Amidst my studies and wrapping up my final projects and papers I decided to take a little writing break. I wanted to focus on something that many people seem to struggle with, myself included. That struggle is what I like to call the comparison game. Whether you want to believe it or not the comparison game is something we are all guilty of. It is the world we live in, but what we don't realize is by playing this game we aren't allowing ourselves to be the person God intended us to be.
How often have you stood in front of the mirror and judged yourself? Wishing you could have a smaller nose, bigger eyes, longer hair, straight teeth, a slimmer body, etc. Typically the reason why these thoughts even cross our minds is because the world has conditioned us to believe that beauty looks a certain way and in order to be worth anything, accepted, or liked we must be what the world says is beautiful. I'm definitely guilty of it. I often find myself seeing the beauty, inside and out, of everyone else, but I fail to see it in myself. This happens because I am comparing myself to others. I want to be as smart as the girl who gets all A's, as pretty as the girl who constantly gets recognized, as confident as the class clown, or as talented as the best musician I know. By doing this sort of thing we are feeding ourselves these lies that we aren't worth anything and we eventually begin to believe those lies. These lies turn us into a person we aren't meant to be. We lose our uniqueness when we want to be like everyone else. And you know what? Those people we make comparisons too, who seem to lead a perfect life, they have flaws too! We all do and that's okay because that is how God intended it to be. Our flaws give us an edge or a character trait that others might not have. Our flaws separate us in a good way and when it is all said and done it doesn't matter what we looked like, how wealthy we were, or how talented we appeared to be.
The comparison game often begins with this ideal sense of what beauty looks like, mainly in the physical sense. I struggled with this for a long time until I recently came across something that struck a chord with me. I was reading a book titled Who Calls Me Beautiful and in it the author talks about the women in the bible who were seen as, or mentioned as, beautiful. It is just that though, they were mentioned as being beautiful, but we don't actually know what they truly looked like. Their looks aren't actually described at all. We take our own ideal of beauty and what the world has told us is beautiful to imagine what these women in the bible look like. For all we know they could be short and stalky, tall and lanky, average height with blue eyes and brown hair, etc, you get the point, but regardless all of them were beautiful in the eyes of God. Many of them were considered beautiful, not because of what they looked like, but because of who they were inside. Who are we to decide what is considered beautiful and what isn't? There should be no ideal standard of what beauty looks like. It is so much more than the outer physical appearance, but is about what comes from the heart and God is the only one who can truly define beauty and to him each and everyone of us are beautiful.
My hope and wish is that one day this comparison game will end and that many, if not all, of us can reach the understanding and depth of our worth from how God created us to be and not what the world tells us we should be. I'm going to be honest, I definitely need to take some of my own advice, but I can tell you I have already started taking steps in the right direction. It took a long time and a lot of different realizations to get me where I am when it comes to self love. Not every day is easy and I still find myself in the comparison game from time to time. It becomes a habit and an innate tendency that can be hard to get rid of. I challenge you, the next time you find yourself trying to compare yourself to others, ask yourself what am I good at, even if it isn't perfect, and what makes me beautiful. Just remember that no matter what you are beautiful in the eyes of God, made in his image. To me there is nothing more beautiful than that.
XOXO
Sarah
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