1.4 I Hope She Wins

What happens when someone else gets the thing you wanted?

It’s easy to celebrate people when their success doesn’t bump up against our own disappointment. But what about when it does?

In this episode, Nicole talks competitive dance, the scoreboards we create for ourselves and our kids, a painful confession from her years of infertility, and why someone else’s success was never evidence of your failure. Because maybe the goal isn’t to stop wanting things for ourselves—it’s learning to genuinely cheer when someone else gets them.

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Oh, dance competitions. They've taught me a lot about life. First, I'm gonna say this, and if you're a dance parent, you know. I know you're gonna get me. Chick-fil-A nuggets and copious amounts of Sour Patch Kids absolutely count as a balanced meal when they're eaten out of a box on the floor of a dressing room, right? Am I right? You know I'm right. Second, glitter is explosive. You don't clean it up. We all know that. You just accept that it belongs to your family now, and I'm pretty sure there's still some in my car from 2024. But one of my personal favorites is this: people are weird. I mean, let's just face it, people are weird, but guess what? So am I. I'm included in that. Give us a few hundred sequins and some shiny rhinestones, some sleep deprivation, and a score sheet, and suddenly human nature is fully on display. I've seen some of the sweetest moments at dance competitions, kids cheering for each other, moms helping kids who aren't even theirs, teachers losing their minds from the audience when one of their dancers absolutely nails it. But I've seen the other side, too, and after enough weekends sitting in those auditoriums, I started realizing this: there's actually two competitions happening. There's one on the stage, and then there's one that nobody announces, the one you're not gonna find anywhere printed on that program Hey, thanks so much for being here, and welcome to The Things We Don't Say. I'm Nicole. If you're like me, most of us move through our days without realizing how much is actually happening beneath the surface. I get it. I get the conversations, the disappointments, a laugh around the dinner table, or any other moment that seems ordinary. But here's the thing, there's something deeper, and it's time we take a closer look. Around here, we tell stories, we ask better questions, and we look for purpose and humor and hope hidden in ordinary, everyday life, because sometimes the smallest moments end up changing us the most. So let's talk about the things we don't say. Okay, before we get into that second competition though, I need to tell you something. I'm sitting here recording this on Monday night. This episode comes out in 11 hours, and doing something that totally screams I am not a professional podcaster, I went to plug in my microphone, and it did not show up. And I started freaking out. I was like, "Oh, my gosh, this is supposed to come out in 11 hours, and my microphone's not even working." And so, of course, I ChatGPT, "Why is my microphone not even working?" Um, come to find out my headphones were plugged in but not my USB cord. So, uh, give me some grace. I'm still new at this, and you know what? You probably never would've even realized that. But what this tells us is Things We Don't Say has officially been out in the world for not even a week, and you guys, the number of you who have reached out to me via text or email, um, I had some DMs of people who were like, "I was crying in that first episode." Um, guys, like, I was crying when I got your message. People who have shared it on their own pages or sent it to a friend or posted in their stories, guys, thank you so, so much. Seriously. Like, some of you have gone so far out of your way to support this little thing that I just n- like jumped off a cliff for pretty much and trusted God with. I like... Goodness gracious. I- I've noticed it, okay? And there have been moments this week where I just sat there thinking, "Are you kidding me? People are actually listening." Gosh. But here's what's kinda hilarious about recording this particular episode, even 11 hours before it releases. It's... Do you know what I've also had access to all week? Um, the numbers. And, like, totally guilty, I think, like, on that first day, I was not expecting it, but I opened my email and, and it just like, "Congratulations. You have 100 downloads." And I was like, "What?" But the rankings. How did one episode Do that, right? Like one episode compared to another episode, and who shared it and who didn't, and how many people followed. You know what it all sounds like? It sounds like a scoreboard. And of course, this is the episode that I was riding this week. It's been a really good reminder to me that I can be unbelievably grateful for every single person who's listening, and I am, but I can also do it without asking those numbers to tell me whether