We’ve all heard the lines from Shakespeare’s “Othello” that warn of the green-eyed monster of jealousy. Equally dangerous and incredibly destructive, a more subtle form of jealousy that is easier to miss is comparing oneself to someone else. This can occur in two forms. Comparing your strengths to someone else’s weaknesses resulting in pride, or vice versa, and the one I want to address, comparing your weaknesses to someone else's strengths.
We see blogs from our friends, strangers, people who write blogs for a living, random blogs we find through pinterest etc. It’s all incredibly “inspiring,” right(?!), full of good ideas and fun things you can do with your kids. ~100 activities to do with your toddler in your spare time that stimulate all the senses and promote social and emotional development. ~Homemade fruit snacks for your pre-schoolers that only have three ingredients and are oh so easy (!?), lunches and after-school snacks shaped into animals or smiley faces or thematically centered around the book your child is reading at a 5th grade level even though she is only in 3rd grade. ~Homemade sprinkles for the 'made from scratch' cake pops for teacher appreciation week, back-to-school presents with cute, free “printables,” 101 ways to show your husband you love him, and on and on and on.
I kid you not. This kind of stuff is all over the web.
Oh, and then you also read about the moms who have their kids in sports, music, dance, community service and so on, all before they even get to junior high. If they can’t do something by the time they’re twelve it’s too late, right?
All it takes is a nursing mom, who has one free hand, and is tired and maybe a little bored, to sit down at the computer with her baby and start surfing. And instead of riding the waves of inspiration she drowns under one big wave of guilt. Despite all the wonderful stuff out there-and I’m not trying to say I haven’t been inspired by some of it and even used some of it, it’s one huge place for potential GUILT.
As my mom pointed out this week, blogs still only show what people want to show. Even if they seem to be writing the ups and downs of their lives, we’re still only seeing a fraction of the whole picture. You still don’t know everything that is going on and how that person is accomplishing everything they are posting about. You don’t know their health, their strength, the family support they might be receiving etc. But we compare our own lives, our own weaknesses, our own limitations with the big world wide web of seemingly perfect, or at least incredibly amazing people.
As
President Uchtdorf put it in two recent talks:
STOP IT! and
Slow down.
Your child’s teacher will survive without the homemade sprinkles. Hey, they will even survive without a present at all. (I know because one year I just couldn’t manage to pull it together and I had nothing to give Rebecca’s dear sweet teacher on the last day of school. And guess what, she still talks to us two years later!)
Your child will survive without you trying every developmentally helpful activity available to momkind. Your child will even thrive and be smart and capable without every cognitive stimulating toy or museum or experience. It’s okay to give your child some time to be “bored” and see what their minds come up with on their own. We don’t need to be our child’s constant educator and entertainer. Yes, we are responsible to teach and raise our child, but it’s okay to let them have some down time and let them dream and think on their own.
‘Cause guess what, some of the brightest minds in history were raised without all the things we’re being told we need. No children’s program at museums, no homemade sensory quiet books, no jello with ice cubes to practice drawing their letters. And yet these minds wrote Othello, painted the Mona Lisa and sculpted the Pietà . And some of these minds worked on farms or pulled handcarts across the plains or founded new cities. And some of these minds didn’t write, paint or sculpt or invent anything, but simply became wonderful human beings, who contributed to society in their own little way, grew up and had their own little families-taught them about God and love and being a good person.
There are seasons to life. And yes, there are some seasons when we can provide our child with an interesting museum experience, or a fun activity, or an educational trip.
But there are times when you can’t provide these things. Any of them. Period. It may be due to the stresses of a pregnancy, a new baby, a health issue, special needs in your extended family, a particular child who needs most of your attention for a time, a difficult situation in your marriage, a demanding job, you or your spouse going back to school or whatever it may be.
Let go of the guilt. STOP IT. Stop comparing. Slow down and remember the very basics and what is truly important. Love your child.
Love your child. Give them a hug and a kiss. And then just love them some more. And love yourself, too. You are worth being loved.
Let go of every craft or recipe found on pinterest. Let go of every re-decorating or organization project off the internet and of everything that is inducing guilt in any shape or form. Disconnect from facebook for awhile if you need to. Hey, let go of the fact that you read this post and thought, “she was able to write a blog post and I can’t even do that right now.” Don’t worry about it. I needed to do this for my soul. You’re doing something else that I’m not. Let it go.
And then when you get out of this stressful season of life and you still find that you can’t do everything everyone else is doing, realize:
it’s still okay. We’re all different. We have different abilities, emotionally and physically. If you love your children, and give them a home where they are safe and secure and loved, you teach them about God and loving and serving others and help them discover their talents as time and energy permits-they are going to be
just fine. You’re YOU. And God sent these children to you because you needed them and they needed YOU.
And what
YOU have to give is enough.
