Motherhood, Ministry, and Comparison

The following is a portion of the transcript from a talk I gave to Stoney Creek Baptist Church's women's bible study:

(After introducing myself and our ministry...)

What I really wanted to share was what God has been teaching me over the last four years (our first four years in the mission field). Surprisingly, that has been a difficult question to answer. Actually, I feel like there are a million answers, and the problem is just deciding on one. I’ve had since November to think about this talk and what I would say. Honestly, it took me until last week to decide on a topic. I’m calling that topic, “Motherhood, ministry and comparison”. It has come out of my struggle to determine, what does it mean to be an effective missionary or for that matter, and effective Christian? I’ve summed up what I want to talk about in one catch all statement:

If you want to measure what it means to be an effective Christian, stop comparing yourself to those around you and start submitting yourself to God.  

What do I mean by this and how does it apply to my life?  Well, I’m just going to be honest. I’ve struggled with comparison all my life. I hope I’m not alone in this—I think it’s quite a universal problem. In my case, I’ve known it since I was a child. It started with sibling comparison—I was the oldest of three girls. It was the constant striving to be the smartest of the girls, or the prettiest, or the most petty of things—the TALLEST. As if I had any say and ability to affect how tall I was! It then progressed into highschool and university—and I wasn’t popular there (thankfully). It was comparing myself to the class, comparing myself to models on magazines, or the popular girls in school. It was the persistent pursuit of success—success in school, success in work, success in relationships.  And it all hinged on comparison—so long as I was better than those around me, I felt happy and content. But if I felt that I wasn’t matching up, if I was inferior to those around me, then it was a nagging feeling of disappointment. I was a Christian—most certainly, but that didn’t mean I was always willing and happy to turn this all over to Christ and sink myself in to deep scriptural truths about my identity. It often led to poor decisions, and I was aware of this—but I wanted to rebalance the scales, so I could compare myself to those around me and say with certainty, “Yes! I’m doing okay because I’m doing better than these people in these areas.” 

Once I was out of school and into the real adult world, I thought all this might be over, but, wow, I certainly wasn’t prepared for the dragon of comparison to rear its head again—and with much more vigour and power—when I entered motherhood. Motherhood perhaps is the ultimate test of contentment, perseverance, patience, and humility. It’s all too easy in motherhood to play the comparison game: are my kids hitting their milestones, or better yet, hitting them early? Are they smarter than so and so’s kids? Or if not smarter, are they happier? Kinder? More photogenic? Better at going to bed or eating or faster at potty training? There’s an entire industry built up to compare your children to those around you. And what about yourself? Are you succeeding as a mom—hosting the best parties? Preparing the healthiest snacks? Keeping the house clean? Are you doing better than your parents financially? Is your house keeping up to the same standards as the rest of the neighbourhood? Are you playing enough with your kids? Spending enough time with your spouse? Praying enough, serving enough, contributing enough to society? 

Now, I thank God that I moved overseas, because I will tell you one saving grace in my life—very few, to none of you, will ever see my clean or unclean house. Few of you will ever sit to a meal with me to know if I’m a good cook or not. You all have no idea if my kids behave well in front of strangers in Angola or listen to me *the first time* I ask for something or if my kids fight more or less than the average kid. I actually feel guilty for how nice my house is in Angola, because *compared* to the houses of average Angolans, my house seems like a dream … even though it’s very simple by North American standards.  

But despite moving overseas, I do still struggle with comparison—and in an area that, as I wrote this, and as I say it, almost seems laughable, but maybe some of you will laugh and then completely agree with me. I struggle with comparison in something I’m going to call the “sainthood scale”. What do I mean by this? It’s that “works-righteousness scale” that many of us, inevitably and only sub-consciously, form to evaluate ourselves on how we are doing as a Christian (based on everybody around us, or at times, every other living person in history). In our faulty logic, we’ve got mediocre Christians down here, you know, your relative who only makes feeble attempts to make it to church a couple times of year but made a commitment to Christ years ago. We’ve got the rest of us, just based on our sin from that day and how many minutes we’ve prayed, floating somewhere in here. And then we’ve got pastors and missionaries and Christian leaders up here. And at the top … Jesus. 

