast a net and reel me back in to reality.
We’ve always been told that we shouldn’t compare ourselves to everyone else, simply because we aren’t anyone else. Though that’s is true, I think the reasons can stem much deeper than ourselves. So, if any of you also struggle with comparison, here are just a few reasons to stop this comparison game.
You're telling God, His gifts aren’t Good Enough
I know this sounds harsh, but sometimes the truth is just that—harsh.
God has given each and every one of us certain gifts, whether that be physical, emotional, or spiritual. We were all created uniquely by Him.
So, if we sit back and wish for that other girl’s job, or her relationship, or that 4.0 GPA that she so effortlessly gets, we basically telling God, "What you have given me isn't good enough. I want that"
It’s like giving someone a present for their birthday and having them say, “Well, this is nice and all but it’s not really what I wanted.” You’d probably think that person was completely ungrateful and rude, as they rightly would be. The same can be said for our lives and every blessing in them.
When God gives us a gift we need to cherish it, even if we don’t see the use for it yet.
There’s that very common verse that we’ve all heard a million times. Well, let’s make it a million and one. “I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” Psalm 139:14. This is an everlasting truth that not only as women, but as people we need to hold fast to.
Another verse that speaks so plainly to our lives is Psalm 139:16: “Your eyes saw my unformed substance, in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.”
God knows the ins and outs of our lives.
Comparing Your Life can damage Your Relationships
I don’t want to state this as an absolute truth, because maybe this isn’t the same for everyone. But I know from my own experience that comparing your relationships to someone else's puts strain on what you currently have.
Whenever I would compare my relationships to other people's, I was filled with so much discontent for my own healthy relationships. Scrolling through Facebook and Instagram, I would see all these pictures of friends either getting engaged or getting married (when you reach your senior year of college, this will start happening left and right, you’ll see). And as a twenty-one-year-old who’s been dating the same guy for two years, I became impatient.
It’s taken me (and is still taking me) a long time to realize that I’m at a different stage in my life than anyone else. I’m not engaged or married. I don’t have a ton of friends, only a few good ones. I can’t always see eye to eye with my parents.
But you know what? That’s okay, because who I have now, is who God wants me to have.
God places specific people in our path for each season of life we’re in. If we wish that we had someone else, or something else, our current relationships would start to feel the pressure. Subconsciously, we begin expecting things from people that only God can provide for us. We end up wanting someone to act a certain way or do a certain thing, because we think it will make us happy. Time and time again, however, the Bible tells us not to rely on man because man is a sinful creature.
Instead, we should be relying on the only one who can truly satisfy us—the one who created us in the first place.
So What Now?
This game of comparison stems much deeper than just the old “you can’t compare yourself to someone else, because you aren’t them!” Yes, that’s true but comparison hurts more than just us. It hurts the people around us and—most importantly—it hurts God.
God has given us a life. We can either sit back and wish for someone else’s seemingly better life, or we can grab it by the reins and live it to our fullest potential. The decision is up to us.
Our time here on earth is short, so what are we going to do with it?
