COURAGE, BRAVEHEART

You know those times when the Lord gently and graciously uses a friend in your life to reveal things about yourself you can’t see. Maybe it’s something you weren’t aware of. Maybe you were and you’ve tried to ignore it for years. Maybe it’s something you’ve outright denied. Or maybe just maybe, seeing it from a different angle causes you to stop in your tracks. This recently happened to me with a friend.

So this friend…you know what’s so great about this friend? He didn’t even realize he was doing anything. Because he wasn’t. He was simply living his life and being himself. And there I was, sitting over in the corner sobbing, having an epiphany and I’m sure he just thought I was tired from a long weekend. And maybe that’s a little true. But there was something deeper brewing under the surface. Something, if I’m honest, I’m embarrassed to admit. Something I’m mad that I don’t quite have a grasp on just yet. Now this is where I think a healthy dose of comparison is actually a good thing, because the Lord uses it to show us things from a different perspective.

This happened about over a month ago, but I just got around to posting this. This friend and I were shooting a short film together in Myrtle Beach, SC. We were making the drive up from Atlanta, so we had about 6 hours together in the car and another 6 hours on the way back after shooting. And from our time together that weekend, this is what I realized.

I’m angry in life and I think everyone owes me because of it. And I mean EVERYONE.

Yep. Ugh, that’s pretty nasty huh?

I’ve suddenly realized it’s been coming up in every area of my life and I didn’t even recognize it until I was sitting with this friend, watching him interact with other people, watching his work ethic, his humility, his lack of anger despite having every reason to be angry at what life’s thrown at him, and yet…he’s not punishing anyone. He doesn’t think other people owe him. He works hard with no expectation that he deserves anything in return. He’s humble. He makes things happen for himself. He’s thoughtful and kind. And His faith is a quiet one, but is displayed so evidently in his character. In the way he holds himself and the way he treats others.

And then there’s me. Beetlebum (insert eye roll here). Now, this isn’t a hate session on myself. I think the Lord graciously used this comparison as a helpful tool for seeing where I’m at because of the hurt I’ve been through. And for seeing how I need to go about addressing that hurt to be the healthiest, best version of myself. Not to be my friend. I can’t be him. I’ll never be him. I don’t even want to be him but what I do want to be and what I can be is the best version of me; that’s what I’m striving towards.

So as we were on set working on a pretty emotional scene, I found myself being particularly rude to my director (Ugh! Insert another eye roll here). Not cool, Stef. Definitely not cool. I allowed my frustration to get the best of me, is what happened. I allowed my circumstances around me, as challenging and as heightened as they may have been, to affect the way I chose to treat another person. I took matters into my own hands and whenever I do that, sadly the outcome is usually more puffed up, more entitled, more “I know so much better than you” kinda attitude. And eww, that’s gross.

You see, my pride was hurt. I felt uncared for, disrespected, unseen and unappreciated. Was that what was meant to be communicated? Not in the slightest, but my history allowed these things and these feelings to trigger me to respond in a way, that afterwards, I felt completely rotten about. I called my director and apologized to her. Even though there were things that I think could’ve been done differently to avoid the tough situation we found ourselves in, that was no excuse and I needed to tell her I was sorry. It was going to be an uncomfortable conversation, maybe even awkward, but the stirring in my heart was there for a reason and the ugliness that reared its head is not who I wanted to be. So I apologized and she graciously accepted it and we both said, “Hey, we’re all still learning here.” I was thankful for her graciousness but when I hung up the phone, I just cried because I felt like I had failed.

I was talking to my dad later that afternoon and I told him how crummy I was feeling about the whole thing and how I felt like I had failed. And he said, “Oh, Stef. That’s not failing. That’s winning! That’s growth. Failing would’ve been if you had ignored that feeling and just said “screw it and screw her” and allowed that annoyed, entitled feeling to linger and hang around. Good job for not doing that.”

And you know what? Dad was right. Truth be told, Dad is right MOST of the time. But what I wanted to know was where this came from. So I continued to take a closer look into what I was angry about and who I felt owed me, and this is what I found:

First off, I was angry at God. I was thinking,  “God, you didn’t protect me from a heartbreaking marriage. In fact, I felt like you told me to marry Steve and I did, and look how that turned out. And not only that, now I’ve wasted all this time and I’m not married and who knows if I’ll ever be married again or have a family of my own. You owe me.”

Then, I was angry at Steve. “How could you treat me this way for the past 14 years? How could you not see it? Why wouldn’t you listen to me? How could you be so arrogant and prideful to do nothing about it and to blame me? How could you not recognize what you had? And how could you not be willing to fight for our marriage and just let it go. Or worse, not fight for me and just let me go. You owe me.”

