Don’t Compare Yourselves to Others
With social media so prevalent and overwhelming, it’s hard not for young women to become discouraged and discontent with their lives. They see women making videos of their perfectly clean and decorated homes, making meals from scratch, having big and bountiful gardens, homeschooling their well behaved children, and making a ton of money from the business they run out of their homes. I want to tell you all that no one can do everything perfectly. It’s impossible.
Don’t believe everything you see and don’t compare your lives with these women. “For we dare not make ourselves of the number, or compare ourselves with some that commend themselves: but they measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise” (2 Corinthians 10:12). Yes, it seems the picture of the Proverbs 31 woman accomplished all of these things perfectly but remember, this woman was not a real life woman. She was given as an example to her son what to look for in a wife. It’s a picture of her entire life.
Any woman with a bundle of small children can’t expect to do everything. Her focus needs to be upon her husband, her children, and her home. These are the ministries the Lord has given to her. He hasn’t given her the ministry of making money, having a perfectly decorated home, or making amazing videos. There may come a time in her life when she can make a bit of money from home, decorate her home to her liking, and make videos to encourage women to love being home but when her children are young is not the time. The children need their mother and the husband needs his wife!
The only thing you need to be comparing yourselves to, women, is the word of God and how He wants you to live. He wants you to be sober, chaste, lovers of your husband and children, good, discreet, keepers at home, submissive to your husbands, modest, shamefaced with meek and quiet spirits, and quiet in the churches while learning with all subjection. This is His perfect will for you! Focus upon these instead of how other women are living, what they have (financially and materially), the marriages and children they have, and the places they go.
We ALL will go through sufferings and trials in this life no matter how great our lives look on the outside. We are all human and struggle. We grieve and mourn. We experience loss and heartbreak BUT we know that God is in control of our lives so we live our lives for Him and are thankful for all of His blessings, what He’s done for us, and what He has planned for us. We live in a wicked and fallen world but we are simply strangers and pilgrims passing through (1 Peter 2:11) so live with eternity always in your vision.
But godliness with contentment is great gain.
1 Timothy 6:6
17 thoughts on “Don’t Compare Yourselves to Others”
Amen! This was right on time for me. A mother of littles, young wife in year 4 of marriage, aspiring homeschool mama. I keep praying for some way to help contribute to the family finances as they are rather tight, but this encouraged me to keep on carrying on doing my job as God has designed. The rest will come in time if that be His will.
I thank God for all that you do so courageously in a crooked and perverse time. May God continue to prosper your teaching of the young women.
Thank you so much Lori. I read what you have to say every morning and it helps me so much. I am a first generation Christian with no Godly guidance from the elder women in my family (all feminists). Words cannot express how thankful I am to have your videos and website. You are encouraging us younger women and now we know what to do when our children grow up and we have the time and wisdom to do it for others. Thank you. I love how everything you teach lines up perfectly with what I read in my Bible for myself.
Wise words! Especially now the competition is who can be the most radical and unfeminine!
Thank you! I needed this reminder this morning. I have four little boys, 2 months to 6, and right now taking care of them, the house, and my husband is all I can handle. I don’t even have time to answer text messages some days it seems, so I only answer the important ones right away. Makes me feel encouraged that it is all I should be focused on right now.
Thanks Lori and May God bless you
Thank you, Lauren! The burden of making money should not be on young mothers. God never commands young women to make money. He has way more important work for you to do: raise godly offspring! Learn to live within your husband’s income and be content. You are doing a good work!
Thank you, Kate! I strive very hard to stay true to God’s Word since His ways are far superior to my ways. I have tasted of His ways now for many years and they are good, as many others like you are finding out. You are starting a brand new godly generation!
You are doing a mighty work, Rebecca. Here is something that was shared in the chat room this morning that will encourage you!
“The final fact which fixes this is a sufficiently plain one. Supposing it to be conceded that humanity has acted at least not unnaturally in dividing itself into two halves, respectively typifying the ideals of special talent and of general sanity (since they are genuinely difficult to combine completely in one mind), it is not difficult to see why the line of cleavage has followed the line of sex, or why the female became the emblem of the universal and the male of the special and superior.
“Two gigantic facts of nature fixed it thus: first, that the woman who frequently fulfilled her functions literally could not be specially prominent in experiment and adventure; and second, that the same natural operation surrounded her with very young children, who require to be taught not so much anything as everything. Babies need not to be taught a trade, but to be introduced to a world. To put the matter shortly, woman is generally shut up in a house with a human being at the time when he asks all the questions that there are, and some that there aren’t. It would be odd if she retained any of the narrowness of a specialist.
“Now if anyone says that this duty of general enlightenment (even when freed from modern rules and hours, and exercised more spontaneously by a more protected person) is in itself too exacting and oppressive, I can understand the view. I can only answer that our race has thought it worth while to cast this burden on women in order to keep common-sense in the world. But when people begin to talk about this domestic duty as not merely difficult but trivial and dreary, I simply give up the question. For I cannot with the utmost energy of imagination conceive what they mean. When domesticity, for instance, is called drudgery, all the difficulty arises from a double meaning in the word. If drudgery only means dreadfully hard work, I admit the woman drudges in the home, as a man might drudge at the Cathedral of Amiens or drudge behind a gun at Trafalgar. But if it means that the hard work is more heavy because it is trifling, colorless and of small import to the soul, then as I say, I give it up; I do not know what the words mean.
