970 Square Feet - by @emilylaney

Photo by Daggerquill (creative commons)

 My generation is growing up.  We’re buying houses, starting families, and furthering our careers in our grown up jobs.  It’s scary and exciting at the same time.  There are so many new developments, new challenges, and wonderful changes that come along with young adulthood.  Most of our friends are experiencing these changes.  They’re having children, embarking on new adventures, and adding stability to their lives.  It’s wonderful to see, but with these exciting developments and new experiences, I’ve found a risk that seems to rear it’s ugly head on occasion:

The risk of comparison.

It’s very easy for me to fixate on where I am in life, and to compare it to where others are.  I’ll use homes as an example.  Our little apartment in Sandy Springs is 970 square feet, and most of the time I love it.  I love that there is no more room for anything - No more furniture, no more clothes, no more random decorative things I don’t need.  If I buy more clothes, I need to get rid of clothes.  If I buy new books, I need to get rid of books.  It’s a fantastic sense of equilibrium.  It’s not terribly grown up apartment either.  Unframed paintings from Haiti and the Dominican Republic adorn our ‘dining room’.  The cheap apartment carpet is horribly stained (we have a dog, and there’s nothing I can do about it).  We have a three-foot wooden camel and a six-foot wooden giraffe. There is also a three-foot giraffe in the bedroom.  Their names are Bill, Kajo, and Keji.  Empty beverage bottles, knick-knacks,  and collector Starbucks mugs haphazardly add dimension above our 1980′s era kitchen cabinets, and my linen closet is a 20-dollar shelf from Target.  I’m not a terribly fancy person with fabulous taste, so I’ll probably always have my wooden animals and paintings that I bought off the side of the road in developing countries.

Even though I love our apartment and where we are, in my seasons of doubt I have found myself wondering what others think about our small simple space.  I have sneaked into comparison-land, thinking that maybe I’m not as ‘good’ as others.  We have friends who have big beautiful houses with gorgeous decor and updated features.  About 99% of the time I feel no iota of insecurity or comparison, but every once in awhile, I allow myself to slip into that pattern.  Am I good enough?  What do people think?  Should I do things differently to get approval?

Ultimately life is about embracing who you are and who God made you to be.  It’s okay if it doesn’t include cherry cabinets and immaculately decorated homes; it’s okay if it DOES include that.  Maybe your ‘thing’ isn’t a house.  Maybe it’s relationship status.  Maybe it’s where you are vocationally.  Ultimately, we have to stop comparing ourselves to others.  

You are where you are for a reason.  Whether you are 22 and buying your first house or 45 and living in a one bedroom apartment, we all need to embrace where we are.  Whether your career is going perfectly and you’re climbing the ladder to your dream job, or if you’ve just been laid off and have no idea what’s next, trust that God is leading you and that HE is your identity.

Comparison causes us to be envious and to take our eyes off of what God has for us, and where we are going next.  It’s a great way to completely derail yourself from the amazing path you’re on.  I’m choosing to be content in my 970 square feet, embracing where we are, striving to be a good neighbor, and practicing Biblical hospitality the best I can.  By focusing on the here and now, I can leverage the amazing place God has me for HIS glory.

What do you focus on?  
How have you compared yourself to others?  
What do you do when self doubt and seeds of envy sneak in?

¹⁰ Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings or of God, or am I trying to 

please people?  If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ."  

Galatians 1:10

Emily Laney is a social worker, educator and justice seeker. She has worked with vulnerable populations in the United States and abroad and loves to help startup nonprofits reach their goals. She is a Passion City Church door holder and leads a team of abolitionists at Not for Sale Georgia.  She loves her husband Brent and their rescue pup Biscuit. Sunsets and Sushi make her happy. 


You can connect with Emily on twitter @emilylaney or on her blog www.emilylaney.com

Being Impressive



Trying to climb the ladder while
remaining humble is a delicate balance.
 (photo credit: chefranden, creative commons)

Being Impressive 

By
Emily Walters Laney

I’ll never forget one of my senior seminar projects in college. We were supposed to write an excellent resume to assist with our upcoming job hunt. I wrote my resume, highlighting my work experience (pretty good for a college student) and my travel and volunteer experience (also really good for someone of my age). But when I got my rough draft back, my professor had written all over my resume, telling me to use more adjectives to tell potential employers how awesome I was! I had ignored that part of the assignment, simply because I had a very hard time describing myself as ‘exceptional’ or ‘excellent’. I just couldn’t do it! And out of all my undergraduate assignments, including complicated internship presentations, intimidating role plays, and fifteen page papers, I remember that blasted resume assignment as being one of the most difficult!

