Comparison is the thief of joy

 Comparison.  It's a bitch.

Michael received a mission call a few days ago.  He wanted to go foreign.  I think he partly wanted to go to another country because that sounds exciting, but really he wanted to go somewhere "cool" because every single one of his friends is going foreign.  Not a single one is staying in the US.

His assignment is...  Arizona.  Not only is he staying in the states, but he's going to a place that is a weekend road trip away.  He was disappointed and I understood.  It will be fine, and he'll love it, but can we all just stop blowing smoke up his ass and trying to convince him that going to the state next door is the same as his buddy that opened a call to Peru on the same day?  And therein lies the problem.  IF all of his friends had gone to different place in the US, I'm guessing that Arizona wouldn't have looked to disappointing.

Once upon a time, I had an expectation of what yesterday would be like.  The day that my oldest son opened a mission call.  You know what I didn't picture?  The fact that I would be worried about how my husband would feel.

Do you know how strange it is to have a husband that thinks the church isn't true, and also have a son that is getting ready to spend the next two years of his life asking people to join that church?  Do you know what is even weirder?  Trying to help my son get ready to go to the temple and make eternal covenants with God, when at this very moment, my husband has decided that those covenants are silly?

That puts me in the most "interesting" position I've ever been in, and it's definitely not a position that I ever imagined I'd be in.

That's where the comparison comes.

Yesterday was a day that a younger Krista had thought about and had expectations for.  When I compare those expectations with what reality was..  That is where the disappointment comes.

And if that wasn't a hard enough situation...

That day, I got Michael's girlfriend's graduation invitation and immediately messaged her mom to tell her I got it, and tell her how cute it was.  I also mentioned that the envelope had several postmarks on it and the address had been circled which confirmed that it had probably originally been delivered to our neighbor who has a similar address, and often gets our mail.  After a short conversation, it quickly became apparent to me that girlfriend had told, not just her mom, but Michael, that I had either ripped the card up and thrown it away, or I was hiding it from Michael.  I also realized that her mom, one of my closest friends, had maybe believed this too.

Ouch.

Realizing that girlfriend immediately jumped to thinking the worst about me, was hurtful and lets me know exactly what she really thinks about me.  But taking it a step further, and using her inaccurate assumptions to make my own kid and close friend believe those things, was even more hurtful.

How hard would it have been for any of those people to text me and say, "Hey.  Did you get the graduation announcement?"

This is the thing that has been the hardest for me over the last year.  Girlfriend is not the only person that has done this.  Friends that I thought loved me, have seen me acting differently, and immediately thought the worst of me.  

I hope that the biggest lesson/gift I get from this experience...  Is grace for others.  I hope that one day when I see a friend act different than she has before, I don't immediately judge her and assume the worst about her.  I hope that my first assumption is that she is probably struggling with something and the last thing I do is something that adds to the load she is already carrying.