Constant Comparisons and Cutthroat Competition Crushes Compassion

My last post left me unsatisfied. Fasting from "snipping" or "giving my opinion"isn't a bad idea. I love how Catherine Marshall wrote about her day of fasting from giving her opinion--she didn't know how 24 hours of holding her tongue could be so hard! Nonetheless, I think I want to dig deeper. I started listing reasons I would have for responding like the women did to the mother of a two-year-old.

1) I truly think the mother of the teenagers was trying to be loving and kind. I imagine her hope was that moms of little ones may have it tough now, but maybe that means their tough days will be during the years when you can still pick the children up, hug them, and put them to bed.

2) Hopefully, the mother of teenagers was not saying, "You may think it's rough now, but, boy oh boy, wait until they hit the teenage years!" I am fairly sure that something similar has passed through my lips. Now, as I look at a statement like that, I am really competing for whose life is the most challenging. I would like to give myself the benefit of the doubt and say I am commiserating with the moms of young children. Essentially I am trying to say that I understand their pain because I am in pain, too. It is obvious from the harsh responses of the moms of babies that they were not comforted. I need to learn from their responses because I want to be a person whose words bring love and light, not cause harm.

How often I play the comparison game or the competition game. Why? Sometimes I use my challenges because I feel I am being pushed to do something I just can not or do not want to do. Instead of looking to Jesus for direction in my life and simply letting my "yes" be "yes" and my "no" be "no," I compete for whose life is busiest.

Or, I compare my life with someone else's and I look for all the reasons I fall short when I need to listen to the Holy Spirit, who does not use words such as, "Girl, you just fell short. What's wrong with you anyway?" In defensive mode, I spell out how challenging my life is, which it very probably is, because life is tough, but this means the other person is going through tough times as well. I can turn to Jesus to speak words of love and compassion.

I love how Frank Laubach writes in his letter (9 March 1930): "...His question is, 'How far will this man and that woman allow me to carry this hour?'" 

"But how 'practical' is this for the average man? It seems to me now that yonder plowman could be like Calixto Sanidad, when he was a lonesome and mistreated plowboy, 'with my eyes on the furrow, and my hands on the lines, but my thoughts on God.' The carpenter could be as full of God as was Christ when he drove nails...Some hour spent by some night watchman might be the most glorious ever lived on earth. God is not through yet. He is breaking through.."

Wherever I am at: as the pregnant mom with 3 children at home whose "water" broke at the same time that the toilet overflowed (yes, it really did happen), as the mom of 4 teenagers pushing the boundaries while the husband is working overtime hours, as the woman who loses her job and her community when a new boss streamlines the company, in all these my eyes can be on Jesus who keeps me in His peace and His grace as I turn to Him moment by moment. And, when I forget, He lovingly calls me back.

The photo in this post was taken many years ago when my boys were young and decided to change pajamas with one another. I find that I often try to "change clothes with someone else." Not physically of course, but I compare my life to someone else's. I look at their "outsides" and think if they had my life, then...

I put "my clothes" onto them.

Or, I think if I had their lives -- I put on "their clothes" -- then...

Somehow I miss the fact that I end up looking like my boys do in this picture.

I have no need to compete; I have no need to compare. I am His Beloved. He calls me by name; I am His. My identity is in Him. He sustains me as I practice slowing my mind down long enough to hear Him speak so lovingly to me. Often that means not rushing my steps, not rushing my hands, not rushing my words -- that conscious practice of slowing down when it is possible makes it easier to hear His voice when life seems impossible...or when a compassionate word is needed.