I’m Sorry if They Told You It Would Be Easy: How Growing Up Helps Us Face Hard Things [Podcast Transcript]

Title: I’m Sorry if They Told You It Would Be Easy: How Growing Up Helps Us Face Hard Things 

Podcast Date: September 23, 2025

Listen Here:

In this “Compared to Who?” episode, Heather Creekmore talks about how growing in spiritual maturity can help you break free from comparison and body image struggles. She gently challenges listeners to re-examine the belief that life will be easy if you just do everything right—a mindset she calls “magical thinking.” Instead, Heather explains how holding onto this idea can prevent us from fully trusting God and experiencing real growth.

She shares her personal experiences with disappointment, especially around marriage and body image, and how letting go of perfectionism and unrealistic expectations made space for deeper faith and emotional stability. Ultimately, the message is about moving away from idols and quick fixes, and toward a more honest, grace-filled relationship with Jesus—even if it means accepting that life will have its hardships.

There’s a lot more nuance and encouragement in the episode, so it’s definitely worth a listen!

Resources & Opportunities Mentioned:

• 10 Days of Encouragement (Free!):
  Sign up at heathercreekmore.com to get 10 days of personal, encouraging emails straight from Heather.

• Improve Your Body Image—Fall Programs:

  • 40 Day Journey: Starts Oct. 1, with group meetings from Oct. 7. Sign up at improvebodyimage.com (Look for the “40 Day Journey” tab).

  • In His Image Conference:

    Happening outside of Dallas, TX, on Nov. 15. Details here: https://www.wonderfullymadenutritioncounseling.com/events/in-his-image-body-image-conference-for-teen-girls-and-women-2025 (Early bird pricing ends soon!)

Related Episodes to Check Out:

• Coaching Episode with Presli: Surprising Anger and Idols
  (Heather references Presli's honest story of getting unexpectedly upset over a meal—highlighting hidden idols.)

• 4 Ways to Stop Thinking Negatively About Your Body

• How Spiritual Maturity Can Transform Body Image Struggles

•  The Comparison-Free Life book: Heather expands on grace, maturity, and living “comparison free.”

Connect & Support:

• Subscribe so you don’t miss this fall’s gentle, but life-changing, journey toward spiritual maturity.

• Leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify—Heather loves hearing how the show impacts you!

Find more encouragement and Christ-centered content at the Life Audio Network.

If you’re ready to stop comparing and start truly living, this is the episode for you.

Loved the episode? Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify—Heather and the team love hearing from you!

For more Christian podcasts, check out lifeaudio.com.

Disclaimer: This transcript is AI-generated and has not been edited for accuracy or clarity.

Transcript

Heather Creekmore [00:00:02]:
Life Audio hey friend, Heather Creekmore here. Thanks for listening to the Compare to podcast today. Like I hinted at last time, this fall is all about helping you mature in your faith. Because friend, a lot of us just need to grow up. And I say that with so much truth and love. But I'm hoping this fall, on this show, you will be encouraged to start really, really deepening and maturing in your faith. And ultimately, friend, that is what is going to help you find freedom from comparing yourself to other people, from body image issues, things that are just little pests nagging at us, keeping us from doing what God has called us to do, keeping us distracted. Friend, I don't want to oversimplify, but maturity helps a lot of these things.

Heather Creekmore [00:01:00]:
And so that's what I want to encourage you in this fall. Hey, I'm glad you're here for it. If we've not connected before, go to heathercreekmore.com I've got 10 days of encouragement for you there. I'd love to be email friends, I know you still check your email. You still read your email. I send personal encouraging emails once a week, not more than that. And I would just love to be able to encourage you right in your inbox once a week. And you'll start off with 10 days in a row of encouragement.

Heather Creekmore [00:01:28]:
Go to heathercreekmore.com and look for the 10 days of encouragement. Also, if you're looking to improve your body image this fall, I've got two opportunities for you. First is our 40 day journey reading for that starts October. The first meetings start October 7th. You can learn all about that at improvebodyimage. Com. Look for the 40 day journey tab. Also the In His Image conference happening in Dallas, Texas November 15, Saturday.

