Dear friend,
But the LORD said to Samuel, “Don’t look on his face, or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for I don’t see as man sees. For man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.”
I did a thing yesterday I'm not proud of. Saw a photo of someone's clean, organized pantry, all the labels facing out, and felt genuinely bad about my own life for about ten minutes. Over a pantry. My daughter was asking me the same question four times and I didn't even hear her because I was busy feeling behind.
That's the whole letter, almost. I'm caught up comparing myself to people whose actual lives I don't know anything about. Not their arguments, not their bank accounts, not their bad nights. Just the labeled jars.
I keep thinking about how this shows up for me in the smallest ways, not the big obvious ones. It's rarely someone's whole life I'm measuring myself against. It's a kitchen. A caption. A body in good light. Something under a thumb.
I don't have this fixed. I'm not writing from the other side of it. I'm writing from inside a week where I noticed it happening in real time and still couldn't stop it fast enough to save those ten minutes.
What's the last small thing that made you feel behind before you even knew why?
A prayer
God, You know exactly what's been quietly weighing on her this week, the comparisons she almost didn't notice making. Slow her down enough to see her own life plainly. Amen.