Morning friends!

I was scheduled to link up with Shay and Erika for their Let’s Look Link Up. They are talking all about their Holiday Menus this month. Feel free to go check it out!

Instead of linking up I wanted to take a minute to just be real with you guys about something on my heart. Because this is where I struggle with blogging.

I understand that many of the bloggers have made a very good living doing what they do. And I admire that. I really do. This is no way is a bash to them. It’s just something that God is all over me with and I wanted to share it with you today.

I fear that we as a society are allowing ourselves to fall deeper in the comparison trap than ever before.

We scroll through social media and see all of these perfectly, staged, edited and beautiful pictures. The perfect family in matching Christmas pajamas, sitting in front of their beautifully decorated foyer with their King of Christmas Tree in the background and all of the expensive holiday decor displayed for all to see. And then the caption reads, “Oh you know, just having a fun family night decking the halls!”

Let me tell you what decking the halls looks like at my house. We decorate my tree from Walmart with ornaments I’ve collected through the years. They’ve come from Target, Walmart, Dollar General and gift exchanges. We normally watch Elf and back non homemade cookies.

You better believe my kids will make some kind of competition out of decorating the tree because they are my children. The winner will be happy and the loser will cry and whine and threaten to go upstairs. And then Joseph and I will probably lose our patience, yell things like “you need to learn how to lose” and “you can’t always win” and “don’t be a sore loser.” My OCD will force me to tell them to stop and let me just finished the rest of the tree and then we will sit and watch the rest of Elf, take a pic for the gram and then go to bed.

But when I go to post the picture, I’ll probably say something like, “Decked the halls with my amazing crew tonight. We had the best night doing all the Christmas things.”

And I stop and wonder….why? Why not just be real and say how it really went down?

And I truly believe it’s because society doesn’t want real. Real makes us uncomfortable. Real is looking someone in the face and saying, “today sucked” or “my kids are driving me bananas.” Real is showing all of our imperfections and messy lives. Real is hard.

But y’all. I need real. And in my heart, I know you do too.

We already struggle with trying to find our purpose. We try to figure out what big thing God has for our life. In our soul, we just want to leave our mark, leave a legacy for our family and make the most of the time God has given us.

But we got lost in the scroll of all the pretty pictures and assume that everyone else is killing it and here we are changing our 5th diaper, reheating our coffee and still sitting in our pajamas at 3:00 in the afternoon.

The world tells us that we can do anything we set our minds to do, that we control our own destiny, we are our own boss and we can get things done. But at the moment, we feel like we can barely make it through the day.

Jamie Ivey writes about this in her new book, You Be You. She says that the danger in these sayings is,

“that they can’t hold up under pressures of the world. Because, no, you’re not enough, girl. You ain’t got this. You can’t hustle enough, can’t get enough things done. You can’t do everything you set your mind on, no matter how badly you want to do it. You don’t control your own destiny, because the One who made you has the days of your life already numbered, planned, and written for you. And sometimes, life can be so hard that there aren’t enough bootstraps in the world to pull yourself up with.

We are only enough because Jesus is enough. The only good things coming from you and me are coming from the Father”

The world wants us to believe that we can do it all. It wants us to focus on all the pretty Instagram posts and kill ourselves financially, physically and psychologically trying to keep up.

It wants us to compare our real lives to the highlight reels of others.

And I am here today to remind you that not everything you see and read on the internet is true.

We need more real. We need more posts about how we are struggling with our kids or posts sharing our testimonies with others in hope that it will point people to Christ.

We need to learn to admire the pretty picture without wishing we had what is in the picture.

“I think we have been asking ourselves the wrong questions about our lives. Instead of asking, “Did I do enough today?” what if we asked ourselves, “Did I become more like Jesus today? Instead of asking, “Was I successful?” What if we asked, “Was I faithful?” Less about us and more about Him. Less about our accomplishments and more about our hearts. Less about my glory and more of His glory. Less about comparing our life to their lives, and more about comparing our faithfulness to His calling on our lives.”

Less me. More Him.

Psalm 26:2 says, “Test me, LORD, and try me, examine my heart and my mind;”

Where’s your heart today? Where’s your mind? Are you too busy focusing on the highlight reels of others instead of going to work with what’s right in front of you?

Don’t get lost in the scroll, girlfriend! Bring your focus back to Christ.

I hope this encouraged and challenged you today.

XO