For real

It's the end of an era. I'm not using Facebook anymore. Technically, I still have it, because I didn't delete it (there are SO many videos and pictures of the boys on there, and I'm not quite sure how to save them all). But I deleted the app on my phone and made it difficult to get on from my home computer.

I've had an account since 2007. I was a college senior and life was so incredibly different. Facebook was an amazing new world to reconnect with people from different parts of my life. I didn't realize that for someone like me, a girl that is constantly battling perfectionism and feelings of unworthiness, this particular website would cause me to go down a slippery slope.

The truth is, social media has made me unhappy. Ben and I have had the hardest year yet in our ten year marriage. Really, really hard. Things we never thought we'd struggle with personally, we've ended up facing (full disclosure, he is okay with me writing this. Promise). When we'd be in the middle of a struggle, I'd find myself on social media, viewing everyone's date nights and fancy getaways and wondering what we were doing wrong. Why we didn't feel the way the people on the computer felt. It wasn't fair for me to compare real, in the thick of it us with a filtered, highly edited them. Every new pregnancy announcement just made me angrier with him. He didn't understand, because he's always been very uninterested in this whole phenomena of over-sharing every little detail with the world wide web. All these years, he's been on to something.

So this Friday, I held my finger down on that little app and deleted it. It was a little scary. What if my friends don't talk to me in any other way? But I don't really need 350 friends. I need to save my marriage.

I'm not knocking all forms of social sharing. I mean, I am typing this on a blog. I'm not knocking Facebook, even. I'm just tired, bone tired of comparing. It's time for real. I'm really excited for real.

I am not you

I'm going to confess something that a nice Christian girl should perhaps keep to herself: I am struggling with sin. My sin of choice? Jealousy. Big, green, ugly jealousy.  I'm not jealous of your fancy SUV's or your four bedroom houses. I'm not jealous of your Starbucks runs or your clothing budget or any of that.
I'm jealous of your big families.
I want one so much it hurts.
But God's been using my pain to teach me something amazing. I am not you. I am not meant to be you, I never was. It's really hard for me to have babies and we may never have more and it doesn't make me any less valuable, any less of a mother just because I can't have six kids. A mother is a mother, no matter how many kids she has given birth to.
What makes me a mother is the love I have for my sons. The fact that I would give my life for theirs in a second, without hesitation. What makes me a mother is a million little things, a million choices I must make each day to put these boys before myself.
But the jealousy thing. Here's my problem. As a follower of Christ, I believe with all my heart that God chooses family size, and God is in control, ultimately. Pretty much everyone I hang out with has a big family, or is working on having one. I can't compete. I want a quiver full just like you do. But sometimes God's answer to my prayers is different from his answer to yours.
I'm not going to tie this post up with some Christian cliche, because I'm not sure they help. I'll just say this. I'm grateful that even when I don't know, even when I have zero control over the future here, God is still good. I am not you. And I guess it's okay.