this was worth doing. Because before I ever hit publish, I already decided who I was doing this for, and we'll come back to that, right? I, I talked a little bit about it in the last episode, but we'll come back to it. Okay, so I wanna jump back to that other scoreboard that I was talking about, though. You know, I've spent three seasons as a competitive dance mom, and I know there's a lot of veterans out there, with way more years under their belt, so I'm not claiming expert status here by any means. Um, but, but I really... I wonder if you'll agree with me on this. There's always two competitions that are happening. To be honest, I'm not really sure which one I paid more attention to over the past three years, but I'll say this. What I did notice is that it had absolutely nothing to do with the dancers, and once I noticed it there, I started seeing it everywhere. When I say that I started seeing it everywhere, I really mean I saw it. I see it. I experienced it this past week. I see it everywhere. So think about it. You won't find many people walking around with a score sheet in their hand, but I bet if you asked, they'd be able to tell you who's ahead. They'd know who got the promotion, whose business took off, who bought the house, whose marriage looks really, really good right now, who got pregnant. That one was always, always hard for me, and to be honest, sometimes it still is. Who got picked, who won, and, hey, if you're thinking, "I don't do that," you might be right, and I can trust you with that., Or maybe you just haven't noticed it yet. Um, something inside of us starts doing the math, and is it matching the way that it should be for our hearts, right? Sometimes it's nothing more than a little shift inside of us when someone tells us really good news, and we're so happy for them, but also something in us starts doing the math. If you listened to last week's episode, you may remember me saying that someone else's success has nothing to do with our own, and I meant it then and I mean it even more now because I've been thinking about it a lot. And I'm gonna be honest here, I struggle. If someone else's success really has nothing to do with mine, why does it bother me so much that I lose sleep over it? I'm, I'm gonna tell you vulnerably and honestly, sometimes it bothers me so much that my stomach turns upside down and my heart just starts beating out of my chest. You know what feeling I'm talking about? That pressure. Why can I be perfectly content with my life, and then start seeing something happening in someone else's life that makes me start questioning my own? The struggle is real. I can love you. I like to think that I'm really good at that. I can want great things for you, I can pray for you, and sometimes still have this tiny voice show up when you get the thing that I wanted. Like, if I'm honest, sometimes it's not even something I wanted until you had it. It's so ridiculous I could scream. It's, it's really dumb, and I know how dumb it sounds, but suddenly there's a scoreboard where there wasn't one five minutes ago. If you've been around for any length of time, you've probably heard the quote, "Comparison is the thief of joy." But I actually think that comparison gets even more powerful when we convince ourselves that someone else's gain is our loss. If I believe there's only so much to go around, your success doesn't just become something I see. It's as though He might have enough purpose for you, but somehow He runs short when He gets to me. And I don't actually believe that, but sometimes I live like I do. And then the risk that comes is my encouragement, my encouragement, like I have little quotes around it. Maybe I should start filming myself. Should I do that? No, I, I can't be that vulnerable. Okay. The risk that comes with my, quote, "encouragement" quietly turning into a competition, and then ultimately the loss of authenticity. It's when your good news starts feeling like commentary on my life. It's when another person's story becomes an answer to a question it was never supposed to answer. What does your life say about mine? And I think that's the lie underneath so much of this, that somehow your win changes my story, but it doesn't actually. And quite honestly, why would I even want you to have the story God is writing in me? That's something I don't wanna share. And I-- You know what else I don't like to share? I don't like to share food. But I definitely don't want to share the story that God is writing in my life. The question I'm trying to figure out isn't simply how do I stop comparing. It's this: How do I celebrate yours without feeling like it takes anything away from mine? Because I don't just want to get better at ignoring comparison, I want to get really, really good at celebrating what God is doing in your life to write your unique story, and I think that's where the difference is. Actually, I was talking to Hannah about this a couple days ago. It's something we've