The thankful bee is wildly excited to bring Kristen Borchgrevink to you as the second guest author in our Queen Bee Series. I originally met Kristen through my children’s involvement in high school music and theatre. She is a talented and beautiful soul. So, grab a mug of hot apple cider or that pumpkin spice latte. Settle in and exhale, dear friends. And enjoy the read. How to live the real you: Undisputed origin. You will be encouraged!
Undisputed origin.
by Kristen Borchgrevink
Wipes tears away, rolls up her sleeves.
Let’s go.
Living authentically. If you grew up in youth group like I did, you have probably heard the phrase ‘we want to live authentically’. This has been a goal for my life for as long as I can remember. I tell people all the time, “I just want to lead from a place of authenticity. I want to be 100% real with you…”. I’m sure I feel that way in the moment.
But do I really want that?
I have recently gone through a lot of emotional stress and change. Those of you who know me personally know that I’ve been carrying some pretty heavy burdens. Honestly, I am not doing a very good job. I have been having trouble processing and being real with myself. I slap a smile on my face and might as well put an auto response on my text messages when someone asks me how I am doing. “I’m doin’ ok! Thanks for asking, but how are you?”
Deflect.
Don’t answer the question.
Don’t get too deep.
They’ll see how broken you are.
Why is that bad though? Why do we constantly strive to appear better than we are? And why do we constantly keep people at arms length to hide what’s actually going on in our lives?
Because I want people to see a better side of me than I see of myself.
Let me give you a little background for context…
It all started with the NSale.
I have recently tried to break into the influencer occupation. I love blogging, and I love fashion. And I would love to be apart of that. However, the past month made me question everything.
It all started with the NSale.
For those of you who do not follow fashion bloggers, the NSale is a super prestigious sale that Nordstrom does every August. They have a hierarchy of dates for shopping based on a person’s level of spending, store credit card, or level of influence on social media. Following all of these incredible bloggers has made a really ugly side of me appear. I am going to open up and be honest about it. I would rather sweep it under the rug and hide it, but I think it is important to shed light on this though.
Comparison. Envy. Sadness.
Watching these bloggers vlog their Nsale experience set off a sadness inside me that I haven’t been able to understand. I watched these STUNNING, FLAWLESS and INFLUENTIAL women walk into fitting rooms with racks of shiny, new, expensive and exclusive clothes to try on for their followers. Their hair is beautiful, their bodies appear perfect and they are drinking champagne while trying on all these beautiful pieces. Doesn’t get much better than that!
I love clothes. The first thing I buy with my fun money is clothing. It is interesting to me how quietly comparison sneaks into our lives. As I watched these women buy all of these clothes, I kept looking at my budget. I watched them demonstrate the fit of the jeans, and I looked about my waist in the mirror. I watched them style pieces with the new “must have sneaker” that “goes with everything”, and I instantly wanted to get rid of the shoes I already bought for fear they might not be good enough this season. Honestly, I spent way too long on social media watching these stories and posts and trying to find ways to justify spending all this money to look like these women. It’s after all what I want to do!! If I want to be influential, THIS is what works in the current culture.
Trust me, in retrospect, I hear how irrational I sound.
Sadness like a dark cloud
A sadness came over me like a dark cloud. Then the lie that has followed me through my entire life.
I will never be good enough.
I say all of this to bring attention to the root of all of that garbage – Comparison.
Comparison is a liar and a thief
Comparison will steal any joy and happiness that you have. In other words, comparison is a liar and a thief. It makes you work twice as hard for something that might not even be what you actually want. It causes you to doubt every calling on your own life. And it causes fear and anxiety to reign in your head instead of love and peace.
Comparison slowly creeps in and steals your ability to shine and forces you to focus on the light in others while slowly dimming your own. We compare ourselves to others in every aspect of life. We compare our timeline with other people, even though we serve the Author of time.
