UnsupermommySýnishorn

Giving Up on Your Own Expectations

Let me raise my hand and admit to you: I love to be right. I hate realizing I’m not. I spent my first years as a mom trying to be perfect. I wasn’t even trying to do all the things. I focused on just a few things I wanted to be good at as a mom. I put all my energy into being a spiritual, academic, and fun mom…and all my energy wasn’t enough. I had been wrong about motherhood. The path of motherhood isn’t meeting my system of standards to raise the perfect child. It is my whole, tired, imperfect heart relying on my infinitely mighty and righteous God.

We have so many good plans for our motherhood. We are so certain that if we just achieved every expectation for ourselves as mothers, we would raise happy, healthy children. Then real life gets in the way and messes up all of our plans. But that messy reality isn't an accident; it is God's plan for our lives.

In Jeremiah 29:11-13, God assures us that those plans are for our good. Why? To cause us to call upon him. The difficult circumstances of real motherhood are meant to force us to seek him with all of our heart. When we are at the utter brink of our inabilities, all we need to do is call out. He will hear us.

When my motherhood circumstances brought me to the end of my rope, I finally accepted the humble truth: I’m not enough, but God’s grace is. This is the gospel. This method of motherhood works because it simply follows the path God laid out in his gospel. First, we will always be imperfect and we will never be enough. Second, Jesus stands in the gap covering our sin and shame. Next, God uses the imperfect to display his power to those around us.

As mothers, this looks like realizing our sinful hearts and tired bodies will always hinder perfect motherhood. We have two choices, to keep hustling and striving to make motherhood work in our own merit or to give up on measuring up and rest in God’s grace over our imperfection and our weakness.

Dear Imperfect Mommy, every moment of everyday grace is bigger than your sin. You may be imperfect in practice, but you stand before God forgiven and free. If you stay connected to God, your focus will naturally fall to both his greatness and goodness. If you know moment-by-moment throughout the day a God who continually forgives and endlessly loves, you will live in the freedom that Christ bought for you rather than the shame of your imperfection.