Life in the professional world can be a delicate balance. The world is competitive and if you want to find employment in many fields you have to know the right person, say the right things, and promote yourself in the right way. If you downplay your success in a job interview or resume, you more than likely won’t get the job. Believe me, I know. I really do. I’ve struggled with this balance for years, since that fated resume assignment, and have definitely not gotten interviews and jobs because of it. There is a ton of pressure to be the best and present your best self, all the time.

Why have I struggled? Because, on the flip side, as a Christian, you learn and read about humility and service as the true character of Jesus. Verses like 'Let someone else praise you, and not your own mouth' (Prov 27:2), 'God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble' (Prov 3:34) and many others are taught to us from an early age. If you want to be like Jesus, you need to be humble. Many of us are told repeatedly that in the standards of Jesus, we will never measure up and we fail daily.  That’s true, but I think many of us take that truth along with scripture about humility, and use it to beat ourselves up. I have read articles that women are much more prone to this than men. Many of us downplay our giftedness and can even display false humility by only seeing our own weaknesses, and not our strengths.

I’ve been doing this for years, and I’ve come to the point in my life where I realize that I need to stop. I have gifts, talents and passions that are unique to me. I have a long list of accomplishments and personal and professional references that will happily vouch for those accomplishments. I have worked hard and have done some really incredible things in my twenty eight years of life. I have nothing to be ashamed of. Here are five things I’m learning that I feel like many of us could benefit from:

1. God gifted you. This is pretty self explanatory but it bears repeating. You have unique talents and gifts, and your experiences are special and valuable. Speak that over yourself and embrace it.

2. Honesty IS the best policy: Don’t lie about your skills and accomplishments. That means that you shouldn’t elevate them, but you also shouldn’t downplay them or make them seem like they are ‘no big deal’. That’s not being honest either!

3. You really should be visible: I love this truth. My pastor, Louie, shared this in a training of all the door holders (volunteers) at my church a few weeks ago. We think we’re supposed to be humble and invisible, but in his words: “It’s hard to be invisible when you are being the light of the world”. When I see a fellow Christian succeed in the mainstream, it’s encouraging and empowering for me. I see fellow believers who are well respected in their fields, and as a young professional who is also a person of faith, that encourages me immensely. It’s okay to be visible when we are giving God glory.

4. Being proud of your gifts and being prideful are two different things. Be confident and secure in what you are good at. Know what those gifts are, and be ready to share them if asked. That’s not being prideful. The sin of pride is putting yourself on a pedestal and placing your gifts above God. It’s knocking others down with the purpose of building yourself up. We don’t need to get the two confused.

5. Someone has to do it, and that person may be YOU! God wants to use you, but you have to be willing to let him. If you are constantly putting yourself down you may miss the blessing that God has laid out for you.

You really are awesome. Embrace that awesomeness, but don’t walk over others to get what you want. Be humble and let others praise you, but be honest in your accomplishments. Everyone has amazing talents to bring to the table, many of us just have to learn how to embrace those talents with a balance of confidence and humility. That means that we shouldn’t put ourselves down, but we also shouldn’t go around putting others down and solely talking about how awesome we are either! I think sometimes I need to work on both of those extremes, the balance of humility and honest confidence can be difficult to manage.

So embrace all the things that make you impressive my friends. You are a treasure and a gift, don’t ever forget that!





Emily Laney is a social worker, educator and justice seeker. She has worked with vulnerable populations in the United States and abroad and loves to help startup nonprofits reach their goals. She is a Passion City Church door holder and leads a team of abolitionists at Not for Sale Georgia.  She loves her husband Brent and their rescue pup Biscuit. Sunsets and Sushi make her happy. 

You can connect with Emily on twitter @emilylaney or on her blog www.emilylaney.com
Emily Walters Laney, LMSW

social innovator and aspiring world-changer 

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