Heather Creekmore [00:01:51]:
It's going to be amazing. You can learn more about that in the show notes. Now let's get to today's episode Foreign so I titled today's podcast I'm sorry if they told you it would be easy. And last week I promised we'd start venturing gently into what it means to actually grow up and how that journey not only is going to impact your body image, but growing up can honestly transform every area of life where you're struggling. So today we're going to take the next step. And this step is really, I'm going to call it step one. I mean not this is like a 12 step program or like easy five steps to freedom, but if you don't do this thing, you will stay stuck. You will never grow up.

Heather Creekmore [00:02:49]:
And honestly, this thing is kind of what I wrote about in my first book compared to who. But I want to explain it maybe in a different way so you can clearly see. See how this struggle, this belief, this believing that life will be easy, the struggle we all share, this false belief, really, that if we just do xyz, we can make things come out in the way we want them to come out. I'm hoping to show you today how this is intricately connected to what stops us from maturing in Christ. So, like I just said, I believe that this is a struggle that we all share. Because honestly, we internally, we all know how we were created. We were made to live in paradise. We were made to live in this perfect world.

Heather Creekmore [00:03:45]:
But then sin messed all of that up. Like way back with Adam and Eve. The fall changed everything. And here's just a little truth bomb, right? Okay. The sin that messed everything up wasn't about food. It wasn't about them eating food when they shouldn't have eaten food. Yikes. Like, oh, that frustrates me so much when I see that in Instagram memes.

Heather Creekmore [00:04:06]:
No, the sin was unbelief. You see, Adam and Eve believed God was holding out on them. They doubted his goodness. They thought maybe he wasn't actually looking out for them. And when he said, don't eat from that tree, they saw it as a limitation rather than as a gift and friend. That's the sin. The sin is not trusting God, not believing that he's always good, not seeing that we are covered by his grace, not believing that he knows what's best for us. And so we live in this broken world with this longing for perfection.

Heather Creekmore [00:04:43]:
And that's the struggle of unbelief that bleeds into our lives today. We long for heaven. We long for perfection. But the world is messy. It's broken. And so a lot of us believe that we're competent enough to try to fix it. And we think if we can just fix it, like fix our relationships, fix our bodies, fix our homes, then we can create for ourselves a little taste of heaven on earth. But it doesn't work that way.

Heather Creekmore [00:05:16]:
Now, see, hear me. The longing is actually good. It reminds us that we weren't made for this world, that we're made for the next one, which is perfect. But thinking that way requires us to grow up. We have to mature. We have to realize first and foremost that this world will never fully satisfy that longing we have for perfection. And for some of you, that's going to hit right away. You're like, yep, I know.

Heather Creekmore [00:05:41]:
I've Tried, I could never make it perfect. And then there's others of you who are like, no, I don't think actually it's my responsibility to try to make this as perfect as possible. And that's where perfectionism creeps in. And maybe you're there. You feel stuck between trying to control everything or even feeling like you'll let God down if you don't try to make everything here as perfect as possible. But the false promise under all of this is that life should be easy. And that's really where we have to start. We have to start by examining this false promise that if we do the right things, control the right variables, then life will somehow flow smoothly.

Heather Creekmore [00:06:25]:
Let me be clear. Living according to God's instructions often does save us from unnecessary trouble. Like, if we follow God's principles around money or relationships or work, like, we may avoid some stress, right? We may avoid being hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, or we may avoid the pain of having exes who weren't following Jesus or had no interest in spiritual things. But there's no promise of perfection. In fact, just the opposite. John 16:33 reminds us, I've told you these things so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But now the good news is the end of that verse.

Heather Creekmore [00:07:09]:
Michigan says, take heart, I've overcome the world. But here's where most of us get stuck, right? We long for a formulaic life. I want to do XYZ and know I'm going to get this outcome abc, right? But life rarely works that way. And what can really set us over the edge is that inner frustration we feel when we think we've done things right. When we think we've done xyz, we. But outcome ABC doesn't happen. And sometimes we blame our circumstances, but a lot of times we blame ourselves. We think, oh, I just didn't do it well enough.

