Replacing Comparison with Contentment

     

    At this point, it’s no secret that I struggle with everything I’ve written about for this blog: anger, resentment, guilt, busyness, envy… Part of my goal in starting this writing ministry was to dive into the Word of God so I could explore these personal struggles, figure out what God says about how to manage them, and then share what I am learning with others who may be struggling with the same thing. This has truly been an exercise in working on myself and letting others know they’re not alone in this messiness of pregnancy and motherhood after loss and infertility.

Today’s topic is one that has been a struggle for me literally my entire life:

Comparison.

Now, before I go further, I want to clarify something. You may already be thinking to yourself, “Meredith, you’ve talked about this before. I remember it!” Back in November, I did a post on replacing envy with gratitude, and I can definitely see why today’s topic seems like a repeat. Here’s where I’m making some distinctions:

First, in my previous piece, I was viewing envy through the lens of what I didn’t have versus what other people did have. Today, I will be viewing comparison through the lens of looking at what I do have as less than or not good enough compared to what others have.

Second, I see gratitude as the showing of thankfulness towards the person (in this case God) who bestowed a kindness, whereas contentment is a state of satisfaction with the kindness shown to us. Gratitude is an action while contentment is a state of mind.

Hopefully these qualifiers will help us see these distinctions in our own lives so we can navigate all these complicated responses more clearly.

So back to my life-long struggle with comparison. Whether it was with school work, my friends, or my extracurriculars, I was (and still am) constantly comparing myself to others. I think where this showed itself the strongest as a kid was at dance. I started dance classes when I was 3 years old and continued in this skill through a minor in college. I also taught dance for 7 years after graduating. That’s almost 30 years of my life.

In an activity like dance, it becomes increasingly difficult not to compare yourself to classmates and other dancers the longer you work at the skill. You can see which dancers are more flexible than you when you’re warming up. You can see which dancers can balance longer when you're doing combinations in the center of the floor. You can see which dancers complete more rotations in a turn when you’re going across the floor. I spent several years of my dance career performing in competitions, where dancers were literally compared to one another and ranked first to last.

This stayed with me through my whole career. In high school. In college. Even as a teacher, I compared my choreography to other teachers- and again took dancers to competitions where judges literally did that. And while it was most apparent in my dance career, comparison has plagued me in almost all areas of my life:

How does my teaching measure up to my colleagues at work?

How does my marriage measure up to other couples?

How does my house measure up to my friends’?

And today, it shows itself the most in my parenting: how does it measure up to people I see on social media? Out in public? To my friends?

Culture has done a really poor job of supporting moms in this struggle; in fact, much of what culture perpetuates in parenting pits moms against one another:

My friend uses formula and I breastfeed- time to fight.

My friend sleep trains and I respond at night- time to fight.

My friend chose baby-led weaning and I fed purees- time to fight.

The parenting culture of social media is constantly comparing one way of parenting to another, asking us to choose which one is better than the other, when in reality, if something works for your family, than it’s the best option for you regardless of what someone else does.

But in the beginning of motherhood, I was constantly, internally, comparing myself to other moms, and as a result, I was comparing my son to other babies. What a tough thing to put on a tiny baby, whether he had any clue it was happening or not.

I worried about his size and how much he was growing compared to other kids his age.

I wondered if his progress in his motor skills milestones was on track, or if he was behind compared to others.

I did the same thing with speech milestones, almost to an obsessive extent, tracking his word count to make sure he was within the range of “normal” compared to his peers.

I think this response is common for moms, but going through infertility and loss increases the intensity. I had wanted to be a mom for so long, and had tried so hard to finally have a baby. I was constantly afraid that, now that he was here, I would do something to impede his growth and development or that some issue would reveal itself through these comparisons with what was supposedly normal.

Do I think it’s important to make sure our kids are developing well and are showing signs of healthy growth? Absolutely. It’s our job as parents. But the difference here is when we obsess over what everyone else is doing in that arena and deem it as “normal.” Instead of caring for the blessing that God has given us and being content that the way they develop is exactly who God intended them to be.

Our anxieties can cause us to compare ourselves, our experiences, and our families to what others have and ultimately become dissatisfied because we don’t think what we have or what we are is measuring up. The question is: doesn’t measure up to what? Who dictates what that measure even is? If we can let go of that arbitrary, even imaginary, definition and find contentment in what God has given us, we will no longer feel the need to measure up.

