If your faith is the hero you've got it all wrong

The danger of making your faith about self-reliance instead of surrender in motherhood and beyond

In the weeks after my son’s birth another birth story popped up on my feed. (This was before I deleted all my social media.) This post talked a lot about the power of God, faith, and most importantly how this person prayed for this birth story and because of her faith, she received it.

Or at least that was how she told the story.

The comments all celebrated this woman. She had a following of around 20k people and they all commended her for her faith and prayer life. This was the reason her birth was what it was—she prayed it into existence and her faith caused this.

I cried reading about it. I wanted to be happy for her. But truthfully, I hated her for it.

I don’t even know this person. But I sat on my couch thinking, Seriously, God? What magic prayer did she pray that I didn’t know the words to? I’m so sick of this.

Her birth story sounded a lot like the one I had prayed for. For some reason, her prayers had broken the barrier between us and heaven and mine had bounced right back down to earth. (I know that is not a thing, but that’s how it felt.)

Even worse, in the weeks following, her postpartum looked glorious. Her baby was always in these adorable knit outfits and they were all snuggled up with sunshine seeping in their kitchen windows to perfectly hit her nutritious breakfast prepared by her loving husband. (Did he even have a job aside from being her personal chef?)

My husband who is also very loving was back in his office days after we were released from the NICU. His paternity leave felt insanely short due to our extended hospital stay. I ate a lot of Dunkin hash browns for breakfast. Not nutritious—but yummy.

I struggled to get up off the couch due to my surgery and not in a glamorous, restful way. I felt frustrated with the weird side roll, half push up situation I did accompanied by my old man grunts. Snuggling my baby was hard too. My entire abdomen was wrecked and it felt agonizing to try to get in a comfortable position with my little boy nearby.

My lactation consultant even told me one of the positions I fed my baby in looked “awkward” and I teared up telling her how much my stomach hurt. (It’s been a year and I still have nerve pain.)

All around me it felt like I was faced with evidence of the lack of God’s love for me and the incredible love he had for this random girl on Instagram.

On Instagram, it appeared she had a magical birth where nothing went wrong, a beautiful birth story to share, no NICU experience, no visible postpartum struggles, and everything about it seemed just perfect.

What on earth did this girl pray? And why didn’t anyone loop me in on how to get that?

I have since been off of social media for months and I’ve realized how easily I get sucked into social comparison—especially in the midst of such a vulnerable season of life. Comparison really is the thief of joy. Social media was robbing me of a lot of joy.

But when I took a step back from it, I tried to compare to the women who I walk closely with and know in real life.

These faithful women in my life all have had many different struggles.

We’ve all had moments where we have desperately pleaded with God for one thing and ended up with another.

We’ve spent days, weeks, months, or even years on our knees in passionate prayer only to be left without an explanation and a simple I don’t understand but I’m choosing to trust God anyway. And in those desperate moments, it doesn’t sound like that. It is curse words, sobs, and screams that shape shift into prayers.

It’s more like Hannah in 1 Samuel being mistaken for being drunk because that is how chaotic and desperate prayer is. You can’t fit that into an Instagram story.

It’s a lot less glamorous to share that on social media. And I’m not even sure that is where it belongs. So instead, the sunshine display of avocado toast and a snuggly baby in it’s best outfit prevails.

I feel tempted even as I write this to message this girl and ask how her birth really went. And how postpartum really was. And if her marriage is really what it appears. Because I think she’s lying on social media.

I also think everything she shared was to make herself look good.

This is tragic. Not just because I personally find it annoying (I do) but because “God opposes the proud and gives favor to the humble” (James 4:6). When we make ourselves the hero, even if we call it faith, it’s a message drenched in pride.

When we make it about us—about our prayers, our faith—we miss the point.

Even when we dress it up in Christian language we have lost sight of the truth. If you’re sharing on social media I think it needs to be a lot less about us. Share things to actually help people, not to make yourself a hero.

We live in a culture that tells us we are the “main character” and all that has gotten us as a society is increasing rates of anxiety and depression. Maybe because self-reliance doesn’t work—even if you try to make it work with a faith-related twist.

The real life faithful Christian women I know are not the hero and they aren’t interested in trying to become one. They are in desperate need of a hero. And they know that hero personally and call him by name—Jesus.

They have faith that he will save so they can stop trying to do the saving.

They also know some prayers go seemingly unanswered, at least for now. They choose to trust God anyway. Even when their faith doesn’t appear to “work.” Real faith isn’t about getting what we want, it’s about trusting God when we don’t.