Last summer I was at a conference and sat next to a lady at one meal. We got chatting. She was probably in her 60s, a doctor, working in a village in Papua New Guinea. She was single and she told me about her work, that there had been quite a few families working in that village at one time but now it was just her and another single lady left. And then later she shared at a conference session later about different problems there had been but how God had been faithful through them.
As we finished our meal, my unspoken thought was that she was the real deal of what a worker looked like. I mean, she had spent many years working in such a remote and far off place, lived without access to many things that we take for granted in the UK, was exposed to so many physical hardships - and that was without even considering the pressures of work, the realities of singleness, the spiritual battle. I have so much admiration for her. Compared to her life, I didn't think my life was that hard at all.
But then she floored me. I'd shared a bit of where we lived and what we were doing and she turned to me and told me that she didn't think she could live where we lived when it was such a spiritual stronghold of another religion.
I wanted to point out that in many ways, my life is so much easier than hers. At that time, we'd just spent two years living in Istanbul, where we had excellent public transport and shopping centres and broadband Internet and friends who spoke English. Where people could come and visit us relatively easily. Where the Mediterranean coast was a package holiday destination. That I'd been blessed with a husband to do all the transition of moving to a new country together with and two lovely children. I mean, it wasn't necessarily easy. There were enough power and water cuts, cultural adjustments and other issues to confirm that. But if it wasn't easy, it had to be easier.
How quickly we fall into the comparison trap.
The months since we moved to our new city have not been easy months, for a variety of reasons. Moving to a new city is always stressful and we've been navigating various bureaucratic processes to set up life here and get permission to stay. I have found my third pregnancy to be significantly harder than the previous two. I had worse morning sickness, we had quite a few bouts of illness, I've been more tired than before. And just when I thought that I had finally got out of the tiredness stage that traditionally finishes with the end of the first trimester but seemed to stretch half way into the second for me, my body decided to remind me that I don't have quite as much energy as I thought I did. So a a few weeks ago, I spent a pretty terrible week completely wiped out energy-wise, with a mouth full of ulcers that had me in pretty much constant pain and unable to eat or talk very much. Thankfully that is behind me now and has not recurred. Plus, ministry is just messy in every country and sometimes that can be compounded by cross-cultural issues, or at the very least having to do everything in a second language.
And I start to play the comparison game. Yes I had worse morning sickness this time, but it was only (constant) nausea. I've some friends who threw up multiple times a day for the first few months of their pregnancies. Or felt nauseous their entire pregnancy. Or felt nauseous and threw up their entire pregnancy. So any hint of me admitting that it was harder this time comes with the add-on that I can't complain, it could have been worse. Yes I've been tired. But I only have two small children. Imagine how much harder it is for those who are on their third or later pregnancies. And L helps out a lot around the house and with the children. So it's nothing to mention really. Yes a couple of months back I had a bit of a rough week health-wise. But it passed, at the end of the day it wasn't a serious health issue and there's always someone in a worse situation. And look at all the things I have to be thankful for - two healthy children, a healthy baby developing, a loving husband who supports me as much as he can and retains more flexibility to help me than most people.
So often we want to compare ourselves. Often it's to other people, either real or imagined. But sometimes to an invisible standard that we think marks the bar of where our issues feel serious enough to warrant mentioning, or asking for prayer, or using it as a rationale to explain why we've had to back out of doing something without wondering whether everyone will think it's just an excuse, or even if we can possibly start classifying it as a 'trial' or 'suffering'.
We tally up the hardship factors on one side against the blessings of our life on the other, and try and work out whether one outweighs or merely counterbalances the other, and therefore do we meet the invisible standard of hardship or trials or do we just need to quit complaining and get on with it. I live in a different country and not only that but in a city away from most foreigners. One for the hardship column. But I also live in a large apartment on the edge of the city. And I can even do my food shopping online and get it delivered that day. That must balance out living in a different country/city, at least to some degree. Pregnancy is tiring and I miss the NHS. But the hospitals here are so much better than in most of the world and my mum is coming to stay when the baby is born. And it would be tiring as well if we were in the UK. And so it goes on.
But there is another way. We don't have to prove to ourselves or others that our troubles are significant.
If we have trusted in the death of God's Son for the forgiveness of our sins, then we are adopted as God's children and have the grace of God. And this grace flows into our lives, filling every nook and cranny, covering us completely. It says that we don't have to compare ourselves to others, we don't have to check and see how serious our problems are to consider them trials, we don't have to prove ourselves to be deserving enough to be heard.
Grace allows us to bring our troubles to our heavenly Father. And not just bring them hesitantly, but to cast our cares onto him. Cast as in throw, toss, fling. And not just the significant trials but our 'cares' - it doesn't matter how big or small they are, our Father wants us to bring them to him.
Young children are the perfect example of this. My children do not consider whether or not a problem is significant enough to bring it to my attention. If I am occupied with one child's issue, that does not stop the other coming with his own problem. The level of seriousness of the first issue that I'm dealing with has apparently no bearing whatsoever on the other child's problem and whether that moment is really the best time to bring it up with me. They simply do not compare their issue to their sibling's issue. And they definitely do not calculate how serious their problem is in relation to all the other good things in their lives.
They assume that if they think it's a problem or issue, they should let me know about it immediately, regardless of anything else and presumably because (even if they can't articulate this yet), they know at a deep level that I love them and will listen to them and try to help them. When my children come to me with their cares and problems, I do my best to listen to them, to be patient and to take them seriously. Sometimes my 'help' may not be what they think the 'help' should be but they hopefully at least understand that I hear them and their problems. In my better parenting moments, I understand that however insignificant their problems might seem to me, they matter to my children and because I love my children, those problems then matter to me. (In my less impressive parenting moments, I show my impatience at why exactly something that seems so insignificant to me is such an issue and can't they please just get over it, but that is why God is our perfect ultimate Father and parents will always be rather imperfect in imitation.)
We are to be like little children. We come to God with the faith that he hears us, he loves us, that nothing is too small for him to be concerned about, that we don't need to compare ourselves to our spiritual siblings. We don't have to try and work out if our troubles measure up to the invisible bar of significance, or calculate if they are outweighed sufficiently by other things that we should just grin and bear it. We know that God is infinitely patient and loving with us. We don't need to worry about how big our troubles are but we are free to express our hurts, doubts, frustrations, disappointments, anxieties, troubles to our Father in prayer safe in the knowledge that he cares for each of us individually.