talked about with her for years, especially as a soloist in competitive dance. The goal was never for her to dance for another person. We have always said that. The goal was for her to dance for the Lord. And there's a verse in the Book of Colossians that we've read to her, and we've prayed it over her over and over and over again, and it's this: "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart as working for the Lord, not for human." Um, and the word that I've always emphasized to her is whatever. Whatever you do. So if she's gonna dance, she needs to dance with everything she has for Him, not anybody else. And if she's gonna play field hockey, she's gonna play with everything that she has. And if you're going to be kind to someone, you put them above yourself, and you use every bit of your heart, little lady. And so I was, so I was having this conversation with her, and back to dance, mostly because her solo was an individual sport that highlighted the opportunity to compare or the opportunity to encourage. And so we tell her, "Honey, I want you to use those gifts that God gave you. You need to work hard. You need to practice. Your goal is to get better, but not necessarily better than someone else. Better than yourself 10 minutes ago or last week. So go out there and absolutely nail that double that you've been working on, and do all of it in a way that's gonna glorify God." And so we would tell her a trophy's wonderful, a great score, it's very exciting. Nailing that double was absolutely worth celebrating. But none of those things could ultimately tell her whether what she did had value. Think about it. She could dance for those judges. She could dance for her teachers, for her team, for the parents that were sitting in the auditorium, but at the end of the day, she was given a choice to decide whose approval ultimately mattered most. And that's why we've always called it dancing for an audience of one. Now, I also wanna say it's a really confusing concept when you're only five or six years old, because there's literally a table of judges that is sitting right in front of you holding their score sheets. It's like, "Mom, I'm pretty sure I know exactly who I'm dancing for. They're sitting right there," right? But this is the part that I hope we're teaching her. You are really dancing for an audience of one, and you can honor God when you win, but you can also honor God when someone else wins. Her score doesn't change who she's dancing for. Her trophy didn't take anything away from what she just gave. Her success doesn't diminish anyone's worth. That's important. And if someone is being told otherwise, those words are not from God. And so we've tried to make this the, like, bigger than dance, right? If you've ever, happened to pull up behind our car while we're unloading our kids at dance studio or soccer or school or just about any place else, even when they're running into, like, their children's environment at church, we say, "Shine Jesus' light." And we say it all the time. Actually, I'm gonna, like, go on a tangent here just a minute. So, um, so Robbie came home from school today, and I forgot, but, like, even before school started, there was a order form to order school spirit stuff. So Robbie goes to kindergarten at school. The twins are homeschooled here. Well, of course, the twins get really jealous because Robbie comes home with school spirit stuff today. So they're like, "Mom, we need a T-shirt." So we named our homeschool today, and I am going to order them some matching T-shirts and some long denim skirts so we can be that homeschool family, which if you know me, we are absolutely not that homeschool family. No judgment. But the name of our homeschool that we decided was Lamplight Home Academy. Is that right? I think that's what it is Lamplight. Lamplight Home Academy. Yeah, I think that's what it is. Okay, anyways, the point is we chose light because that's something we always say, "Shine Jesus' light." That's what we want them to understand. Jesus said, "Let your light shine before others so that we can glorify our Father in heaven." And I think that's something we really want our girls to understand. You don't have to put Jesus' name in a dance for people to see Jesus in the dancer. They can see Him in the way that they work with all of their hearts, in the way that we choose to treat people, in the way that we respond when we win, and maybe even more importantly, in the way that we respond when someone else does. Sure, we want the best for our kids. Of course we do. Whether you're a teacher or a parent or a coach, we want the best for the kids that are in our lives. I wanted Hannah to nail that double because that was her goal, and I wanted her team to win to see the payoff and the hard work they'd put into everything. I want my kids to get picked and succeed and be really, really good at the things that they love, but I also want them to learn humility. Wanting the best is very different