UnsupermommyНамуна

Giving Up on the Expectations of Others

If you are pregnant, your heart is full of lovely desires for how your motherhood will look and the kind of home your child will experience, but if you are already a mom, you probably know the brutal truth: motherhood often feels like failure upon failure. The world around you is filled with bloated expectations for moms. Even though logically you probably know that no one can live up to those standards, it’s nearly impossible not to internalize them.

These standards aren’t all bad on their own. It’s the assumption beneath the standards—that we can control our circumstances—that’s fatal to your joy. No matter how skilled you are with babies, raising your own baby will be a completely new experience. There is simply no learning a new thing without a lot of failure.

But there is hope! You may not have the power to succeed at the expectations piling up at your feet, but God's strength is mighty in your weakness. He has more than enough power to plug into when you discover that you just aren’t strong enough. Ultimately, God's goal is not to create supermommies, but to develop us into women whose hearts earnestly love and desire more of Him.

The only way to lessen the desire for the approval of man is to replace it with a desire for God’s glory instead of our own. Embrace the Bible’s standards for your life. The glory of the gospel is that when you fall short of God’s perfect law, Jesus stands in the gap of your imperfection. Jesus writes his perfect name in blood over every failing, redeeming all your wrongs.

No more shame, only freedom. Shame is the result of elevating the opinion of others above the approval of God. Other people may be vicious and judgmental, but God is kind and loving. Put the venomous judgments aside and focus on God's gentle love calling you to freedom and redemption by the blood of Jesus.

Connecting to God’s superpowers is the only ticket to the wisdom you need to navigate the confusing and overwhelming decisions of motherhood. If you don’t remain connected to God, you’ll find yourself conformed to the world’s standards of motherhood. If you want to renew your mommy mind and have wisdom to discern God’s path for you, you must plug into his truth instead of the world's standards for perfect motherhood.