When All You Can See Are The Cracks

Sometimes I wear my insecurity on my sleeve. Literally. 

{or on my feet...}

It takes a little bravery to admit that you struggle with comparing yourself to the person next to you, the person sitting next to you at church or the family eating lunch across from you in the restaurant. I'm hoping that you can relate. I'm hoping that I'm not the only one tempted to see my cracks next to your seemingly whole got it together picture. There is always someone with nicer shoes, better behaved kids, who are smarter, wiser, more affluent, more attractive, just...more than you. 

All of these side ways glances and nervous smiles when you don't feel good enough can wear you down. I know it wears me down. My own voice ringing inside my head wears me down and wears me out until all I can see are the cracks tenuously holding my life together. In one moment all the things that I like about myself, thriftiness, craftiness, creativity, crunchiness can seem cracked and ragged at the edges. It can appear to be a life mosaic not worth sharing with the general public. It is easy to stop seeing your life as a creation of God for His good purposes and start seeing it as a tattered and torn piece of art fit only for the flea market.

But we are not a dime a dozen people.
We are all cracked and broken and torn in unique ways, but we are being remade to be like Christ.
More whole than whole.

I won't say, "Don't look at the Frye boots that your neighbor is wearing." because that just isn't going to happen. Those boots are beautiful and only have a few hundred dollars standing in the way of me and them, but I digress. We will always be tempted to see the "better" in others and think the worst of ourselves. There will always be someone with a nicer home, better clothes, more Norman Rockwell-esque family than you. At least that is how we will perceive it.

Here is reality.

The real nitty gritty reality that smacks in the face of our insecurity and wandering eyes. Those folks sitting down the pew from you looking so perfect, that co-worker who got the promotion and the bigger bonus than you, the other mom whose kids are never sick while you are in and out of the doctor twice in one week...they aren't any different than you really.

In God's economy we are all beggars.

We could squint our eyes and make all the cracks go away. We could pretend that the budget isn't tight and that the car isn't on its last leg and that one more day in a rental home isn't going to send us to the looney bin, but those cracks are real. They fragment our lives in uncomfortable ways. They remind us of our need. The cracks remind us that we need a savior. That we need THE SAVIOR. Jesus.

It is easy to let our eyes see the abundance of others in contrast to our own need. We don't get to sit in judgment of those that seem to have more than us. I find myself longing to say what Paul said, that he found the secret to living with much and little. He called it contentment and claimed that it could burst the seams of any situation because of its truth. He was a sinner saved by blindingly beautiful grace, and sandals or not, bed or jail cell, he had immeasurable riches.