from needing to be the best. As a six-year-old or as a forty-five-year-old, there's nothing wrong with wanting to do your best. The trouble starts when doing your best isn't enough anymore and when it becomes that we need to be the best. Instead, the goal starts saying this, "I need to be better than you," or, "I need more than you." That's when the scoreboard starts changing us because now success isn't just something I can celebrate, it's information about me. You got the spot, so what does that say about me? Or you got into that college, so where does that leave me? Your business took off. Am I behind? You got pregnant. Why haven't I? Your marriage looks great. What does that say about mine? And suddenly, I'm not just watching your life, I'm using your life to measure mine. And if I'm being really thoughtful about the way that this shows up in my own life, I have to look at what I'm teaching not only my kids, but the kids that I'm interacting with in our day-to-day life. What a high, high calling to be an example to kids. Seriously, it's so special that I never wanna miss it, we can get pretty good at looking like we believe it. We can clap. We can say congratulations. We can leave the nice comment on their social media post. We can say all the right things when other people are watching, but remember that audience of one. Because God isn't only seeing the version of me that everybody else gets to see. He sees what happens inside of me, in my heart, when somebody else gets what I wanted. He knows whether my encouragement is genuine or whether I'm saying the right thing because I want to look like the kind of person who celebrates other people. And there's that scoreboard again. Because if I'm celebrating you so that other people think well of me, I'm still looking at the audience. It's just the wrong audience. That's where this whole audience of one thing has to become something bigger. It has to become something I ask myself, "Who am I doing this for?" When nobody would know if I compared myself to you, or when nobody would know that your good news made me feel a little smaller. When I could smile and congratulate you and keep every bit of the calculation hidden, who am I doing this for? God sees even deeper than what anybody around me can experience. He sees our hearts. Remember that last episode. And if He really is my audience of one, then the goal isn't just to look like someone who celebrates other people. I want Him to change me into someone who actually does. And that's one of the things that we don't say. At some point, I have to ask myself, "Is the way I'm looking at someone else's life allowing me to trust God with my own? Or am I quietly diminishing my own value depending on where I land on the scoreboard?" When I compare, I'm giving someone else's life the power to tell me something about mine, which means that I'm allowing a scoreboard, a scoreboard, to tell me something about my value that God, my creator, never said at all. And maybe that's the problem with comparison. I've given the wrong voice permission to tell me who I am. It's so much easier for me to look at this in the context of my own kid. It's so easy for me to teach her that she doesn't have to win. She can want it, she can work for it, she can be disappointed when it doesn't happen, but she doesn't have to win to be okay. Um, I'm probably gonna ruffle some feathers here, but as I was writing, these, these words just, like, bled. Um, so I'm okay that I'm gonna ruffle some feathers here. This is something that we don't say, and I see it. I've seen it because I've sat with kids who have felt this. To all you parents or teachers or coaches or, like I said, anyone who interacts with kids on a regular basis, this is where I think we have to be really, really careful, because these kids that we're with, they see it. There is a difference between supporting our kids in becoming excellent at something and needing their excellence to say something about us. Their performance cannot become our identity. I know I'm sounding, pretty harsh with this. Um, I'm gonna get choked up here. I have counseled hundreds of kids, uh, through the years And the ones whose parents do this, those kids hurt so deeply. These kids, they, like, they cannot become our identity. Their placement cannot become our validation. Their role, their playing time, their score, their acceptance letter, none of it gets to tell us whether we're doing okay either, because the second I need my child or my student to succeed so that I can feel successful, I've handed my kid a weight she was never supposed to carry, and I refuse to do that to my kid. It turns into this, like, she's not just dancing her solo, she's carrying my scoreboard too, and I don't want to do that to her. Listen, I want my girls to work hard. I want them to chase things. I want them to know what it feels like to set a huge goal and absolutely crush it. But I don't want them confusing my excitement about what