How many times have you been scrolling through Facebook or Instagram, and there you see it. It is always before you on social media. You can’t get away from it. The more that you stay on any of these platforms, the more difficult it becomes to not develop some pretty intense feelings. You just wish that you had never seen it. It just makes it worse for you.

So what exactly is it? I’m so glad that you asked. Time to explain myself now.

Let me see if this sounds familiar to you. You are scrolling through Facebook or Instagram minding your own business, and there you see it over and over. That’s none other than all of the perfect photos with perfect families with perfect marriages with perfect hair with perfect clothes with perfect children with perfect homes with perfect vacation photos with perfect everything. Then you begin to assess your life and begin to realize that you don’t have any of these perfect things. Your real life is far from any of these visuals that these photos are portraying. There must be something wrong with you because you don’t have perfect anything. Your life is on the edge of falling apart, and you’re just trying to stay afloat. Your life is so complex and complicated that you need your own reality tv show. There must be something wrong with you because you just know that no one lives the messy and broken life that you live. Your life looks nothing like these photos. So what’s wrong with you?

Now let me clarify myself. In no way am I saying that we should stop posting photos on social media. There’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, I enjoy keeping up with my friends this way, but the problem comes when I take my focus off from what is really important and put it on something that makes me doubt every part of me and my life. The issue is that I have decided to turn all of the focus more inward onto myself and what I don’t have or haven’t accomplished instead of just observing the photo. So don’t stop posting.

We must stop this horrible comparison game. We have to realize that no one’s life is perfect no matter how it appears. We all go through difficult things, even the people in those photos. There isn’t one of these people that haven’t or aren’t facing something that is far from that perfect photo. That photo is one moment in time of the pretty, posed, and polished people that you are looking at. It’s just an extra, extra, super small, mini chapter of the very large book that they are writing with their life. Looks can be so deceiving!

Everyday you make a choice between being thankful for all of your life (even those places you’d rather not revisit) and throwing a pity party about what’s not right in your life. So instead of allowing the ugly monsters of jealousy and envy begin to creep in, nip it in the bud. Your life may not look the way that you want it to, but remember that God’s not done with you yet! You can’t judge your whole life against that one moment in time photo that you just happened to see.

So stop with all of the perfect garbage! No one lives that way, but Satan sure does want you to think so. There are no perfect photos because there are no perfect people. Choose God’s truth that you are fearfully and wonderfully made – even in all of your imperfections. Your life is beautiful even if it seems so far from that. Every part is beautiful because it’s just a small piece of the puzzle just waiting to be put together to form a beautiful picture. Your picture isn’t showing perfection, but a beautiful picture of God’s grace and mercy. Now that’s a true picture of perfection in God’s eyes, and that’s the only picture that matters!