Hey Moms: Let the Greater Parent Ease Your Load

“I am going to be more patient.”

“I am not going to yell.”

“I need to spend more time playing with them.”

“All the laundry will be done and put away (like hung and folded, not tossed into the closet or shoved into a drawer ).”

My early motherhood years were marked by defeat and discouragement because of my inability to “get it right”. Days were a vicious cycle of screwing up and then summoning up a self-will to do better next time.

Life as a stay-at-home/home educating mom of three was often-times demanding and overwhelming (still is, actually). I had a few miniature-sized human beings with minds of their own underfoot, who I not only had to keep alive but also was responsible for growing into full-functioning adults in society!

There’s a reason one of the verses I clung onto in that season was Lamentations 3:22-23:

“Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”

I woke up each day hopeful; a clean slate to be the “good” mom, wife, Christian I believed God desired of me. I endeavored to please Him, knowing full well that motherhood was a noble and high calling, and I just wanted to a do a good job!

But I (expectedly) always fell short, making it to the end of the day feeling no better than the one before. Feeling like a failure. Guilty. Tired. Hopeless that I would be able to ever fully live out the roles God called me to (because besides me being a mom, I also had to fit in being a wife in there as well!). I didn’t realize then that I often was “doing” out of my own flesh, unconsciously trying to check off a list that God never intended me to have.

It took me a long while to realize that raising kids was less about how well I am able to do all the things, and more about how often I go to Jesus and rest in His finished work (and encouraging our kids to do the same).

Because here’s the thing: I am a broken person in a broken world. Sure, God may help me gain victory in certain areas of my life as I am challenged to grow into the person, wife, and mom He desires of me. But at any given time I will fail my peeps in some capacity. I just will, because, really, I am completely insufficient and imperfect on my own.

However, I do know a One who is greater than my deficiencies. In fact, He is my children’s Greater Parent … as well as mine. After many years, and only by God’s grace, I was able to recognize that my approach to this motherhood thing was incomplete … and that raising the people under my roof was less about how well I parent and more about how often I point them to The King.

Being a great parent means looking to the Greater Parent.

After all, these souls are His. He formed them and breathed life into them, and continues to make their hearts beat without our help. There is a reason each of our children have been given an existence in God’s story, whether it is for a short time or a long one. As parents, we have just been given the privilege and opportunity to partner with Him in His purpose.

I can’t tell you how much this perspective freed me, not only as a mom, but as a woman after God’s heart; the breath of fresh air I needed as I walked out my own journey as one of His beloved. It then compelled me to move forward in rested work that involves investment of time and a willingness to be vulnerable and transparent with my kids (particularly when I fail them), reminding them that – though I love them and desire to parent them as God calls me to – the bottom line is that I am a big, fat sinner who will mess up. I will fall down and, many times, take them down with me!

But this also means being able to encourage them with the fact that there is a Greater Parent who they can trust to perfectly provide for them; who they can seek out for the genuine comfort, peace, joy, hope, and wisdom that I will fall short of giving them.

So, friends, let’s be faithful and diligent in our stewardship of the little people God has entrusted us with (they really are His!) by pointing them to the Greater Parent they already have in the one who created them.