they accomplish with my delight in who they are. They're two very, very different things. And, if I'm gonna tell Hannah, "Baby girl, you're dancing for an audience of one," then I better make sure I'm not sitting in the audience asking her performance to do something for me. Because the scoreboard was never where her value was coming from in the first place, and her performance does not add to my value in any way. Her win doesn't make me a better mom or you a better coach or a better teacher, and her loss doesn't make me a worse one. Her story is hers. And come on, like, I really have enough power to interfere with the story God's writing for her anyways? Absolutely not. It's like God's up there saying, "Well, Nicole, I had something really beautiful planned for Hannah, but unfortunately she got second place." Uh, no, that's not how God works. He's writing a story for my daughter that is so much bigger than any trophy, team, role, school, opportunity, or whatever other thing I'm tempted to turn into a scoreboard My job isn't to make sure she wins her story. My job is to help her recognize who she's living it for. So why is that so easy for me to believe for her and so hard for me to believe for myself? Seriously, like if I can look at my daughter and know that somebody else's winning doesn't change the story God is writing for her, then why would somebody else winning change what I believe about the story that God's writing for me? If her value isn't on the scoreboard, then neither is mine. How do we become people who celebrate? I think it's actually a lot easier than we think. If my value isn't on the scoreboard, then suddenly I don't need yours to be lower for mine to be higher. And the best part is it doesn't cost a thing. It makes me like the J.Lo song, like my love don't cost a thing. Okay. Hashtag millennial at heart. Um, okay. But really I can celebrate you without calculating what it costs for me. Naturally, no. Effortlessly, absolutely not. But can I commit to practicing it? Absolutely heck to the yeah. Here's why. Comparison is a habit, but the best part is celebration can become a habit too. I'll never ever forget the pain that infertility brought, especially like when we were in the burrows of it. Back then infertility was still kind of this taboo subject. We didn't really talk about it. And if we did, it felt like there was clearly something wrong with us. The way people would just kind of shut down whenever we would bring it up. Then the statistic was one in eight and today it's one in six. We made the decision because we constantly felt alone that we were never going to keep quiet about it. And we're always going to be open about it, and what we were going through because we didn't want anybody else walking through that alone. I just want to say here, if that's you, can you please reach out to me? Please go to my website. You can reach out to me there. I love you and I will sit and walk through it with you. Um Okay, so I'm gonna keep talking about that for as long as I'm breathing. But okay, we made some really difficult choices during those years. One of them was choosing not to go to one of my best friend's baby showers, and I still remember opening the Evite. I remember the sting of seeing it and thinking, "What is wrong with me? This is one of my best friends and I love her. Why am I not happy for her?" And honestly, I didn't even have the courage to tell her I wasn't coming. I was so embarrassed. I just didn't even show up. I don't love telling you that. It's really embarrassing, and I know it's not proper etiquette. But looking back, I see what jealousy and comparison were doing to me. What had I let them turn me into? I was hurting deeply, and that hurt was real, but her joy wasn't the cause of my pain. Her pregnancy didn't take a baby away from me. Her getting what I desperately wanted didn't mean there was less available for me. But comparison had convinced me that somehow her abundance was evidence of my lack. And so during one of my best friend's most joyous experiences, I chose myself over her. I chose comparison over connection. I chose myself over joy, and that's what comparison can do. It doesn't just make someone else's joy harder to celebrate. It can make their joy feel like evidence against us. Hindsight tells me this God was still writing our story. Her pregnancy wasn't evidence that he'd forgotten about me, even though I completely felt like it. Her story was just moving forward in this really beautiful way, and God was still at work in mine, and it was just as beautiful. I just couldn't see it yet. Looking back now, had God not walked us through those years, we never would have reached so many people, um, that we have. Some of whom, by the way, are now founding listeners of Things We Don't Say. Man, God is so cool like that. My grief didn't make me a bad friend. Her joy didn't make my grief less real. Two feelings can totally be true at once, and I think that's something we don't