In my short 3 years as a mom, I have found that one of my struggles is against an ugly monster called Comparison. Especially since we live in an Internet world, we se so many little snippets of people’s lives. But what I often forget, is those snippets are carefully chosen, pieces of a life that the person deems worth sharing. The beautiful pictures, the happy moments. Not the bad stuff. And apparently, I have a hard time keeping that in mind, because I often look at these things and think, “man, I suck”. I am not doing this, or feeding my kid that (side note: does anyone else feel an odd guilt about not being gluten free? I have no reason to stop feeding myself or my kids gluten….but everyone else it doing it...I’m weird), or taking them there, or making that for them, or, I don’t look like that, or have those clothes, etc, etc. It’s easy for me to get sucked in to that mentality.
So, if you are ever reading this and ever feel that little feeling of the comparison monster crawling up your leg….DON’T. And, lucky for you, I have a little illustration to prove my point.
I hate cleaning the bathrooms. Of all unpleasant mother tasks, it is probably my least favorite. I hate cleaning toilets, I hate cleaning showers, and bathroom floors, and most of all, I hate cleaning showers. As a result of my hate, I put it off as long as possible. So long, in fact, that there is ALWAYS mold involved in me and Justin’s shower before it gets clean. (2 disclaimers: One: There is never mold in the kids’ tub…I do drawn the line somewhere. Two: Do you know how hard it is to clean the bathroom when you have two kids? Thatcher only takes one nap, Thad doesn’t nap….THEY ARE ALWAYS AROUND!)
Anyway, yesterday was said day of terror….the day I had to bite the bullet and clean our bathroom. The mold-less area on the floor of our shower was getting smaller and smaller (do you think less of me yet?). So, during Thatcher’s nap, I plugged my other child into Looney Tunes on my Kindle, sitting on the floor of my room (how about now?) and cleaned our bathroom. As usual, it sucked. The sucking reached a whole new level when I realized a horrible fact. There is a groove under the edge of the shower door. (dum dum DUMM). I had never known of this groves presence, much less EVER cleaned it. And it is a deep groove. A groove FULL of chunky, slimy, brown mold. I almost died. It was honestly one of the most horribly disgusting things I have ever seen in my life. It will haunt me at night. It was that bad.
So, if you EVER look at any of my silly little projects, and feel self doubt. Remember: at least you keep your home sanitary. Kudos to you. I make light of the whole comparison thing, but it is really something that I struggle with. I feel like parenting comes really naturally to some people, and I feel like it does not come naturally to me AT ALL, and that always makes me harbor feelings of self doubt. I have been reading a daily devotional by Rick Warren (author of Purpose Driven Life) and Monday’s reading made a good point. It said this:
“When you compare your abilities to others, you begin to doubt God’s abilities. Instead of looking to God, you start looking at everybody else. You think these other people have more talent, more abilities, more education, more experience. The moment you start comparing yourself to them, you are going to be filled with self-doubt. The Bible says, “It is dumb to compare yourself to other people”. (2 Corinthians 10:12 Msg) God doesn’t want you comparing yourself to anybody else. He created you to be unique. He wants you to be you.”
