What About Him?

Peter turned around and saw behind them the disciple Jesus loved —the one who had leaned over to Jesus during supper and asked, “Lord, who will betray you?” Peter asked Jesus, “What about him, Lord?” Jesus replied, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? As for you, follow me.” John 21:20-22

WE’RE ALL TEMPTED to compare ourselves to others, our family to other families, our kids to other people’s kids, and our parenting to other people’s parenting in an effort to feel better about ourselves. Of course, while this tendency to compare didn’t start with the invention of social media, its relentless barrage of photos of everyone else’s fabulous vacations, creative parties, noteworthy accomplishments, and affectionate messages certainly feeds the monster. We look at the family photos and breezy write-ups and are quite certain that others have it a little easier in the parenting department, or that their kids are seemingly turning out “better” or accomplishing more than our kids.

The problem with comparing our parenting and our kids is the pride or discontent it produces. Furthermore, when we desire the life someone else has, we’re saying in our hearts that what God has entrusted to us just isn’t good enough. Our jealousy and covetousness point a finger at God and imply that the story he is writing for our life is wrong and that we would have written it better.

When we’re tempted to ask God why we have been entrusted with particular challenges that parents around us don’t seem to have, we must hear Jesus saying to us, as he told Peter, “As for you, follow me.” Jesus has work for us to do in parenting the children he entrusted to us that he has not given to anyone else. There may be a level of difficulty in our situation that parents around us don’t experience. But we can be sure that he is also giving us grace to parent these particular children and deal with these particular challenges as we need it.

Lord, we need your help to stop focusing on how our parenting and our kids compare to other parents and their kids so we can keep our focus on following you in the work to which you’ve called us.