ever be

Comparison is a nasty, often subtle, cruel game that we play. Men and women alike are duped into various editions of the game of “Me vs. Them”.

This detrimental game we play is rarely confined to childhood and adolescent years. Many of us carry comparisons well into adulthood — perhaps even throughout our entire lives. It can become a constant toxic mindset of seeing someone else’s grass through green, lush glasses, and failing to recognize that your own grass is just as green. Perhaps your lawn just needs some fertilizer. (Take that metaphor however you wish.)

Let me tell you from experience, it takes work to stop playing the game. Why? Because nearly everyone and everything around you invites you to play it. Media portrays ideals for body image, clothing, jobs, houses, vehicles, relationships, happiness, and so forth; and our self-gratification-saturated society will try to convince you that if you do not have what you see on a screen or billboard or magazine page, then you are missing an essential ingredient to happiness and fulfillment. Even if you manage to stay away from popular culture-generated ideals, you do not have to look far to see a friend or colleague or acquaintance who has something in their life that you seem to lack.

I could give you paragraphs of how this comparison game has played out in my head. Oh yes, I have experienced some emotional, spiritual, and mental casualties resulting from trying to be something that I am not.

The problem with — and, I submit, the solution to — this comparison game is that I can only ever be me. There are many things I will never be because those things are intrinsic to the make-up of another person. But there are many equally wonderful, beautiful, important things that I will ever be because they are God-given intrinsic threads in the fabric of me.

I may never be like ____________.
But I will ever be myself.
And as God’s grace has begun to wash the scales of comparison from my eyes, it is increasingly my desire
to ever be
who God made me
to be
to the best of my ability.

Never try to be him or her. You cannot.
But ever be the person that God made you to be.