say enough. I know most of us have heard it, but we don't say it enough. Celebrating someone else doesn't require denying my own disappointment. That's the beauty of this. It applies everywhere, right? You can be disappointed. You can wish it had been you. You can even need a minute alone. None of that means you can't become someone who celebrates. And I said it already. Is it easy? Uh, no. But is it a practice? Absolutely. And maybe the practice starts by refusing to make somebody else's good news mean something about me. Newsflash, life is not all about you. It's not all about me. I'm just gonna say it. I know it's counter-cultural, but I refuse to live a life like that because I've seen how lonely it becomes. Your win is not my loss. Your pregnancy wasn't proof that mine would never happen. I have four really spunky girls now to tell us otherwise. Your acceptance isn't proof that I'm not good enough. I already know my value your promotion isn't proof that I'm behind. Your kid's success isn't evidence that mine is failing. Your story is not evidence against mine. And when I can start believing that, man, it gets a whole lot easier to cheer for you. Here's the reward in watching God write stories. We also get to watch Him work. What if someone else's beautiful story can actually remind me that God is active rather than make me afraid that He's forgotten me? Instead of looking at what He's doing in your life and wondering what it says about mine, I can let it remind me of who He is. If He's working in your story, I get to celebrate that. And I can trust that the same God is still at work in mine, even when I can't see what He's writing yet. Your story doesn't have to make me question mine. And listen, I know we've talked about some of this in the last episode about the gap between the life we expected and the one we're actually living, um, about trusting that God might be doing something different than what we had planned. But comparison adds another layer to that, doesn't it? It's one thing when my life doesn't look the way that I thought it would. It's another thing when yours does. When you're holding the thing that I prayed for, or when your kid gets the opportunity that I wanted for mine, when you get the yes while I'm still sitting with a no, that's when it gets hard, because it's so hard to sit in the moment, in the now I have these really, really beautiful friends who are being forced to sit in the now right now, and it really sucks. Here's what makes comparison especially dangerous in these seasons. Other people's stories don't stop moving just because ours feels stuck. People are still going to get pregnant while you're waiting. Somebody is still going to get the acceptance letter when yours says no. Someone's business will take off. Someone's kid will win. There's still gonna be things to celebrate while you're sitting in a now that you desperately wish was different, and that is when the celebration becomes a practice. I told those friends something recently that I learned in counseling myself when I was this really sad girl in her mid-20s. PS, I'm still in counseling, uh, because I love being able to process and connect and really focus on what's happening beneath the surface, right? Hello, welcome to the things we don't say. Um, but anyway, so I shared that tidbit with them. Like, hey, we need to look at this situation with the end in mind. What do I want to come out of this? And I don't mean what ending do I want God to give me. We talked about that in the last episode. I mean, who do I want to be when I get there? Because that's a very different question. Maybe it's something small, like losing a game or a competition. Do I wanna come back a harder worker, or is God teaching me perseverance? Am I discovering that I could use a little more humility? Maybe God's doing something there. Can I learn to cheer for the person holding the trophy while I'm still disappointed that it isn't mine? Maybe he's doing something there too. Because if all I can see is right now, that's when the scoreboard gets really loud, but the scoreboard can only tell me what happened on this page, right? It has absolutely no idea what God is writing in the chapters after it, and I've said it before, listen, I don't want this to be a podcast where I preach at you. I wanna be really, really clear on that. I wanna sit with you. So where you stand with God and what you believe, where your heart is right now, that, that's all you. Okay? But I know where mine is. And my intention here is to glorify Him by loving you well. So if you're sitting in a really hard now And you don't trust Him then can you just trust me for a minute? Not because I know how your story ends. I don't. But I know what it's like to sit on a page that I desperately wanted to turn, and I will sit with you in the now on this page and all the chapters after it. All you have to do is reach out to me. So while you're sitting here, there, there's still gonna be people