“To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labors and holidays; to be Whiteley within a certain area, providing toys, boots, sheets, cakes and books, to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene; I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it. How can it be a large career to tell other people’s children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one’s own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman’s function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness.”
-G. K. Chesterton
Great post! Society needs more women to think this way. Competition is in direct opposition to femininity, especially now when the competition is who can be the most masculine and how fast can we rob men of all their power.
If she nourishes children, if she is hospitable, if she washes the saints’ feet, if she relieves the afflicted, if she follows up with every good work. 1 Timothy 5
This should be the goal of a woman of Christ, this is what she should emulate. God loves the humble and meek.
Lori (my VT2)!
This is why you are loved from afar! These very posts which you teach us to do – IS SO VITAL! Amen to all these posts ladies! Sadly, the church needs this message NOW more than ever! By God’s grace it will go forth to the body of believers in my sphere! I am so very thankful God is allowing this blog to BURST with LIGHT in this dark world!!! You are prayed for ALOT!!!
great post! this older mama currently going thru the beginnings of menopause needed to see/hear this message today. teary eyed today thinking of times I don’t measure up. this article turned my focus back to God and finishing the homeschooling of my last child. thanks so much for taking the time to write.
Thank you!! I often feel discouraged because other women are doing it better than me. But you’ve reminded me what’s important.
I see all the time on social media the most gorgeous houses, absolutely immaculate, they don’t even look lived in, half of them. No shoes anywhere, no toys out… where do the children play? Spotless kitchens. Perfectly groomed woman. How does she do it all? I’m slowly learning that she DOESN’T do it all. To get that spotless house took her hours – and once her family comes home, it won’t look like that anymore. She did that specifically for the photo! Same as the perfectly groomed woman. It’s impossible to still look perfectly groomed without a hair out of place at the end of a busy day looking after house, children, and hubby.
Years ago, I asked my mother-in-law how she did it all. My husband always led me to believe that his mother (who I never could measure up to) worked full-time nightshift, kept an immaculate house, and cooked nourishing meals while raising her own 3 children plus helping raise her brother’s 5 children after they were orphaned.
She looked at me like I was a nut and said “I didn’t do it all. I couldn’t. Nobody can. I prioritized the important stuff and left the rest.” That helped me hugely. Prioritize the important stuff. And what’s the important stuff? Our husband and our children.
I admire all of you young ladies who are at home with your children so much!
I have a younger friend who is at home with her 5 boys. She also homeschools. Sometimes she says she feels so weary, and longs to finish her degree and “go out and accomplish something”. I remind her that in Biblical times she would have been the envy of the village! FIVE sons! And a husband who is a great provider! Now THAT’s status!
Have a blessed day…all of you stay at home mothers!
Oh wow, that G K Chesterton quote was simply sublime. I’m going to print it off and put it up in my kitchen.
I used to struggle to maintain our home in showroom condition and it stressed me out to no end until my husband sat me down and gave me his top 5 priorities for my day.
1. That the children are fed.
2. That homeschooling is done
3. That the children are clean at the end of the day.
4. That discipline is upheld in the home.
5. That I have time to play with and enjoy the children.
That really set me free from anxiety. Our Saturdays are busy days doing big cleaning and cooking lots of meals for the week just so that the week is simpler. Life is seasonal and Lord willing in the years to come I will be able to put chair backs on the sofa and not worry that they will be stripped away and used as dolly blankets.
The timing of this post was just perfect for me. Always thankful for you’re sensitivity to the Spirit, Lori. And I was so so so encouraged by the new light shed upon the Proverbs 31 Woman! That she wasn’t a real person (never made that connection before!), that she was a picture of what to look for in a wife, and her life as a whole. This revelation has literally relieved such a burden of uncertainty in my heart! I am currently homeschooling a 5,4,2 year old and have a 5 month old baby. I love my husband dearly and love our life together. We garden and love homestead life. But I have a few friends who are doing the same as me, and making some money on the side too. I really would love to contribute financially some way, but my husband is very firm about me not getting into a side job as he fears it will take away from my duties. I am so grateful for that. The pressures of the world are REAL though. And I don’t even get out much! Looking at the proverbs 31 woman is what I desire to be. And I have taken note recently, that she sells what she is already working on for her family, and makes extra of whatever that is. Love that! But understanding that this woman’s life example was as a WHOLE lifetime, has freed me from fear of not doing enough. And now I am fully content with my husbands wishes for me in this season of life. May the Lord continue to bless this ministry Lori! God has transformed THIS WIFE through your faithful teachings on Biblical womanhood. And I know so many more have been too. Don’t grow weary in your well doing Lori, through you, the Lord is transforming lives! ~Maranatha
Thank you, E.C.!
Comparison is the thief of joy and is rooted in low self worth and insecurity. We are children of the king, we do not need to compare ourselves with anybody! to consider oursleves as worth less than God’s royal daughters is to think in a worldly way and is sin! also comparing oneself leads to the sin of covetousness