What Are You Drawn To?

DARE Woman,

It began as a simple bedtime story.

Marvin Wanted More is the tale of a little sheep who never quite felt like enough.

Not because anything was truly wrong with him. Not because he was weak or broken or forgotten. But because every time Marvin looked around at the other sheep, he felt small. They seemed bigger. Stronger. More capable. And more than anything, Marvin wanted to jump — the way the other sheep jumped — high and confident and free.

So Marvin did what so many of us do when we feel we do not measure up.

-He ate.

-And ate.

Believing that if he could just get bigger, he would finally be enough. Finally be able to do what the others did. Finally belong in the way he longed to belong.

As I read it to my children, we laughed at the pictures. We enjoyed the rhymes. But somewhere between the pages, the Holy Spirit quietly stopped me.

Because Marvin’s story was not just a children’s book.

It was a mirror.

A heart at peace gives life to the body, but envy rots the bones.”

— Proverbs 14:30

Scripture introduces us to David as a man after God’s own heart. A shepherd boy chosen above his brothers. A giant-slayer. A worshipper. A king.

God blessed David beyond measure — a throne, a palace, armies, loyal friends, divine favour, and a covenant promise that his lineage would endure forever.

By every measure, David had more than enough.

And yet.

“One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful.”

— 2 Samuel 11:2

In a single moment, the man who had been given everything fixed his eyes on the one thing that was not his to have.

He saw. He wanted. He took.

And everything that followed — the deception, the betrayal, the arranged death of Uriah, the loss of the child, the fracturing of his household — all of it began with a desire that David chose not to redirect.

Marvin kept eating because he compared himself to the other sheep.

David kept looking because he had drifted from the place of purpose.

Both were drawn to something that was never meant to satisfy them.

And if we are honest — we know this feeling too.

Marvin’s problem was not his appetite.

It was his eyes.

The moment he began measuring himself against the other sheep, he lost sight of who he already was. He stopped seeing his own gifts and started cataloguing his own gaps. And the more he compared, the more he consumed, searching for something on the outside to fill what was missing on the inside.

This is exactly how the comparison trap works.

It begins with a look.

A glance at someone else’s life — their home, their marriage, their ministry, their body, their children, their career — and suddenly your own life, which moments before felt sufficient, begins to feel small.

“She seems further along.”

“He seems more confident.”

“They seem more blessed.”

“Why does it come easily for her and feel so hard for me?”

And before long, like Marvin, we start reaching. Consuming. Striving. Performing. Trying to eat our way into a version of ourselves that can finally jump as high as the sheep we have been watching.

But here is what comparison never tells you.

You were not made to jump like them.

You were made to run your own race, carry your own calling, and occupy your own space in the Kingdom — in a way that no one else on earth can replicate.

“For we dare not class ourselves or compare ourselves with those who commend themselves. But they, measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise.”