Heather Creekmore [00:07:46]:
Like, how did I miss that? What part did I miss? I tried to get it all right, but maybe there was just one little angle to it I missed, right? And we end up living in even more frustration and confusion because we feel like, hey, God, I did all these things. Why aren't I getting this outcome? And here's where my apology comes in, right? It's not really an apology like last week, not really apologizing, but more so I'm empathizing. I'm sorry someone promised it would be easy. I'm sorry someone made you think that you could master life, control all the variables, avoid pain and suffering if you just followed all the rules. Because, friend, that's not reality. And this is one of the biggest struggles I see in women I talk to, especially like those women that do body image coaching with me, but just women I've met in ministry who are struggling with self image comparison, insecurity, anxiety. The struggle is this magical thinking. It's this quiet, secret hope that I can do everything right, that it's possible to control all the variables and get it all right.

Heather Creekmore [00:08:57]:
And if I do so, then I can avoid pain, hardship, disappointment, struggle. And it's so tempting to believe it, but it's just not true. So if you feel like you're ready to grow up, maybe you've even heard that call from the Lord in your quiet time, your prayer time, like, okay, come on, it's time. It's time to grow up. It's time to mature. It's time to be the adult in the room, whatever it may be. The good news is, is letting go of this magical thinking, when you stop hoping for getting all the things right so that you'll get the outcome you want, or maybe you've heard, like, the if then scenario, if you stop, like, believing if this, then this, when you start living your life as it actually is, here and now, that's when you see reality more clearly. And that's also when you see how much you need the gospel and how it's the only true hope for fulfillment.

Heather Creekmore [00:10:03]:
Let me share a little bit of how this magical thinking got me into trouble. So, like, early in our marriage actually let me even back up before that. I spent my whole twenties waiting for marriage, waiting for this magical rescue. And I was focused on body image because I thought that was what I needed to focus on in order to get this magical marriage thing to happen. And then at 30, I finally met my husband. We got engaged, we got married at 31. And the opposite of magic happened. Instead of life getting easier, it actually got harder.

Heather Creekmore [00:10:37]:
In a lot of ways, marriage hurt in ways that, like, I had never hurt before and I didn't expect it. Like, being married meant navigating moods and misunderstandings and relational struggles. And I felt bitter and frustrated and disappointed because the reality of marriage had no chance of matching my fantasy of marriage. Like, marriage in my head was amazing and marriage in reality was not that. And I had a choice. I could either keep living in that frustration, keep holding on to that dream of how magical marriage was going to be, or I could accept reality. And let me be clear right in that, whoo. There's a great temptation to sin, right? There was great temptation to believe that I just maybe married the wrong person or maybe there was someone out there better that would actually be able to make marriage match this fantasy in my head.

Heather Creekmore [00:11:46]:
And oh goodness, the temptations to do things to destroy my marriage were there because I was holding onto this fantasy. And so I really had this choice. Either stay in fantasy land, hoping, wishing, dreaming, magical thinking that there is a way to make heaven on earth here, or I could accept reality and then let's go to scripture, right? The truth is God never promised me a perfect pain free marriage. In fact, First Corinthians 7 reminds us that life is going to include trouble. And for married people, that is the promise. If you get married, you will face trouble. And the same is true for our bodies. Like many of you maybe have worked to get the perfect body.

Heather Creekmore [00:12:33]:
I've talked to you in coaching, right? And you tell me the story over and over. You worked so hard, you lost the weight, you firmed the part only to find out that it didn't solve your insecurities, it didn't fix your need for approval. That magical thinking tells us that everything is going to be perfect forever and ever. As soon as XYZ happens, as soon as you can get a grip on xyz, as soon as you can control xyz, as soon as you can figure out XYZ we talked about last week, leaning not on your own understanding, figuring it out doesn't fix it. But magical thinking sure does convince us that it just might. Now let me be clear. Magical thinking is a form of idolatry. It's believing that something on this earth will save us.

Heather Creekmore [00:13:29]:
It'll create heaven here on earth that we can be spared from pain if this false reality we're believing in, investing in can only come true. But here's the truth. Like Jesus doesn't promise us no pain. That's not biblical, friend. Only idols promise us that we won't have pain, that we won't have struggle, that we won't suffer. Jesus promises us heaven awaits us, that we have great hope, then we have a future. But he doesn't promise us that life here on earth will be easy. In fact, following him is very countercultural, right? If we do the things that he asks us to do, we we may not be treated well, we may not be accepted, we may not be respected.

