{"id":832,"date":"2026-10-21T06:37:04","date_gmt":"2026-10-21T11:37:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/?p=832"},"modified":"2026-10-21T06:37:05","modified_gmt":"2026-10-21T11:37:05","slug":"everyone-elses-anniversary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/2026\/10\/21\/everyone-elses-anniversary\/","title":{"rendered":"Everyone Else&#8217;s Anniversary"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<!-- POST TITLE: Everyone Else's Anniversary -->\n<style>@import url('https:\/\/fonts.googleapis.com\/css2?family=Oswald:wght@400;500;700&family=Literata:ital,wght@0,400;0,500;1,400&display=swap');\n.byn{--bg:#F1EDE4;--darkest:#1C1F2B;--mid:#2E3F7A;--heading:#C8862A;--cool:#5F7F7A;--light:#F2CF5B;--surface-verse:#F9F6EF;--surface-deep:#E2E5EC;font-family:'Literata',Georgia,serif;color:var(--darkest);background:var(--bg);max-width:720px;margin:2em auto;padding:2.5em 2em;line-height:1.7;font-size:1.05em}\n.byn .eyebrow{font-family:'Oswald',sans-serif;font-size:.85em;letter-spacing:.18em;text-transform:uppercase;color:var(--mid);font-weight:500;margin:0 0 .4em}\n.byn h2{font-family:'Oswald',sans-serif;font-weight:500;font-size:1.3em;letter-spacing:.08em;text-transform:uppercase;color:var(--mid);margin:2em 0 .7em;border-bottom:1px solid var(--heading);padding-bottom:.3em}\n.byn .verse{font-family:'Literata',Georgia,serif;font-style:italic;font-size:1.08em;line-height:1.6;letter-spacing:normal;background:var(--surface-verse);border-left:4px solid var(--heading);padding:1.1em 1.4em;margin:1.4em 0;color:var(--darkest)}\n.byn .verse-cite{display:block;font-style:normal;font-family:'Oswald',sans-serif;font-size:.82em;letter-spacing:.1em;color:var(--mid);margin-top:.6em;text-transform:uppercase}\n.byn .divider{border:none;border-top:1px solid var(--heading);margin:2em auto;width:80px}\n.byn p{margin:0 0 1.1em}\n.byn .pull{font-family:'Oswald',sans-serif;font-weight:500;font-size:1.15em;letter-spacing:.04em;color:var(--darkest);border-top:1px solid var(--heading);border-bottom:1px solid var(--heading);padding:1em 0;margin:1.6em 0;text-align:center;line-height:1.4}\n.byn .byn-deep{background:var(--surface-deep);border-left:4px solid var(--cool);padding:1.1em 1.4em;margin:1.4em 0}\n@media (max-width:600px){.byn{padding:1.6em 1.2em}}<\/style>\n<div class=\"byn\">\n<p class=\"eyebrow\">By Name \u00b7 Week 1 \u00b7 Wednesday \u00b7 SCREENS<\/p>\n<p>Today would have been forty years.<\/p>\n<p>She is sixty-four, and she is sitting in his chair, the big one by the window that nobody else ever sat in, with the tablet on her lap. She picked it up to look up a recipe. That was almost an hour ago.<\/p>\n<p>Instead: a couple from church in matching shirts on a beach, celebrating their fortieth. A friend&#8217;s grandkids on a trip. Somebody&#8217;s new kitchen. A retirement party. Every single picture is fine. She is glad for every one of those people. And every picture is saying the same thing to her, in a voice she would never use on anybody else: everybody&#8217;s life kept going, and yours stopped.<\/p>\n<h2>The comparison was not the real problem<\/h2>\n<p class=\"verse\">We do not dare to classify or compare ourselves with some who commend themselves. When they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they show their ignorance.<span class=\"verse-cite\">2 Corinthians 10:12 (BSB)<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Paul was writing about something else, but the line about measuring yourself against other people fits the tablet almost too well. None of those pictures were of anybody eating cereal over the sink. The tablet was showing her everyone&#8217;s best day and asking her to grade her worst day against it.<\/p>\n<p>A highlight reel is not a verdict on your life. She knows that. She would tell her friends that.<\/p>\n<p>But it was not really the pictures that kept her scrolling. It was what was waiting when she stopped. The house is very quiet on a day like this one. The scrolling was easier than the quiet. It did not fix anything. It just kept her from hearing it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"verse\">A tranquil heart is life to the body, but envy rots the bones.<span class=\"verse-cite\">Proverbs 14:30 (BSB)<\/span><\/p>\n<p>A tranquil heart is not a numb one. You cannot get to peace by never sitting still long enough to feel what you feel.<\/p>\n<h2>She let the quiet in<\/h2>\n<p>She turned the tablet face down on the arm of the chair, next to the remote.<\/p>\n<p>And then she did not turn on the TV either. She let the quiet come. The grief came with it, all of it, the way it does when you stop holding it at arm&#8217;s length. She cried in his chair for a long time.<\/p>\n<div class=\"byn-deep\">\n<p>What it cost: an hour she had been avoiding for six months, with nothing between her and it. No pictures to look at. No one else&#8217;s happy day to measure against. Just the house, and the date, and him not being in it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>When it eased, she called the young mom across the street, the one who brought a casserole the first week and said call anytime. She never had. People say that. She had never wanted to be the one who took them up on it.<\/p>\n<p>This time she called. The young mom came over with a toddler on her hip and stayed until dark.<\/p>\n<p class=\"pull\">The scrolling was easier than the quiet. It just kept her from hearing it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Name \u00b7 Week 1 \u00b7 Wednesday \u00b7 SCREENS Today would have been forty years. She is sixty-four, and she is sitting in his chair, the big one by the window that nobody else ever sat in, with the tablet&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":833,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-called-by-name"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/SU_20261021_BLOG.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=832"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":834,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832\/revisions\/834"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}