Have you ever said, “I’ve made so many mistakes.”
Of course you have.
Allowing that truth to cause you shame is what is causing you pain.
What if this realization is the exact thing that moves you more and more into the mother you were always meant to be?
Perfect parenting was never an option.
Knowing that you did the best you could at the time allows you to do better now that you know better.
Will it be easy?
No.
But what if it was never meant to be easy.
What if the hard, the challenging, the complicated was always going to be part of it?
If we knew going into it that this would be the hardest and yet most beautiful thing we’ve ever done.
Being a beautifully complex mother to beautifully complex humans.
For some reason we expected to never experience hard parts.
But this is part of motherhood, too.
It’s important to remind ourselves that God is the only truly perfect One.
God doesn’t expect perfection from us.
Jesus did it so perfectly that we don’t have to!
We mamas tend to think we must be perfect at mothering otherwise we are failing.
That we must never get frustrated with our littles and we should always keep a perfectly clean house and have endless energy and patience for our kids’ endless requests and questions.
When we slip into perfectionism, and the need to be perfect, there is a fear beneath the surface.
We think that by being “perfect” we will avoid having to feel uncomfortable emotions.
Emotions like embarrassment, guilt, or shame.
But what if we could allow ourselves to feel every emotion that God designed our bodies to feel?
Because on the other side of FEELING is HEALING.
And we allow them we can ask them what they are there to reveal to us.
Those feelings can always be traced back to a fear.
There’s a fear that the outcome will not be favorable if we don’t do everything perfectly.
That there will somehow be a punishment involved.
That our children will not become good people and we will be to blame and thus we are not good either.
The Bible refers much to the word perfect as “maturing or equipping” in Greek and “perfect in heart or to make complete” in Hebrew.
So, what if you could redefine “perfect” as what pleases God’s heart?
Seeing yourself first as His daughter and understanding our human limitations that we will not always get it right, perfect might look like being a mama who tries her best to have patience and compassion for her littles’ lack of skills and inability to sit still or do a task quickly and efficiently.
When you feel too tired it might mean setting aside a task and teaching your kids that God has told us that we need to rest and take breaks sometimes and to take care of our bodies.
When we snap or yell at our kids, perfect in God’s eyes could be humbling yourself and asking for forgiveness and modeling forgiveness for them when they miss the mark.
And then affording yourself the same grace you give to others and taking a minute to breathe in God’s love and love yourself well with it.
What if we remind ourselves that we are the same as our kids? Both in need of a Savior each and every day.
We can parent FAITHFULLY, but not PERFECTLY. What if perfection was never on the agenda? ~Be Blessed, Jenny xoxo
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