But as I read more, turning page after page, her perfectly-written words began to taunt me. The voice in my head whispered, “You’ll never write like she does. There’s a reason people read what she writes, and there’s a reason they’ll never read you.”
Her mastery of our craft made my fumblings feel like failures. Her thousands of followers and multiple best-sellers felt like goals that would always remain out of my reach. Her successes felt like omens predicting my demise.
That other woman? She, too, felt like my enemy.
*****
To be a woman is to live at war. I suppose that’s true for men, too, isn’t it? It’s true for every human.
To be a human is to live at war, constantly fighting battles big and small.
A battle over your emotions. A battle against weight gain. A battle for the promotion. A battle against time.
But a battle against someone else? That’s not a battle we’re supposed to be fighting. The other person? The other woman? She is not your enemy.
It’s so easy to get caught up in Satan’s tricks, looking at other people with suspicion and contempt. It’s tempting to think it’s us against them, their way against ours. It’s so natural to believe only one of us can succeed, and if someone else is, then we aren’t.
But the reality is not the thing we’re tempted to believe, and it’s not what comes so naturally and easily. The reality is that the other woman is not your enemy.
The reality is that she should be an ally.
Because here’s the truth God commands us to remember but Satan begs us to forget: we are not fighting against flesh and blood. We are all fighting against powers we can’t see, powers in this present darkness (Ephesians 6:12). We have an enemy, and it’s not each other. Right after this verse, we are told to put on the full armor of God. But I love what it says right before – “draw your strength from the Lord and from his mighty power” (10).
Too many of us are trying to draw strength from being better than our imagined enemy. We’re trying to draw strength from being the best, the prettiest, the most successful, the skinniest. We’re trying to draw strength away from another person, stealing her strength to make up for our own lack.
A person’s strength will never be enough.
Being better than someone else will never truly satisfy.
Playing comparison games will never bring peace to our souls.
We have a real enemy – but it’s not the woman whose beauty mocks you on Facebook. It’s not the woman who received the promotion you thought you earned. And it’s not the woman who seems to do everything better than you.
The real enemy is the one who whispers every lie. It’s the one who deflects the attention from himself onto someone else. It’s the one who wants you to forget about him so you’ll continue to live in defeat.
The real enemy is the liar, the thief, and the destroyer.
It’s not the other woman.
***
This article originally appeared at JennieGScott.com.