Heather Creekmore [00:14:18]:
We may not get a bunch of likes trusting him, living by his upside down kingdom principles. It's all hard when I think about all the promises that we've entertained all These promises from idols. Life won't be hard if just fill in the blank there. I get frustrated. I mean, think about the fact that those promises were mostly made by people who wanted to sell us something. It started in elementary school. Get this toy, and then you'll have happiness. Then in middle school, high school, get these shoes, and then you'll be accepted, get these jeans, and then you'll have friends.

Heather Creekmore [00:14:56]:
After high school, get this body, Then you have a boyfriend, then you have a husband, and it just kept going. This is how you have a better marriage if you get this. This is how you can have better children. This is how you can have a better home, better career. This is how to stop ag. It just keeps going and going and going. The promises of the marketers that are really trying to get us to buy the lies, the magical thinking of idolatry, and believe we can create a heaven on earth here for ourselves. So again, I'm sorry if they told you it wasn't going to be hard.

Heather Creekmore [00:15:35]:
I'm sorry if they've kept you on the path looking for the easy button, or if you've believed the lies of the enemy, that it's just hard because you're not doing it right or you're not doing it well enough, or you're not following all these rules. And I don't mean the scripture, I mean these rules that culture has created for us as to how we can have the life of our dreams. Friend, it's all magical thinking, and it's keeping us from maturing in Christ. It's keeping us from getting to know Jesus. It's keeping us from putting all of our trust in Jesus. Because when we have these idols, when we have this magical thinking, we put our trust in those dreams. We put our trust in those idols. So I did a little search, like, using the term magical thinking, because I think that's how culture talks about this, right? Like, so magical thinking is a term that even non Christians will use and talk about.

Heather Creekmore [00:16:36]:
And so it's kind of been recognized as, hey, this is a problem. We all need to, like, have a reality check. But as Christians, we can clearly see this as idolatry, right? We can clearly see that that's the problem there. But I did a little search just to see, like, well, what happens when you give up magical thinking. And it's basically the same list. I mean, I have to tweak it a little bit, but it's the same list that I would write that would be a benefit of giving up or repenting of our idols. So here's a couple other things from that list. So one of them was in addition to, like, seeing reality more clearly, which we kind of talked about already, if you give up magical thinking, give up your idols, it improves your emotional stability.

Heather Creekmore [00:17:19]:
Oh, boy. I thought this was so spot on and so important as we think about how do we grow up? How do we mature in Christ? Well, most of us have this desire to be more emotionally stable. Right? We don't want to be on the roller coaster of up and down, up and down, up and down. I feel good. Oh, I feel awful. I feel good. I feel awful. Right? And so part of finding that emotional stability is rooting out the magical thinking and the idols.

Heather Creekmore [00:17:48]:
And Tim Keller talks about this. I think it's just really a fascinating thing to do. But watch. What makes you the maddest? Do you get really mad when, like, your boss keeps you after work or traffic is bad or a kid needs something and you miss your workout? Like, if missing a workout is what makes you so angry. Oh, friend, you might want to check yourself here. So I love the episode I did with Presley not too long ago. It was a coaching episode with Presley, but she shares honestly just how she got so fuming mad because she had ordered a restaurant meal at a fancy restaurant that she thought was going to be on her plan. And when it came out, it was, like, in a, like, sea of butter.

Heather Creekmore [00:18:36]:
And she shares how she was so angry. She was, like, fantasizing about, like, going back to the kitchen and, like, hurting the chef because she was so mad. I mean, it's funny to joke about. Yes. But, like, I think we've all felt that kind of surprising. Like, why am I so mad? And friend, when we feel that, when we can recognize it, we can take a pause. That is a clear sign to us that we may have an idol. We may be counting on something or someone else other than Jesus to make our lives a little bit of heaven on earth.

Heather Creekmore [00:19:17]:
And, friend, maturing requires us to get rid of that idol. And that's when we can stop getting so mad at the people or things in this life that let us down. Because, let's be honest, there's only one option for other people and circumstances of this life. They are always going to have the potential to let us down. So for me, marriage. Oh, such an idol. I get so angry with my husband. It was so telling that I had made him.

