Not Alone

Perhaps the most powerful lie is the one that says we're alone. No one cares. No one understands. No one has experienced what you're going through. No one struggles with that. You're alone. Alone. 

Living in a dorm full of beautiful, talented, smart, funny women, it isn't too hard to find myself comparing... comparing my success, my talent, my beauty to the fifty other women I live with.

The obnoxious thing about comparing myself is that there will always be someone more beautiful, more talented, more athletic, smarter, thinner, kinder, funnier, and wiser. Someone more grounded in truth, someone more giving, someone more patient. Someone who has more self-control, more discipline, and more love to give.

Comparison is draining. It leads to rivalry. Unhealthy competition.

Rather than simply loving people for who they are, I become blinded by analyzing what they look like, how many friends they have, or how much I wish I was them. As I analyze, I become more and more insecure, uncomfortable with who I am, and frustrated at my own insecurity.

Comparison itself is swallowed up in the lie that no one else is insecure. That everyone else is perfectly content being who they are, and I'm the only person with a desire to be someone else for a change... with someone else's abilities, strengths, friends, or looks.

This used to be me. And then the voice of truth tore down these lies. I realized that I am not alone in my comparing, my insecurity, my desire to be different. The very people I look up to the most feel insecure in the same ways I do...

I wish I could describe what it's like to sit in a room full of the girls you go to school with, eat in the dining hall with, live in the dorm with. And to see these girls admit to their struggles on an anonymous survey. And to have that survey passed back out to other girls in the room. And as each statement is read out loud, those who hold a survey with that answer marked as a struggle... stand up. As I sit on the ground looking up at the sea of legs standing strong, unwavering representing the struggles in that room....the same ones I wrestle with.... the lies come crashing down. I am not alone.