Too Blessed to Be Stressed for MomsНамуна

PMS: Pretending Mom’s Sane 

 “If I keep my eyes on God, I won’t trip over my own feet” (Psalm 25:15 MSG). 

Challenges are definitely part of the motherhood download. Not only must we manage the ravages of our own roller-coaster hormones, we have to juggle the craziness balls of everyone else under our roof. 

Between midnight colic, projectile vomiting, weapons of mass destruction (toddlers), car-seat chaos, sibling crash dummies, and adolescent hormonal tsunamis, moms must grope deep inside their battered selves for hope—especially when we make awful parenting mistakes. When we drop those do-it-all juggling balls. When we’re convinced our kids will turn out to be serial killers. 

I’ll never forget the day my teenage daughter informed me that she’d probably be in therapy for years due to my mothering. Ouch. 

My response? “Well, it’s your job to be a better mother than you had. It was my job and my mother’s and her mother’s before that. Keep all the good stuff and improve on the bad. One day in the future, maybe one of our descendants will get it right.”

Listen sister-mom, we don’t have to wallow in shame over our mothering mistakes. Every single one of us makes ’em. And it’s okay. Papa God created us as imperfect, stumbling, what-was-I-thinking humans, knowing we’d raise offspring just as flawed. 

The good news is that our heavenly parent loves us to pieces anyway. 

So guess what? Ten years after my daughter’s doomful pronouncement of my mothering deficiencies, she and her husband bought the house next door to us. Go figure. They now intentionally include me in raising their three children. Redemption is sweet!

And despite your misgivings, your redemption will be too. No matter how badly you think you’re screwing up today. It’s called God’s grace (Romans 6:15).

So don’t beat yourself up with the vicious lie that you’re the worst mother in the history of the world. You cannot judge your worth by your current circumstances. Don’t allow yourself to fall into the emotional black hole of self-condemnation; Papa God’s love for you is immeasurably bigger than your worst blunders (Romans 8:1). 

Additional Elements: 

BFF (Blessed Friends Forever) prayer: Gracious Father, thank You for filling in the holes in my life with Your bottomless grace. May I borrow Your shovel? Amen. 

Digging Deeper: Romans 9:20-21 MSG