So, as a missionary teacher, working in a one room school house in a third world country, you wouldn’t think that I would struggle with comparison. Doesn’t this put me at the top of this so called “sainthood scale”? The problem is there’s always a million ways for our pride and comparison to sneak in. For example, I’m surrounded by amazing colleagues in Angola who are doing incredible work for the kingdom of God. There are doctors who are literally working all hours of the day performing amazing surgeries, giving life to those who face near death. They work so hard that sometimes I feel guilty being around them because my job doesn’t demand as much as theirs. Then there are those doing discipleship in their neighborhoods, or with the poorest of the poor. These people are the real saints to me. I look at my work at the school, where I’m working with middle-class kids and most of the time just dealing with their behaviour problems. And I think, what value is my work in the light of eternity, compared to theirs? Am I even worthy of calling myself a missionary? Then we have colleagues who are doing evangelism amongst unreached people groups. They go out for days camping in the wilderness sharing the gospel through the use of translators with a tribal group that has no church amongst them. I should be happy for them, encouraging them because they are doing very difficult work with little recognition. But instead sometimes I find myself feeling jealous that their work fits into the exact definition of what it means to be a missionary, while my work sometimes feels so mundane. Some days I get to preach the gospel, some days I’m just hunting down the students to get their work done, or marking a million wrong answers on an evaluation and wondering, “Were you even listening to me when I explained this?”, or just trying to get my own son to cooperate and not throw a temper tantrum.

All of this is compounded by the fact that surrounding us in Angola is an endless amount of need. Sometimes the poverty can feel so suffocating. There are hundreds and thousands of people around us that lack basic infrastructure, or fighting preventable diseases, or whose children don’t even own a single toy. One could literally pour themselves out day and night and barely make a dent in the level of social injustice in the country. And this isn’t even discussing spiritual matters. While many Angolans are Christians, this doesn’t mean that all of them really know Christ. Just as there is in Canada, there is a heavy burden of religion—people calling themselves Christians simply because they go to church on Sunday, but deep down they haven’t heard or understood the gospel. Again, this is compounded by the fact that people are poor and under resourced, many people don’t own a Bible or have never read a Christian book to help them understand the Bible. If they can read it all. When I look around at my surroundings, I feel overwhelmed. Am I doing enough? How could I do enough? Should I just drop what I’m doing at the school, to do more meaningful work amongst the poorest people?

I want to blame my issues with comparison and pride on what is going on around me but I know that the actual problem is in my heart. The problem is pride. The problem is works righteousness. I’m trying to base my value as a Christian on how much I am doing for the kingdom and when I compare myself to those around me and the immense need around me, I’m not doing enough. I could be doing so much more. I could be doing so much more with more joy. Perhaps I’ve struck a chord with some of you as I’ve shared my own struggles with comparison and pride.  

So, what is the cure to this problem—no, this SIN—of comparison and pride?

Well, as I alluded to in the beginning, step one is to stop comparing yourself to others. When has comparison realistically ever got us anywhere? When has it made us feel happier, more content? When has it brought me to my knees in prayer or confession? When has it spurred me on to the right actions—to loving my enemies, offering my coat, turning my cheek? When has it turned me upward to God and outward to others instead of inward to myself?

Stopping the comparison game requires practical steps, like opening your Bible and reading about your true identity in Christ. Here’s a passage to get you going, one of my favourites, 2 Corinthians 2:16-17:

¹⁶ So we have stopped evaluating others from a human point of view. At one time we thought of Christ merely from a human point of view. How differently we know him now! ¹⁷ This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!
Other practical steps that I have found useful include expressing more gratitude, whether in a journal, in your prayers, or in your words. It may mean changing the way you talk to yourself and others—battling back against those voices that say you are not enough or you are not worthy. Scripture tells us we are NOT enough, we are NOT worthy, save for the finished work of Christ on the cross. On the cross, he made us right with God, so that we don’t have to earn our salvation by anything we do or say or are. I love Ephesians 2:8-10.

⁸ For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, ⁹ not a result of works, so that no one may boast. ¹⁰ For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

We are enough because of him. We don’t have to work to earn our salvation—we GET to work because of our salvation. It frees us up to do work out of joy and not out of obligation. And he DOES have good work planned for you—starting right where you are!

Changing our own self-talk is important, even changing the way we talk to others—not always talking about people, not always talking about ourselves or trying to invoke pity—changing the habits of our tongue can have a big effect on our internal satisfaction.

But the most important step is submitting to God. This is the biggest area that I have felt convicted to work on. Daily, saying in prayer, “Holy Spirit, come fill me for today, that I may be an effective Christian in all I do. God, please guide me today to follow your leading, and the prompting of your Spirit.”

When we are open to listening and following the prompting of the Spirit, when we are asking Him to make even our mundane tasks meaningful, when we are looking for the work of God around us—that is what matters. That is what makes our ministry or our lives meaningful. We could be doing all the work in the world to save lives, serve the poor, building wells, or preaching the gospel—but if we aren’t in tune to God and submitting ourselves to Him, we may be missing out.