The first time we see a picture of what it means to be content comes in Genesis 25. This story is about the family of Isaac, the only son of Abraham. Isaac marries Rebekah at 40 and then they struggle with infertility for 20 years, so Isaac prays to God. He answers and Rebekah becomes pregnant with twins. When the babies are born, the oldest, Esau, is red and hairy, while the younger, Jacob, comes out grasping his brother’s heel. Then Scripture tells us, “The boys grew up, and Esau became a skillful hunter, a man of the open country, while Jacob was content to stay at home among the tents” (Genesis 25:27 NIV).

The Hebrew word used here means, “remain, abide, stay, have one’s abode.” It suggests a feeling of home to me, and I know there is nowhere I am more content than at my own house. This passage shows me two brothers who are very different and at least one of them- Jacob- is totally at home with those differences. It doesn’t matter to him that Esau is so skillful as a hunter and he’s not. It doesn’t matter to him that Esau feels comfortable in the open country and he doesn’t. He is totally happy with the way God created him and doesn’t waste his time comparing these things between him and his brother.

I find it ironic- and educational- that God paints this picture for us right in the middle of setting up a story that will eventually be fraught with comparison. Before the twins are born, Rebekah was experiencing great discomfort in her pregnancy because the boys were jostling in her belly. She cried out to God, asking why this was happening, and He responded, “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you will be separated; one people will be stronger than the other, and the older will serve the younger” (Genesis 25:23 NIV). This prophecy sets up a struggle that will bloom between Esau and Jacob. Although he is born second, God intends for Jacob to be the one through whom the nation of Israel will grow. And although this promise from God guarantees this will happen for Jacob, he eventually takes matters into his own hands by stealing Esau’s birthright as the firstborn, which we’ve looked at in another blog post.

There’s one additional line that jumps out to me in this passage, which comes at the end of this section, after the story has told us that Jacob is content with his place in life: “Isaac, who had a taste for wild game, loved Esau, but Rebekah loved Jacob” (Genesis 25:28 NIV). Esau and Jacob, who are perfectly content in their roles, will soon see that their parents are comparing them in order to determine who they love best. It’s no wonder they end up pitted against one another and in the conflict we see later in Scripture.

This is hopefully no surprise to you, but our kids pick up on everything. They know more of what’s going on around them than we think they do. If we spend our energy worrying about comparison, we set our kids up to see this as a model and eventually do the same. Even worse, we run the risk of falling into the trap that Isaac and Rebekah fell into- our kids will see us actually compare them to others, which will only have negative consequences on their mental health. We need to embrace the role God has for us and our kids, not only for our own sake but for our kids, too.

Paul is another great example of contentment. Through the epistles, he discusses the great struggles he endured throughout his ministry. When writing to the Philippians, he states, “I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want” (Philippians 4:11-12 NIV). The Greek word here means “sufficient for one’s self, strong enough to need no aid, independent of external circumstances, contented with one’s means though the slenderest.”

What a picture! Regardless of Paul’s circumstances, he finds them to be sufficient for him. He is not impacted by external circumstances, but is content even when his means are minimal. All of this is possible because he’s strong enough to need no aid from man. Where does he get this strength? “I can do all this through him who gives me strength” (Philippians 4:13 NIV).

God does not expect us to find contentment in our own strength. He knows our human flesh is going to get dissatisfied easily, especially when we start looking around at what everyone else has. He wants us to turn to Him for this strength, to seek Him for the contentment we need to stop comparing ourselves- and our kids- to others.

The author of Hebrews enforces this idea: “Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee” (Hebrew 13:5 KJV). The NIV translates this verse by saying we should be free from the love of money, but I like how this translation, removing covetousness from our conversations, broadens the application to any of the ways that we get stuck in comparison. We can find the ability to stop coveting what others have because we can have confidence in the fact that God is not going to leave us high and dry. He’s not going to forget about what we need to get through this life. While we may not need aid from man, we can rely on aid from Him. So if that thing we’re comparing is lacking in our lives, it’s because God has determined we don’t need it.

When we replace comparison with contentment, it allows us to experience joy with the ways things are for us. We can see the beauty in the roles God has for us and our families, knowing that God intended our lives to be this way. We don’t have to focus on how we don’t measure up, and we don’t have to strive to be like those around us. We can rejoice with others in the best that God has provided to them and be satisfied that God has provided the very best for us, too.