Just wanted to stop in and deliver a quick message as I run out the door. It’s ironic. I don’t know; I just found it funny and had to tell you.
You know how you have been kind of down on yourself about certain things lately? You look at your friends (and then in the mirror) and feel inferior. They can homeschool better, you say. They have a cleaner home, you lament. But guess what. You are going to crack up when you hear this.
Just as you are looking to them as some sort of model or something, they are looking at YOU because they feel the same way—only in different areas. Some envy the relationship you have with your husband (they don’t tell you this, but they struggle). They long for the same looks you two share; it’s so obvious you guys are in love after all these years. Not only that, they can’t understand how you can cook SO well, so much diversity there! (They still feel like they are basic level chefs, they say.)
I guess it’s kind of like that passage in God’s word about various members of the body doing their part (what God created each one to do) and how we all work together like a puzzle, complementing each other. Envy is the wrong action point, Mama. Don’t ever envy anyone else again (and I’m gonna admonish your friends to quit focusing on YOU as the model, too—they need to stop that already).
Christ is our model, and He has given each of us gifts. Let’s use them to glorify Him. Take ourselves off the throne—because self-love and even self-hate are just other ways to put the focus on self—and elevate Him today, instead. He’s the Author of anything good we do. It is all Him!
“For just as we have many members in one body and all the members do not have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another” (Romans 12:4).
We are members of Christ’s Church, and we are all different. God did not create you to be your best friend’s clone. Sure, she is better at teaching grammar; her hair is better, too; but so what. Does it really matter in the end? Raise those kids up in the Lord; you are doing awesome, pretty Mama (and man, keep cooking all that yummy stuff you come up with; it’s amazing).
Copyright 2018, The Old Schoolhouse®. Used with permission. All rights reserved by the Author. Originally appeared in the Summer 2018 issue of The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, the trade publication for homeschool moms.