Next, I was angry about my work circumstances. “Year after year, audition after audition, job after job and I still don’t have consistent work doing the thing I love and the thing I feel like I’m meant to do. And when I am working, people are asking me to work for way less that what I value myself at. But I want to work, so I take the jobs, but sometimes when I’m on set, I make sure they know this was a sacrifice I made. They owe me.”

And the list goes on and go…family members who didn’t treat me the way I felt like I should’ve been treated and who have never admitted to it or apologized for it. “They owe me.” Friends who abandoned me through this whole divorce process, and who never took the time to hear my side or understand the amount of pain it took for me to make that decision. “You, ex-friends. You owe me.”

I think I had so much anger. So much pain. So much loss. And I didn’t know what to do with it and it was coming out in really weird ways. I was comparing myself and my story to what other people had going on in their own lives. Seemingly, everyone had it better than me and somehow in my mind, I had been cheated or left out of a good deal. I had gotten the short end of the stick. This idea that I was owed something, coupled with the comparison game I was dangerously playing, was something that struck me in this very moment in the car, riding back to Atlanta while listening to my friend talk about his life. And let me tell you, the tears just flowed. I actually couldn’t control it. I felt sad for him. Sad for myself. But mostly embarrassed and ashamed for the hurt that caused this ugliness and entitlement that I felt deep within.

After that, this lesson continued to come up for me the following week when I listened to a sermon by Andy Stanley, from Crosspoint Church in Atlanta.

Sidenote: I was lucky enough to grow up in this church and I’ve had the privilege of learning from this incredible communicator for years. He makes things plain and simple, which means God’s word becomes accessible to anyone anywhere. If you don’t know Him, check Him out. It’ll change your life!

I listened to him preach from his series, BORN TO RUN about contentment and comparison. If you have some downtime, I’d suggest taking a listen to what He has to say. It’s so helpful. And so humbling.

Here are some of the main takeaways I got from his sermon:

You think that YOU need what THEY have to be acceptable, respectable, and lovable.

Proverbs 14:30 says, “A heart at peace gives life to the body but envy rots the bones.”

What if you miss God’s purpose for your life because you’re trying to keep up with a culture that doesn’t even exist. It’s just a myth. It talks about this in Ecclesiastes 4, this idea that everybody is determining where they are in life, based on where everyone else is. Solomon, who is considered the wisest man to ever have lived, says that this thing we do, this striving and comparing, “is meaningless. Pointless. A chasing after the wind.” And he had more than anyone that lived. More wealth. More power. More influence. More material goods. More wives. More “cars and second houses”. More stuff. And he said it’s all meaningless. He’s been on the other side of it all and says, “let me tell you, it’s not that great.”

We always think, “If only…If only…If only…”. You need a mental line of defense when you start drifting towards envy or emotional discontentment. Because discontentment is dissatisfaction guaranteed. In that, there is no peace. So when we recognize this discontentment, we should say aloud to ourselves: “That’s chasing the wind. And I don’t chase the wind.”

We assume more is better. But chasing more always leaves us wanting more. Less is actually more, when the less you hold is what you were created for. 

Ecclesiastes 4:4-6 says, “Fools fold their hands and ruin themselves. Better one hand with tranquility (satisfaction) than two handfuls with toil and chasing after the wind.” You cannot compare your way to peace and tranquility. Look to others for inspiration but NOT for imitation.

Count your blessings, not your neighbors blessings. That’s where gratitude comes in. You will NEVER experience your life fully until you embrace what is right in front of you and stop looking at what is right in front of everyone else.

Some of these themes and ideas are similar to my recent post about BEING PRESENT & KEEPING YOUR EYES ON YOUR OWN LADDER. Check it out if you haven’t already!

I love this quote by Jordan Peterson from 12 Rules for Life,

“Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.”           

In conclusion, we’re all doing our very best in life. You parents are doing their best. Your kids are doing their best. Your friends or spouses or siblings or the stranger you run into at the local coffee shop – all of them – all of us, we’re all doing our best. And we’re all going to make mistakes; it’s going to be messy. But at the end of the day, we need to be able to recognize our faults, own up to them, apologize when we’re wrong and say tomorrow’s another day and tomorrow I’ll try again. And try better. “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” I love that little saying.

So if in life, you feel like you’ve been cheated. That you are missing out or that someone owes you, just remember friend, that you are hurting. And it’s okay to be hurting. But it’s not okay to feel entitled and it’s not okay to believe that someone owes you for your hurt. No one owes you anything, really. And the Lord promptly told me,

“Stef, if you feel you’re owed something, take it UP with me, don’t take it OUT on them.”

And so I did. And I continue to. And you know what? He can handle it. He can handle all of me and all of my mess. He is the only one gracious enough to patiently wait for me to play catch up. And for that I’m so so grateful!