On living the life in front of you
A few weeks ago my book club decided to read Shauna Niequist's Bread and Wine for our monthly read. And I must tell you, rarely has a book ever seeped into my soul as much as this one did. With every page I read, I felt more and more like Shauna was my kindred spirit, like she completely understood me. Her writing style felt very similar to mine-- she is very honest, descriptive (maybe overly so- as I consider myself sometimes), and she talks to you like she's sitting next to you on the couch drinking coffee with you. And I loved it.
Her earnestness in how she approaches cooking and baking reminded me of myself, too. I was by no means born with natural talent to cook. My first meal in my apartment junior year that I made for myself was out-of-the-box penne with pasta sauce from a jar (my mom is in Wilmington shaking her head right now... my grandmother Helen in heaven is crying over these words. I come from a family of Italian women who slave over their sauce every Sunday as their homemade sauce simmers on the stove). I'm the girl who once used powdered sugar instead of granulated sugar to bake cookies with, to the point that those at the gathering I was bringing them to asked if there were macadamia nuts in the cookies. All that to say, I'm not a master chef by any means. But I have been elbow deep in mixing bowls before attempting a new recipe, and I've sat in a kitchen surrounded by pots and pans with different mixtures in them-- knowing full-on it would take me two hours to clean up (and it did). I've burnt dishes that I was SO excited to try because of something silly like forgetting to set a timer. And I've completely left ingredients out of meals and wondered why it didn't taste like it was supposed to. But Shauna understands this, and I loved that I could feel that through her book. And like me, she presses on with cooking and baking, even when things don't always look like the pictures you see on cooking blogs or in your cookbook.
She wrote a chapter call "Swimming in Silence," about a trip that she took to Mexico where she was essentially "unplugged" and away from technology and chaos and the busy-ness of life. There was one quote in particular that has really stuck with me and that I keep trying to remind myself of when I feel the growing pressures of comparison.
How lovely. Simply live the life in front of you. It seems such an easy thing to do, until you log onto Facebook and see the dozens of exciting things going on in someone else's life-- engagements, new babies, weight loss, acceptances to graduate schools, great scores on exams-- and then you lose your resolve and feel like you need to do more to be better in your own life.
But that's not true. We have such trouble with being content with our own lives. We're wired to compare ourselves to other people, and social media makes it that much easier. Close your laptop, exit out of Instagram on your phone, and delete that last tweet you were typing about how "blessed" you are feeling right now. Do you know that for Christians, that's supposedly a humble way of bragging? What an oxymoron that is. I'm guilty of it. All of it. But we need to learn to appreciate what we've been given and learn that we're not going to have the same life that anyone has, no matter how hard we strive. Be thankful for the good things in your friends' lives, but don't envy them. Be even MORE thankful for the good things in your own life. And the bad. Because all of it, the good, the bad, the ugly-- it's how God grows us.
So this week (and every week), live the life in front of you. Value your life. And stop pressing your face into the glass of other people's, no matter how tempting it may be.
Grace & peace,
Cristina
Her earnestness in how she approaches cooking and baking reminded me of myself, too. I was by no means born with natural talent to cook. My first meal in my apartment junior year that I made for myself was out-of-the-box penne with pasta sauce from a jar (my mom is in Wilmington shaking her head right now... my grandmother Helen in heaven is crying over these words. I come from a family of Italian women who slave over their sauce every Sunday as their homemade sauce simmers on the stove). I'm the girl who once used powdered sugar instead of granulated sugar to bake cookies with, to the point that those at the gathering I was bringing them to asked if there were macadamia nuts in the cookies. All that to say, I'm not a master chef by any means. But I have been elbow deep in mixing bowls before attempting a new recipe, and I've sat in a kitchen surrounded by pots and pans with different mixtures in them-- knowing full-on it would take me two hours to clean up (and it did). I've burnt dishes that I was SO excited to try because of something silly like forgetting to set a timer. And I've completely left ingredients out of meals and wondered why it didn't taste like it was supposed to. But Shauna understands this, and I loved that I could feel that through her book. And like me, she presses on with cooking and baking, even when things don't always look like the pictures you see on cooking blogs or in your cookbook.
She wrote a chapter call "Swimming in Silence," about a trip that she took to Mexico where she was essentially "unplugged" and away from technology and chaos and the busy-ness of life. There was one quote in particular that has really stuck with me and that I keep trying to remind myself of when I feel the growing pressures of comparison.
"...I think back to that week often, to how non-fragmented my brain and spirit felt, how little I missed on Pinterest and Facebook. I think about how valuable it is to live the life in front of you, regardless of how tempting it is to press your face to the glass of other people's lives online, even though doing that is so much safer and entirely addictive."
How lovely. Simply live the life in front of you. It seems such an easy thing to do, until you log onto Facebook and see the dozens of exciting things going on in someone else's life-- engagements, new babies, weight loss, acceptances to graduate schools, great scores on exams-- and then you lose your resolve and feel like you need to do more to be better in your own life.
But that's not true. We have such trouble with being content with our own lives. We're wired to compare ourselves to other people, and social media makes it that much easier. Close your laptop, exit out of Instagram on your phone, and delete that last tweet you were typing about how "blessed" you are feeling right now. Do you know that for Christians, that's supposedly a humble way of bragging? What an oxymoron that is. I'm guilty of it. All of it. But we need to learn to appreciate what we've been given and learn that we're not going to have the same life that anyone has, no matter how hard we strive. Be thankful for the good things in your friends' lives, but don't envy them. Be even MORE thankful for the good things in your own life. And the bad. Because all of it, the good, the bad, the ugly-- it's how God grows us.
So this week (and every week), live the life in front of you. Value your life. And stop pressing your face into the glass of other people's, no matter how tempting it may be.
Grace & peace,
Cristina
I've thought a lot about this too and I love that quote. I might use it for my blog as well! My friend once told me "comparison is the thief of joy" and your post reminded me of that so I thought I'd share! :)
ReplyDeleteIt's SO true about comparison being the thief of joy. I get caught up in that all the time.
ReplyDelete