around us with something to celebrate. I'm not asking you to pretend that it doesn't hurt. I'm not asking you to call disappointment joy, and I'm definitely not telling you that being a good Christian means smiling through something that is breaking your heart. I'm asking whether we can make room for both. Can I grieve this page of my story without resenting the beautiful page in yours? Can I believe that your joy is real without deciding it means something about my pain? Can I celebrate God and what He's doing in your story while I'm still waiting to understand what He's doing in mine? Because maybe that's what celebrating without comparison actually looks like. It isn't pretending I don't want what you have. It's refusing to believe that you having it means God has forgotten me, because that's not true. After spending this entire episode talking about scoreboards, this is the thing I most want to tell you. This scoreboard was never a scoreboard between me and God. Listen, I've known Jesus since I was 13 years old. I know where my value comes from, but almost 30 years later, I still forget it. I can find myself picking up scoreboards He never handed me. Who has more? Who's further ahead? Who's getting noticed? Scoreboard. And none of those things have ever been the way that God measures my worth. That's not the gospel. Because if getting close to God depended on me putting enough points on the board, I would lose every single time. Jesus never asked me to win my way to Him. My value isn't something I have to outperform somebody else to protect. It was settled long before I ever started keeping score, and that's why I can learn to celebrate you so freely. I have security in knowing I could never perform well enough to earn what Jesus gave me. Not because I caught up, not because I beat somebody else, not because I finally got enough points on the board, but because He loved me, and that's the ultimate freedom from the scoreboard. Jesus already settled everything that I've been trying to measure up to. My worth isn't up for competition. My place with Him isn't determined by where I rank besides you. Jesus already made the way for me to come home. And listen, if you don't know what I mean by that, you're probably thinking like, "Nicole, I don't even know him." Just send me an email, okay? Seriously, I would love nothing more than to just have a conversation with you. But for those of us who do know where our value comes from, that's why I wanna get better at this, at celebrating you. Because when I know where my value comes from, I don't have to protect it from your success. I don't need to explain away your win. I don't need to find the reason you had an advantage. I don't need to quietly compare your best moment to my hardest one. I can just cheer. And guys, I wanna be that person. I wanna be the person who gets genuinely excited when somebody else gets the thing. The person who notices what you're doing well and actually tells you. My love language is, um, words of affirmation. I think sometimes it actually weirds people out when I just, like, go and tell them, "You are just the most amazing person because blah, blah, blah, blah." But I truly, truly mean it. I, I want to be that person. I wanna also be the person who can sit in disappointment and say, "Man, look what God's doing over there." Not because I've stopped wanting things for myself, And not because comparison never shows up, and definitely not because I'm suddenly so spiritually mature that somebody else's success never stings. That's, that's like, no. Um, but I'm practicing. I'm practicing taking my eyes off of the scoreboard. I'm practicing remembering my audience of one. I'm practicing Trusting the author with my story, and I'm practicing cheering while he writes yours. Because your success has nothing to do with my success. Your beautiful story does not make mine smaller, and mine doesn't become smaller because yours became beautiful. Hey, go find someone to celebrate. Just step outside your comfort zone. Think of someone whose success has been hard for you to celebrate, someone you've compared yourself to, someone you've been jealous of. Heck, maybe even someone you've held a little resentment towards. I'm just gonna say it. Cheer for them. Cheer obnoxiously loud. Cheer like the mom in the back of a dance competition who has completely forgotten that there are other people sitting around her. And when that little voice starts calculating what their win means about you, remind it, "Yo, wrong audience," and just cheer anyways, okay? You don't have to feel it yet. You just have to practice it At its heart, The Things We Don't Say is about helping people recognize that there's always more going on beneath the surface of everyday life. It's about paying attention. It's about meaning. It's about beholding the bigger picture hidden inside ordinary moments. Because often, the things we don't say reveal the things that matter most. Thanks for listening