As Steven Furtik says, we compare our behind the scenes with other people’s highlight reels. We compare talent, looks, success, parenting and our marriages. We compare bank accounts and jobs as well as how well behaved our kids are. How many followers on Instagram we have. How fit we are. What is fascinating is that we are trying to prove something about our life to someone who isn’t paying attention. They aren’t paying attention because they are trying to prove something to someone else… it goes on and on.
It’s about believing – not proving
Comparison will make you think you have to prove your worth instead of believing your worth.
When you do not believe in who God has called you to be, you convince yourself to perform and prove your value.
All of this is coming from someone who is struggling with this right now! So if you see me performing my life instead of living it, call me out, people!
Comparison manipulates your mind into performing and keeps you from actually living.
Comparison makes you believe you have something to prove instead of resting in who you are.
Because the reality is, when you realize who your creator is…. you realize you have nothing to prove.
You don’t need to prove your worth
So what makes someone compare themselves to other people? For me personally it stems from a deep rooted place of insecurity. Somewhere along the way I have bought into the lie that who I am at my core is not enough. I feel as though I am inadequate. Maybe it stems from the performance world, constantly comparing and competing, you always have this unattainable goal.
Here is something you may not know about me – I am a word nerd. I always look up the definitions to words because I find it fascinating that I don’t know the real meaning behind some of the words I use. So I looked up the word ‘inadequate.’
Inadequate: “Lacking the quality required, insufficient for a purpose”.
That definition hit me like a ton of bricks. This, my friends, is the root of so many of our problems in life. OK, maybe just mine but I have a feeling I am not alone in this. We all are born with a longing to have purpose, a reason for being brought into this crazy world. As we grow up we are bruised and broken along the way by other bruised and broken people. (Never an excuse to hurt others, but most of the time hurting people hurt people.)
We doubt our Creator
We are all just searching and longing to have a purpose. When you allow the world to influence the way you view yourself, the lies take root into your soul. Suddenly a beautiful masterpiece (Ephesians 2:10 “For we are God’s workmanship…”) starts to crack at the seams. We start to doubt the Potter’s intentions and doubt the beauty of His handiwork. We forget the time that our Creator spent forming our souls and our hearts.
When we look through those broken lenses, our self-perception shifts and skews. Those lenses lie and tell us we need to look, think and be a certain way. We forget that the Creator had our purpose in mind when he fastened our hearts. We doubt our value because we have unbelief in our hearts. And we don’t believe that our Creator made us the right way, or maybe, just maybe…. He made a mistake?
Oof, don’t you dare let that lie take root. He doesn’t make mistakes.
Snakes don’t yell. They whisper.
In the Garden of Eden, it was a snake that tempted Adam and Eve. That is interesting to me. When I think about the way a snake would speak, I imagine that a snake’s voice wouldn’t be very loud. It would be quiet, right up in your ear, whispering and piercing. I think that is why we don’t notice the lies right away. We get so used to the negative self-talk in our own heads we can’t tell a difference. All the whispers and all the lies start to blend together and soon enough it will start sounding like truth. Those lies start sprouting little roots that start traveling and growing until they have taken root deep into your soul and into your heart and we don’t know who we are anymore.
Suddenly those whispers become the only thing we can hear… like white noise.
No wonder the truth is silenced.
Be careful little ears what you hear
Now that I have two impressionable daughters of my own, I think very often about what influences they take in. Anyone who grew up in Sunday School might remember a little song that said, “ Oh, be careful little eyes what you see, be careful little ears what you hear.” Maybe it was just MY mom. 😂 That song haunts me now that I am a mom because what we take into our ears and eyes has a direct affect on how we feel about ourselves.
I hear you. “But Kristen, what does this have to do with comparison and living authentically??”
Wow, I am so glad you asked!
When we listen to the lies and block out the truth our security in who we are gets shaken. We start to question who we are and why are we here. The unbelief creates a void that we try to fill with quick fixes and easy solutions. We numb the pain or distract ourselves and shove it down long enough for the next lie starts knocking on our hearts. When I feel myself start to drown my life boat has always been to go back to the beginning.
