After 30 plus years in baseball, you would think I would have a handle on the anxiety I feel walking into a ballpark. As I sat in the parking lot watching the time tick away until game time I felt the recurring jitters of the first game of the year. Not nerves about the game or my hubby’s job, but the uneasiness of not fitting in, not being like the other wives.
When we began in this game I was the age of the wives and girlfriends. I now have kids older than some of them. That is a reality I cannot change but not understanding the way I fit in those social groups makes me uneasy. The difference of economic standing, not being able to buy the clothes and accessory they can makes me feel like I stand out.
I am very thankful that most of the girls I’ve encountered throughout the years have been some of the best humans I know. I haven’t had to win their approval even though I put the pressure on myself.
Sitting in my car I had to remember whose approval I need to win. Peace comes with knowing that I need to please God and God alone. As a servant of Christ, my one job is to acceptable in God’s eyes.
“Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ,” Galatians 1:10.
Comparison is a dangerous game. Women have been conditioned throughout our lives to measure up to other women. The moms at school. The ladies at church. The happy marriages of friends. The neighbor’s grass. The person at work. The post on Insta. The praise on Facebook. The negative impact can cause a lifetime of loneliness, feelings of disapproval and rejection.
The only place we can find peace and contentment is in the approval of God, living a life of Christ-like behavior and fulfilling the life God has called us uniquely to be according to His power.
Through prayer, reading His Word, and finding a group of like-minded women is the beginning of our peace and contentment.
Ladies, we are in this life together. Let’s hold each other up, first with finding the peace and contentment with ourselves.
Do you find yourself falling to the comparison game? How’s that working out for you? What is the one place you struggle the most in comparing your life to others?
What is one thing you can do right now to step out of the comparison competition, to get out of the dangerous game?
