Life Swap?!

Today’s prompt on the blog challenge was “If you could switch lives with someone for a day, who would it be? Why?”

I’m really sorry, but instead of answering that, I’m going to share with you to a guest post I wrote for thelifeinbetween, about finding your true identity and stop comparing your life with others. I don’t want to be a kill joy, but comparison is a big pitfall for me, so for that reason I’m not going to tempt myself by entertaining today’s above challenge.

Following on from my last post, I have been thinking about how the enemy uses our insecurities as ammunition against us. In any other ‘battle’ you would never hand your enemy ammunition, so we really need to work on our insecurities so we don’t hand over ammunition in spiritual battle! The Bible even tells us in Ephesians 4:27 [ESV] “and give no opportunity to the devil.”

How do we get rid of our insecurities – the ‘simple’ answer is to have our identities firmly secure in Christ. With our identity firmly rooted in Christ, we will stop trying to find our self-worth, joy, peace etc in other places. We will no longer rely upon the praise or love of others around us to make us feel valued, or huge numbers of “followers” and “likes” on social media to validate our day, a huge piece of chocolate cake to help comfort us etc… God’s love isn’t based on our performance, what we can do for him, how good that photo filter makes our lives look, how amazing our lasagna tastes or even how well we treat those around us. God IS love [1 John 4:8] HIS love is unconditional, steadfast, and there is nothing you or anyone else can do to separate you from it [Romans 8:35]! And I believe when we truly, deeply, understand how great, wide, deep, overwhelming and all encompassing God’s love for us is, and surrender to it, well that will be the happiest, most secure and most content any of us have ever felt. We will stop accepting the labels others put on us, boxes they put into us, stop being defined by the things they say about us, how they treat us or how they make us feel. Our insecurities will no longer rule over us, we will stand assured of our heavenly Father’s love and nothing will be able to stop us – because if God is for us, who can be against us?! [Romans 8:31, Psalm 118:6]

Having our identity secure in Christ is a huge concept, one that there are various books written about, many sermons have been preached upon, there’s even courses designed to help you to secure your identity in Christ! So, I am not going to attempt to tackle that today. [My top book recommendation on the topic however, is Ephesians. It is in fact your complete guide to having your identity rooted in Christ!]

Until we have our identity fully secured in Christ and are still fighting the insecurity fires, what can we do? Looking at my own life, I know the root of a lot of my insecurities stem from, well, not having fully nailed the above, I need to work on that myself! But apart from that, a lot of mine stem from comparison. Theodore Roosevelt said “Comparison is the thief of joy”. Some days I letter this out again and again… as much as I need to until it has sunk in. Because comparing ourselves to those around us, generally just leads to no good. It leads to discontentment, sadness, bitterness, jealousy, insecurity, pride and so many other bad things! The Bible warns us in James 3:16 [ESV] “For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice.” Or as they say in The Message translation: “Whenever you’re trying to look better than others or get the better of others, things fall apart and everyone ends up at the others’ throats.” Isn’t that the truth!

Comparing yourself to others is always risky. I think in this age social media makes this temptation to compare ourselves even greater… I am still not a fan of Facebook, I think it brings out the inner stalker and tempts you into comparison. (Or maybe that’s just me!) You look through your social media feed and see fabulous photos of people’s perfect lives… You can start to grade your day based on the life someone else is projecting. You start comparing your life against one that isn’t even that real!! This can happen by accident… Let me explain what I mean, I had a trip to IKEA not all that long ago with my family. You really don’t want to bump into me in IKEA if I am with my family! It’s not pretty!! I become a ball of stress, I get grumpy and short tempered. This trip was no different, and half way around I was losing the will to live and my gorgeous daughter and hubby were driving me nuts! I picked up the waste paper basket I’d put in the trolley, and I put it on my two year old daughter’s head because I didn’t want to listen to her whine any more! [Yes, I am a bad Mummy!] I decided to post “real life” on my instagram feed… I took a photo of her running around with a bin on her head and posted it with the comment “I reached my IKEA limit a good twenty minutes ago!” with a grumpy face… do you know what, so many people totally misread the situation and thought we were having a blast! [I think from the replies Tawni was the only one who read it and knew I was loosing my rag] One of my friends said to me the next two or three times she saw me, how she wished she could have been in IKEA that day because we were having such fun!! I couldn’t stress to her enough how much I had been stressed out by and not at all enjoyed the experience, but she still thinks from that post my family and I are the funniest people in IKEA!?

