A Recent Reflection on Comparison
I will be honest. In general, comparison is not a struggle of mine, not often anyway. Since entering my thirties I have felt waves of clarity about myself, my gifts, and what I am called to. This makes me sometimes too much so, wholly uninterested in what everyone else is doing. However, I am writing about comparison today because in the last couple of weeks I have realized just how enticing it can be and the things that if we are not careful, we allow that then invite it.
A couple of weeks ago I was invited to preach at Sowers Summit in New York. I plan to write more in depth about the experience as a whole but I am still processing a lot of it so today we’ll focus on comparison. You may have never been invited somewhere as a speaker or special guest so let me tell you about it. It is an honor and privilege but it also means that you are ‘on’ the whole time. You are asked countless times by other speakers/guests in the green room and backstage who you are or, “what do you do?” if you are me because I am not famous and don’t really have a claim to fame like the rest of the guests.
In the case of Sowers Summit it was great to see speakers who are friends I barely get to see or Instagram friends I hadn’t yet hugged in person. But of course there were plenty of people I just had never interacted with, even if I had heard of them. Speakers/guests usually have a claim to fame. They are pastors of well known churches, founders of organizations, they are authors, or they frequent the conference circut with their faces plastered on digital pamphlets we see on Instagram. I don’t really fit in any of those categories. I don’t have an issue with that. Boxes and labels aren’t really where I am comfortable anyway. But it did start to wear on me after the fifth person asked, “so what do you do?” Especially realizing that I was one of just a couple people being asked. It started to feel like this pressure to somehow legitimize myself or prove that I belonged there, next to them on the pamphlet, or preaching on an agenda with much more recognizeble bible teachers.
The first night of the conference I was on a panel and was asked a question about how we respond when we see things like racism, tokenism or sexism in the church. I had been given the question ahead of time to prepare so I knew what points I wanted to hit but didn’t script myself. I felt really good about my answer and heard nothing but grateful and even some impressed response from people afterwards. One of the things I am, that I’d fumble through a sentence trying to explain what I do to people earlier that evening is, I am a DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) professional. A big part of what I do for my department at work is consult across our programming to check in on how we are representing our deep beliefs in DEI as a mandate of God’s love and Jesus’s life. I am tremendously proud of that part of my work and life but I just don’t really know how to articulate it quickly when answering the what do you do question. Here is what that evening told me of comparison; we may be struggling with it because we aren’t doing what God has actually called us to do. The doing is where the clarity comes from. The practice is where the pride in ourselves and in what God has anointed us to do kicks in. Once I was up there, doing what I do, the feeling of needing to prove something or compare to someone else faded.
It isn’t some new concept for me to explain that when we are idle that we have a lot of time to think and that time can lead us to things like comparison. What can you do today that has to do with how God has uniquely and creatively abled you? Will this solve it, to just begin doing? No, I don’t think so. But does it put us on a path toward focusing on what God has for us and not on what he hasn’t, yes it does.
On the second day of the conference I was up to preach the first session of the day. I was very excited about the sermon. It is probably my favorite sermon I have after done to date and a story that I will be turning into a chapter for a book I am contributing to next year. I did it, God did his thing, women were blessed. In the 10 minutes following the sermon I was pulled aside by a number of people praising the word. Three women in particular shared about their own journeys with grief and loss, moving me to tears feeling overwhelmingly honored that God had chosen me to participate in their healing.
Here is the second thought on comparison I want to leave you with. When are doing what God has called you to d0 -- Even more simply, when you are being yourself and not trying to emulate what you saw someone you admire act like, your community will affirm what it is God has gifted and abled you for. So many women I have talked about comparison with hear me say something I say often about how I live my life in general which is, eyes on your own paper. Looking around at what everyone else is up to or what they have is distracting. When they hear this the next direction the conversation goes is, “but how do I know what God has called me to so that I can do that?” My answer is often, ask your community. In what ways do they feel blessed by you? What do they reach out to you for help with? The answers to those questions then invite you on a journey of even more questions like, “in what ways can I do this for the people at my church?” Or, “would my workplace benefit from me leaning more into this gift or interest of mine?”
The Summit ended before I could figure out the right or smooth answer to “what do you do?” But it did end with me feeling sure that what I do do is exactly what God has asked of me. In that I can surrender any questions of my legitimacy according to a standard of man or woman, however recognizeable they might be.