The Origin
Once again nerdy Kristen makes an appearance for this paragraphs episode of…. “What’s That Definition!“
Did you know that authenticity means to have undisputed origin.
You better hang on, I’m about to preach.
Undisputed origin. When you are living in authenticity you are living with an understanding that you have an undisputed origin. Or in Kristen’s translation, you know where you come from. When you know who you are the rest of the lies cannot stick. Those lies are disputed. They hold no weight, no validity and no value. There is no argument to be made. The line is drawn. We are striving so desperately to find purpose yet we forget that we were meticulously formed in our mother’s womb.
How do I know that?
The Truth according to our Creator
13 For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.
- I am a workmanship (Ephesians 2:10).
- I am loved by my God (Isaiah 54:10).
- Beautiful (Psalm 45:11).
- Redeemed (Ephesians 1:7).
- Worthy (Romans 5:6-8).
- More precious than rubies (Proverbs 31:10).
- Forgiven (Romans 8:1).
- Valuable (Matthew 6:26).
[SIDE NOTE from the thankful bee: Valuable. As in, worth more than many sparrows! And that is a recurring theme here at the thankful bee. Check out “The Sparrow and the Surfer Dude” HERE.]
- Chosen (1 Peter 2:9).
- Strong (Psalm 18:35).
And the list goes on and on and on…
Your value is undisputed. Rest.
Here’s the thing… when we believe who we are, the lies of the world and the lies of the enemy hold no weight. Our value is undisputed. When we are our real authentic selves, just who God created us to be, nothing else matters. We are who we need to be! We have purpose. Knowing who we are is made easier when we know Whose we are.
When we belong, when we are accepted and loved, then our hearts can find rest. There is no need to strive, to compare, to alter, to be perfect, to try constantly to be who everyone else wants us to be…. we rest. We rest knowing we are already who we were meant to be. And we rest easy knowing that we have a purpose.
Someone else’s story and journey is not our journey. For example, we do not know what storms the Lord has walked through with those people. We don’t see the sweat and tears behind the perfectly posed photos. We don’t see the nights of little sleep working to reach their goal. And we don’t see the pain of comparison that they are dealing with, too.
Similarly, we don’t see the argument and the melt down that family had right before that perfect family picture was taken. We don’t see the temper tantrum that two-year- old had before their mama bribed them to take a cute “mommy and me” photo. Likewise, we don’t see the immense pressure our favorite music artists are under. We don’t see the list of rejection that Broadway star had before they won their Tony. We just don’t see it.
The pressure is off
When the truth sinks in, suddenly every day you can become a more beautiful creation in the Potter’s hands. The pressure is off!
A vase doesn’t compare itself to another vase. It serves its purpose knowing it holds the beauty of the flowers within.
The moon doesn’t get jealous of the sun’s time to shine. Instead, it confidently waits knowing night time is coming.
We were created for greatness. We were created to shine.
Stop dimming your light by comparing yourself to others. Shine bright and live in authenticity.
Live the real you: Undisputed origin.
About Kristen
Kristen started blogging in March of this year. She is a wife to husband, Peter and a mama to her two beautiful daughters, Elliana and Shaylee. She has her Bachelors in Vocal music from Lee University and enjoys Musical theater as well as leading worship! Kristen has also been music directing local middle school and high school theater programs and teaching privately on the side.
She recently started blogging about her love of affordable fashion, the craziness of motherhood, home, life and her relationship with Jesus. She says that she is surviving the (mama)hood with coffee, Target runs and a little bit of sarcasm! You can read more from Kristen on her blog, Mindfully Mended Mama.
The inspiration continues next weekend with the third installment of our monthly-long Queen Bee Series. Please plan to join us October 17th as the thankful bee welcomes our next guest author, Sandy Thornton, from The Book of Thornton. Sandy’s true tale about “that time she got conned in church” is a story you don’t want to miss!