This comparison to a life that isn’t real, can also come from the fact you can edit out the bad when posting online! You don’t have to take a photo of the toddler temper tantrum, the burnt dinner, the argument with your sister, the mascara stained cheeks or the flabby tummy… no, you can suck it in, dress it up, slap on some make up and smile for all of two minutes, take a photo, post it to show the world you are okay and you are coping, even if you feel like you’re drowning. What you see on social media is not always the true story, or shall we say it’s not the full story.

My top tip for comparison via social media – If you find yourself following someone and you are comparing your life with theirs too much and it becomes an issue – UNFOLLOW THEM [Matt 5:29] it really can be that easy. Social media is a double edge sword, it can be great for up building it can also be really damaging. It’s about who you follow and what you choose to see. Proverbs 27:12 “Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another.” [ESV] We are influenced by those around us, the ones we surround ourselves with both in the real world and online. So choose carefully and wisely, these people can bring you down and dishearten you, or these people can lift you up and propel you forward in your faith. I did not find the online Christian community side of Instagram until I had already been on it two years. There is nothing wrong with following all sewing and cute Boston Terreiers, I enjoyed it, I got some good sewing tips. But now that I follow great Christian Accounts like @SheReadsTruth and @IllustratedFaith, and connected with people around the world who enjoy creative worship and share their faith daily – my feed is COMPLETELY transformed. If I’m having a bad day I can scroll no more than four pictures on my IG feed before I get some scripture posted from someone – and that is awesome! That’s the word infiltrating my life at every corner and I love it!!! So, I’m not saying pack up social media and live in a cave, quite the opposite, just be aware of who you are “following” and why!

But back to the point… As we compare ourselves to another it creates a barrier between that person and ourselves. A wall gets built up with many different bricks… Judgment. Either we don’t feel worthy of their friendship, or we judge them unworthy of ours. We feel ashamed of our life compared to theirs. We are jealous of something they have – a physical item, a relationship, a situation or opportunity they have. We feel threatened by their extrovert personality that wins people over whilst we sit in introvert silence. The possibilities of the word written on the brick is pretty endless, but as we compare our life to others we pick up another brick and add it to the wall between us. Comparison has got in the way of some potentially great relationships in my life and ruined some too. I’ve met women and based on a first impression, compared our lives and considered us to incompatible to be friends. I missed out on 18months of friendship with one of them most fantastic Christian women I know, because when we first met I compared the outward appearance of her life with my own and judged it. Wrongly! When we eventually started to hang out I was amazed at how similar we actually were and we shared some of the best theological discussions I’ve ever had, over what became our weekly lunch meet up. In another church I had a good female friend who I gelled with pretty instantly… we had babies at similar times, and then insecurities set in amongst the pregnancy hormones as I started to compare myself to her. What she was doing compared to what I was with our new babies. The odd comment from my husband, cemented those bricks between us. “She looks nice today, she seems to have lost her baby weight now, maybe you should ask how she has done it.” An innocent enough comment, which would spin me into a mass of comparison and unhappiness. I compared her “wonderful life” with my own quickly picking up bricks to build a wall of insecurity between us. And with this wall half built, I would then look for opportunities to compare our lives so I came out more positively “well, I at least never do that” and “she’s not as good at me at this”… Instead of a sterling prayer partner and friend, through comparison I created a rival. Me, myself, I did it!! Pretty soon there was a huge wall between us and the friendship was challenged beyond it’s strength for a time. All because of comparison. She had not changed at all, she was the same great woman she had always been, she remained gracious and patient with me even when she didn’t understand why I was pushing her away and stopped asking her for coffee. It was all down to me comparing our lives and building a wall because of insecurity. And do you know what, if I had talked to her about those insecurities, rather than building a wall with them – I am pretty sure she could have helped me! [Maybe I would have even learned how to shift my baby weight!]