Heather Creekmore [00:19:47]:
Or marriage, both. I had made them idols in my life. I mean, I remember feeling so angry, I just wanted to beat him with pillows. Like this rage would well up inside me because it just felt so impossible to make things perfect and to make him the way I wanted and to make him, like, respond exactly the way I want him to respond. And, oh, it made me so angry. But here's what I've learned. Once you can see the idolatry, once you can surrender the idol idols, your emotional stability will improve. You stop throwing toddler, like, tantrums over butter or missed spin classes or the compliment that your husband didn't say.

Heather Creekmore [00:20:34]:
Right? These things are no longer trying to ruin your perfect life. They're just imperfect parts of your real life. And this is where grace comes in. A lot of the women I talk to have, like, an understanding of grace maybe comes from being raised in church and they know, like, the words to amazing grace or whatever, and they maybe understand that, you know, grace is what we get from Jesus and that's gonna save us later and we need grace to get to heaven, that kind of thing. But, but in my book, the Comparison Free Life, I really dig into this concept of grace. So if. If you're like, yeah, I don't know if I fully understand grace, grab my book, the Comparison Free Life, because I dig into all the different aspects of grace. And when we cannot fully see and understand all those aspects of grace, that's when we're most prone to living in this magical thinking land of idols, right? But.

Heather Creekmore [00:21:29]:
But when you can see your idols and start seeing how God's grace is at work in every part of your life, whoa. That's when the growing up really happens. The other thing that happens is when you give up this idolatry and magical thinking, you're deepening your faith because you're no longer pursuing what I'm going to call a you led faith, and instead you're pursuing a Jesus led faith. Now, most of us would not readily, like, raise our hand and say, oh, yeah, Heather, that's me, I've been following me instead of following Jesus. Right? It's so subtle because like I said, I talk to women every week who are in church. They're reading their bibles, they're praying, and they don't even recognize how they've slid into this place where I'll call it, they're driving and Jesus is their co pilot. Right? Maybe you've seen that bumper sticker. But true faith is not you driving with Jesus in your backseat.

Heather Creekmore [00:22:34]:
True faith is Jesus is driving. You're in the backseat. You're in the passenger seat, right? You are the co pilot, and hopefully not a backseat Driver. Right. So when we have idols, oh, friend, we have a you led faith because we are putting our hope not in Jesus, not in his greater, better plan for us, but we're putting our hope in things going a certain way, things going my way, the way I would like them to go. And often that's a way that will make things better for us here on earth. Right. Maybe it's meeting a fitness goal or maybe, oh, goodness.

Heather Creekmore [00:23:15]:
Maybe you've put your hope in a marriage counselor who can transform your spouse or transform your marriage. Maybe you've put your hope in a diet plan like, okay, my me led faith has. Putting all my eggs into this basket of this diet plan is going to give me new confidence and renewed joy. Okay, here's, here's an example of this. Okay, Try this experiment. Oh, I've hesitated as to whether or not I should use this, but I think I have to. Okay. Find someone in your Instagram feed or Facebook feed that's selling Optavia and read some of their posts about what Optavia has done to change their life and then go back through and replace the word like plan or the word Optavia with Jesus or faith and recognize just how subtle it can become to put our faith, to become an evangelist for a faith that is not the gospel, but.

Heather Creekmore [00:24:15]:
But faith that is a diet plan, faith that puts hope into something else to transform us. That's not about salvation and what Jesus did on the cross, but it's about transforming our bodies or transforming our lives here. And it's so subtle. But we can start to believe that Jesus and God, that's the answer for later. That's totally going to help me out when I die. Thanks. Thanks for hooking me up there. But while I'm here on earth, what I need is something to save me now and again.

Heather Creekmore [00:24:50]:
Hear me. I'm not saying every person that sells Optavia does this, but I've watched some very sweet, committed Christian women shift their devotion from being all about the things of God to being all about the things of one of these MLM dieting plans. And it's worth noticing because again, the idolatry is so subtle. So I read somewhere the other day, as someone explained part of what Paul talking about in Romans one was really talking about how there is a way to use the Bible to meet our own goals versus using scripture to get to know God. Another way to say this is maybe following the Bible not because you love God, but following the Bible because you love yourself. So it's. I'm going to do these Things that God commands because I know it will work out well for me. And it's really kind of putting that expectation of, okay, God, I'm going to do all these things, xyz.

