On Failure {And Motherhood}
I’ve always been ambitious and driven. I can be a bit competitive and not very okay with mediocre. I don’t want to be okay. I want to be the best. And failure? I sort of hate it.
I remember being a teenager and making a list of everything my husband would have to be. As a 22 year old, I sat in my pastor’s office and voiced my concern that I may never marry. He told me the strangest, yet best advice ever: “Amanda, you need to lower your standards.”
{And for the record, he didn’t mean to go marry the first single man I laid eyes on. He meant my ideal guy didn’t exist.}
And I let go of my list, trusted the leading of my God, and fell madly in love with my husband. And he is far better than anything I could have imagined up on a sheet of binder paper as a sixteen year old.
In light of this, I think of being a mom. The way it feels like I fail a thousand times a day. The way I fall so short of how I imagined I would be as a mom. I am terrified of failing and deep down I think I have to be a perfect mom.
I love my kids. To the moon and back. With all my heart. No matter what.
But I wonder if I lowered my standards, wasn’t so afraid to fail, wasn’t so set on being perfect if I would fall in love with being a mom.
I think things like the blue lotion in my son’s hair and the bedtime battles wouldn’t speak to me and tell how badly I am doing at this thing called motherhood.
I think I would let go a little, trust God a lot more, and enjoy the daily grind of being a mom… because I wouldn’t be so afraid of getting it wrong.
Because if I am really honest, some days I find myself looking for the things I am naturally really good at instead of what’s right in front of me. I struggle with being content here and now. I want affirmation. I want to know I am good at something. And the days where the floor got covered in Cheerios and the son hit his sister and the sister rolled her eyes at me and the son got out of his bed for the 15th time and it’s now pushing 10 pm and he’s still not asleep and the dishes got left in the sink for the next day and the daughter wet the bed and I haven’t gotten a solid 8 hours of sleep since that first baby started bladder jumping in utero in the wee hours of the morning… I feel like I’ve failed.
It’s not that I should intentionally do a terrible job of parenting, it’s that my ideal version of motherhood doesn’t exist.
Motherhood is messy. And most days, it’s like hacking through the jungle, bravely pioneering the unknown territories of your own fearfully, wonderfully and uniquely made children. And somedays, it’s going to feel like groping through the dark without a flashlight. It’s going to be rough. You are going to make mistakes and missteps. And really it’s the Grace of God that sees us through.
What I said yesterday has really stuck with me: God is a beautiful-tapestry weaver. And He takes it all, stretches the messes and the triumphs across the loom and weaves His Grace through it all. And He makes beautiful things. He’s got your family. He’s got your kids. He’s got you. And HE is making beautiful things out of it all.
And God doesn’t need you to get it perfect.
So perfect. I am giving up on you.
I am going to {learn to} be okay with failure. I am lowering the standards I place on myself. Instead of getting it right, I am going to take it all to the One who makes all things right.
The single most important thing I can do as a mom is lead my children to You, God. So I am taking it all to You. The path to the foot of the cross is going to be a well-worn path in this family. My kids will know the way because they will have watched their momma go there so many times.
Okay, so I gotta know: is there anyone else that has been chasing perfect? That’s afraid of failure? That feels like they are currently failing at this thing called motherhood? Sister, I am standing here with you.
By Grace,
Amanda Conquers