As well as the classic comparison pit falls of celebrities, siblings, rivals and friends there is also the big one… Yourself! Don’t fall into the trap of comparing yourself to either past you or the you that “you want(ed) to be”. This can start quite simply and innocently… a glance at photos of yourself in your late teens / early twenties longingly wishing you were either “still that thin” or back in those “good old carefree student days” etc. A one off thought is not an issue, but if it develops into daydreams and starts consuming a lot of your thought time… I’m not going to beat about the bush here, it’s a waste of time! You cannot jump in that photo, and the more time you waste daydreaming about it the more unhappy and discontent you we feel in your current situation. That’s as much time as I am going to give that! The bigger ‘you comparison’ pitfall [in my mind at least] is the issue of comparing your current situation to where you thought you would be “by now”. The spouse you thought you’d find, job you thought you’d have, house you thought you’d be living in, kids you expected to have etc etc… Comparing your current situation to dreams you had – yes it can be a positive motivation if used right, but I suspect it’s more likely to rob you of the joy of your present situation. You don’t see what you have right now and celebrate it, because you’re too busy comparing it to what you expected to have around you right now. The comparison pulls you into dwelling on the past and breeds disappointments rather than celebrating (and living in) the now!! It is so easy to dream about your future when you’re young – what you think you’ll do for a living, where you will spend your days, who you will spend them with etc. And it is so easy to spend years with expectation for these events, which may never happen – for one reason of another. But just because your life doesn’t look like the things you dreamed about and scribbled down in a teenage diary doesn’t mean it’s a failure. I am not saying give up any hope of achieving the dreams of your youth – no way! If you’re still working at breaking a career in a hard field and want to, keep going! I’ll cheer you on! Never give up hope of finding love. Don’t settle for less that you deserve… What I am saying, is do not miss the joy in your life right now because you are waiting for your life to ‘really start’ when you reach that goal, meet that person, get that promotion etc etc.

All of these are some of the most likely places comparison is lurking waiting to jump out and create insecurity for the enemy to use. The enemy uses our insecurities as ammunition for more than just us too. He uses my insecurities to isolate and disarm me, but he can also use my insecurities to harm others. I have done this [how do you think my friend felt being on the receiving end of what I described above, because of my comparison, my insecurity, my judgments and the wall I built between us?!] and I have also been on the receiving end of this. It sucks. You know when you’re a kid at school and a girl is mean to you, you come home upset and your parents say “it’s just because she is jealous of you”? [Well, I remember both of my parents saying this to me as a kid!] I didn’t understand it at the time, I couldn’t see what that popular girl who was being mean had to be jealous about. Now I can see it, looking back – because sometimes when you know no different you take things for granted, and so cannot see what there is to be jealous of. Like a stable home life, something so ‘simple’ and ‘expected’ in my own childhood, but sadly this is not the case for many children. Looking around me as an adult, I can also see some of the most hurtful things that have been said to me by my ‘friends’ in recent years have been rooted in comparison and jealousy.

Oh yes, the enemy is really good at fooling us into becoming bricklayers. We build walls that stop friendships and community that could benefit us. And that’s not easy for me to say. I’m an introvert, I am not a people person. By ANY stretch of the imagination! I have been known to say such ungracious things as “community is overrated” [* hangs head in shame *] but it’s not. As much as I would rather be on my own than in a crowded room, community and being REAL, being vulnerable with trusted people and sharing life cannot to be overrated.

In the same way we can ‘filter out the bad’ when we post online we can in the real world. When people are in real community sharing life together, they get venerable and share real life – the good the bad and the ugly. But too often in life we hide behind a mask and make out all is okay. The sad thing is, often when we do that we deprive others and ourselves of support. For example, when I was a new Mum and used to go to coffee mornings… All the new Mums sat around at coffee morning looking lovely, saying they are fine…when actually several of them [including myself] were only just holding back the tears because we felt so overwhelmed by everything – we were exhausted and it took everything we had to get showered and dressed and make it to the coffee morning. But everyone sat around smiling and well presented, so you think they must all be coping better and it’s just you who feels like this BUT that is not the case. Isolation is a killer, friends. We compare our lives and based on what we see and we think we are alone, we are the only one struggling, so we internalize our feelings and spiral down. [hello postnatal depression!] When if we simply put ourselves out there and be vulnerable and say something which could be as simple as “gosh this is harder than I ever expected, is anyone else struggling with the lack of sleep!?” you’ll be amazed how many people jump in with “oh-my-word, YES!” they’re all desperate to say it, but too scared to be the first one to admit they’re finding it hard! Or they may even say something that can help, “well I was struggling with that, but we got past that stage by doing this…” So why don’t we stop comparing lives from the outside, start comparing notes TOGETHER on how to ace life! Compare notes on how to conquer fear, deal with nappy rash, get ahead in the business world, whatever!

Do not be an unwitting labourer for the enemy. Don’t be a blind brick layer, building up walls of insecurity. Pick up a sledgehammer for the kingdom and knock some down! Stop looking through a lens of comparison but look at those around you as God does. Do you think God compares his creations? I don’t! LOVE those around you, as God loves us.

1john 4:7

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.