Heather Creekmore [00:25:59]:
And what I want from you, God, is abc. I want you to bless this because I did this and now you're supposed to do this. And it's this quid pro quo relationship with God. And that's not biblical. The chief end of man is to know God and make him known. So Romans 1:25 connects to this. It's something Paul has written and he's talking about people who follow the law or chase after God's commands, but their hearts really aren't in it. They're not following for love of God, they're falling for love of self.

Heather Creekmore [00:26:36]:
Romans 1:25 says this people exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator. So think about that. Like sometimes we chase perfection, approval. We chase this feeling that we just want to have it all together because we believe it will satisfy us. But in doing so, we're worshiping created things. We're worshiping our own goals, we're worshiping our own ideas. We're worshiping our own idols instead of worshiping God. And the result is that our hearts grow darker, they grow harder, our thinking becomes more and more futile.

Heather Creekmore [00:27:19]:
And those things that we're chasing, they never really satisfy us. But here's the beauty. If we can see these idols, if we can be honest about these idols, if we can identify them and not be afraid to call them out as what they are, idols. And we have this chance to repent. We have this chance to turn. And then we get to worship God for who he is and let him shape our desires. Instead of chasing all the things that the world tells us will give us what we want. We start chasing him and he changes what we want, right? That's that.

Heather Creekmore [00:28:01]:
Seek ye first the kingdom of God and then all these things will be added unto you, right? It's not about doing it so the things will be added unto you, Right? It's about seeking him so he can make the change. Oh, and then the things that are added are the things of him, not my silly perfectionistic, magical thinking, idolatrous goals. And that's the heart of it, friend. We've got to defeat the idols that have set up shop in our hearts. We have to accept that life as a disciple of Jesus will not always feel perfect. It won't always be pain free. There will be struggle in this life, there will be hard things. And if we want to grow up, we have to recognize that you can't live with one foot in the world trying to find comfort there, trying to do things the way the world tells us will make us happy.

Heather Creekmore [00:29:06]:
And one foot following Jesus. Because, friend, if you do that and you ride the fence like that, the only thing you get, I've said it before, is a sore crotch. Again, your longing for perfection isn't a bad thing. Let's pause and remember that God put that there to remind you that you were made for more than just this world. I think of that song from a few years ago and all I know is I'm not home yet. Friend. This is not our home. Like I write about in the comparison free Life.

Heather Creekmore [00:29:38]:
This is not the big parade. This is the dress rehearsal for the big parade, right? And so if life here hurts, be comforted by the fact that this is the only hell you'll ever have to live through if you're going to spend eternity with Jesus in heaven. And here's what we know. When it gets hard, it's often for our good and his glory. The suffering, the struggle, the trials, the hard things that we all try to avoid. If we're honest with ourselves when we walk through them, we often draw so much closer to Jesus. They often put everything else in our lives back into proper focus as we were able to zoom in on connecting with our Savior and feeling his love and feeling his comfort and feeling his peace. And we're less distracted by all those other little things, those magical thinking goals.

Heather Creekmore [00:30:38]:
God loves us so much and I think that's why he wants us to grow up. That's why he wants to call us away from the magical thinking, from the idolatry, so that we can find true peace and rest in Him. It's never going to come when you try to make your world perfect. I know you're trying, but we'll never do it well enough. Our only hope is to turn to Him. Friend, I hope something today has encouraged you. I hope something today has helped you stop comparing and start living. If it has, let us know.

Heather Creekmore [00:31:15]:
Drop us a review. Apple, Spotify, wherever you listen to your podcast, those encourage us so so much. Make sure you are subscribed wherever you listen to your podcasts or on YouTube so that you don't miss an episode this fall. Because we're going to take you on this gentle but good journey to growing up in Jesus and it just may change everything for you. Thanks for listening today. We'll see you next time Compared to Podcast is proud to be part of the Life Audio Podcast Network. For more great Christian podcasts, go to lifeaudio.com.

Disclaimer: This transcript is AI-generated and has not been edited for accuracy or clarity.