They Compared It to Somebody Else's Mother

Tonight we are making a pan of baked chicken with rice, and the gravy is made in the same pan, so there is one thing to wash.

Here is the whole method in one paragraph. Heat the oven to 400. Salt four chicken thighs well and brown them skin down in an oven proof pan for six minutes, then take them out. In the fat, cook a chopped onion for six minutes, then stir in two spoons of flour and cook it for a full minute. Pour in two and a half cups of broth slowly, scraping the bottom, until it thickens into gravy. Add a cup of rice, stir it through, put the chicken back on top skin up, and put the whole pan in the oven uncovered for thirty five minutes, until the rice has drunk the gravy and the chicken is browned and cooked all the way through with no pink at the bone. Let it stand five minutes. It feeds four, it costs a few dollars, and the gravy under the rice is the entire point.

Now, the reason I am writing is not the chicken.

It is a sentence a child said about three weeks ago.

It was about a friend's house. Something like: they had that thing at Marcus's, his mom makes it with the sauce on. That is all. No comparison intended, no criticism, no thought behind it at all. Children report the world.

And you said something normal back, and the conversation moved on within four seconds.

And you have been in a competition ever since with a woman you have never met.

The verse that calls this out by name

There is a line in Second Corinthians where Paul names exactly this behavior and calls it foolish, and he is not being harsh, he is being kind.

For we dare not make ourselves of the number, or compare ourselves with some that commend themselves: but they measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise. (2 Corinthians 10:12, King James Version)

Read the last clause. Are not wise. Not: are sinful. Not: are proud. He says the activity itself is unintelligent, which is a very different criticism and a much more useful one.

And the reason it is unintelligent is in the middle of the sentence: measuring themselves by themselves. The whole system is circular. You have no access to the other person's actual life, so you are comparing your inside to an outside you invented from one sentence a nine year old said.

You are running a comparison with no data in it, and God has never once ranked one mother against another. Second Corinthians 10:12 calls the whole activity unwise rather than wicked, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes that off a page and puts it into a kitchen at half past five.

You have not been found wanting anywhere, and heaven has never once kept a table of who cooks better. It is written that comparing themselves among themselves, they are not wise, and the same Spirit who breathed that line is standing in the room where the gravy is thickening.

What you actually know about that woman

Now let me lay out how little there is to work with here, because seeing it plainly will do more than reassurance.

You know that on one occasion she made something with a sauce on it. That is the entire evidence base.

You do not know what she cooks on a Tuesday. You do not know whether she was having a good week or whether that was the only thing she made all month. You do not know whether she is tired, or whether her children complain, or whether she stood at her own counter that night thinking about a sentence somebody said about your house.

You are not behind anybody, and God has never once assessed a person against a life He knows they cannot see. Second Corinthians 10:12 names the whole comparison as unwise rather than wicked, and the Holy Spirit is the one who ends a competition only one person entered.

And here is the thing that would end this in a second if you could see it: she is almost certainly doing exactly the same thing. Somewhere, about somebody. Everybody is.

One remark about a friend's dinner is not a verdict on a mother.

You are not behind anybody, and God has never once assessed a person against a life He knows they cannot see. The passage names the circularity of the whole exercise, and the Spirit of God is the one who ends a competition that only one person entered.

You have been carrying a rival who does not know she is one, and that is an exhausting thing to do for three weeks. Second Corinthians 10 is written by a man refusing to enter a comparison that everybody around him was running, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that refusal possible in a kitchen.

Cook your own thing well

Here is the practical part, and it is deliberately not about learning that sauce.

Cook your own dish, and cook it properly, and do the parts of it that people skip.

Brown the chicken before it goes in. Cook the flour for a full minute so the gravy does not taste raw. Scrape the bottom of the pan, because everything that matters is stuck to it. Let it stand five minutes at the end.

You are able to do your own thing well tonight, and God has never once required a person to match somebody else to be doing it right. It is written that they measuring themselves by themselves are not wise, and the Spirit of God is the one who puts a woman back in her own kitchen.

That is the answer, and it is not a competitive answer. It is that your food gets good through attention rather than through novelty, and attention is entirely within your control, and it is invisible to everybody except the people eating it.

And if you do want to try the thing with the sauce sometime, do it because it sounds good, not because a nine year old accidentally started a war.

You are able to do your own thing well tonight, and God has never once required a person to match somebody else to be doing it right. Second Corinthians 10:12 refuses the comparison entirely rather than winning it, and the Spirit of God is the one who puts a woman back in her own kitchen instead of somebody else's.