So I committed to writing something every day this month. I’m glad I did, because I feel like I don’t have much to say, but I will appreciate having to come up with something.

Something that’s been on my mind lately is comparison and contentment. I worked through a lot under these topics about a year and a half ago before going on Summer Project to Australia (by the way, they are now called Summer Missions). I read Calm My Anxious Heart by Linda Dillow and sincerely prayed that God would make me content.

I struggled often over anxiety while on that trip, and I think God used those difficulties to help answer my prayer. After also going through a year of counseling, I was feeling completely content with my life and who I am. HUGE. PRAISE!! I will share more about that later I’m sure. But fast forwarding to a few weeks ago, I came across a new challenge in this area. I hadn’t had to deal with comparison for a year because I had worked through all the situations that were on-going in my life. And then I met new people and was thrust into a new situation.

And thus is life! Right? Whenever we think we’ve got something down, that we’ve mastered an area of struggle, we are given something else. So the past few weeks I’ve been wrestling through feeling inadequate and left out in comparison with a group of women that I’ve just met. They’re a different crowd than the people I knew in college, on staff, and have met at church the past few years. So with them brings new obstacles to overcome in my thinking.

I hate it when people share vague stories without examples, but I often forget to share them myself, so I will force myself to share one. The women I’ve met recently seem to have it all together. They know what they want, they (seem to) get along with each other, and they don’t really know yet how to interact with me and vice versa. They wear a lot of makeup, take cute pictures with their husbands, and are super organized and crafty. Things that in general, I am not!

The thing I know is that this is a good thing. I am not like them, inherently, and that doesn’t mean that we can’t be friends or that something is wrong with me or them. The thing that I feel is that I don’t belong because I’m different, and that I should be more organized or well-dressed like them.

Thus I am given another opportunity to trust the Lord and be satisfied in who He has made me to be. It’s good to feel uncomfortable, because I want to continue growing in my faith, defeating lies from the devil, and fighting for unity in the body of Christ. Because as all of us women know, Satan loves to get in-between women – He knows we’re strong when we are vulnerable and dependent on one another, and He doesn’t want that to happen. So we fight, situation after situation, for godliness, unity, and contentment.