Hope for Try-Hard Moms

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I was elbow-deep in soapsuds when my 4-year-old’s cries prompted me to drop my dishrag, abandon the breakfast dishes, and  race to the other room. Maggie had been coloring a picture, but when I reached her side, the paper lay crumpled and torn on the floor.

“Honey, what’s wrong?” I asked.

“I can’t color in the lines,” Maggie complained.

I retrieved the wrinkled paper and smoothed it with my palm. The kitty on the coloring page looked like it had been caught in a crossfire.

“See?” my preschooler said, as she rubbed the crayon furiously over the holes on the paper.

I could feel Maggie’s frustration as I watched her shoulders tighten with each squiggly stroke. The more she pressed that plum Crayola upon the page, the more the picture ripped beneath her efforts.

“I just can’t make anything beautiful,” Maggie declared.

What a curious remark from this child who sculpts gourmet cakes from Play-Doh and creates masterpieces on the driveway with a fistful of sidewalk chalk. An artist indeed, my daughter doesn’t yet know that beauty isn’t always measured between the lines.

Maggie sighed and set down her crayon, and I recognized myself in her try-hard weariness. There, in my 4-year-old’s furrowed brow, I saw the mom who had once tried to live within a set of invisible lines.

No one had written out the rules of good parenting for me. They were the result of my own expectations, noble ideas shaped by well-meaning mommy books, fabulous Facebook posts and my personal good-girl gospel.

My lines declared that a good mom keeps a clean house, bakes bread from scratch and arrives everywhere on time. A good mom knows just what to do when her teen slumps into silence, when a toddler refuses to eat her veggies, or when a 6-year-old strings a web of lies.

But no matter how hard I tried, my life kept spilling outside the lines.

I was certain that a good mom never lies in bed at night wondering if she is ruining her children. (But sometimes I do.)
A good mom never delivers her child to the wrong soccer field on the wrong day at the wrong time. (But maybe I’ve done that once or twice). And a good mom never leaves the house with dirty-faced children or forgets to pack her kindergartner’s lunch (But I’m guilty of both).

Perhaps you’ve lived within a self-declared set of lines, too. Maybe you believe that good wives serve dinner by candlelight and always have the laundry done. Or that good friends always reply to texts and certainly never forget a birthday.

Maybe, like me, the harder you try to live within the lines, the more your soul rips beneath the weight of your efforts. But here’s the good news for try-hard women like us: God’s not offended by our flaws and imperfections.

In 2 Corinthians 12:9, God reminds us that our weaknesses are merely windows to His strength. “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

That small verse tucked on the pages of God’s holy word was what finally compelled me to trade my invisible lines of expectation for the compassionate contours of my Savior’s grace.

And do you know what? When I finally stopped obsessing over my flaws and began focusing on His faithfulness, my life took on a new kind of beauty.

Maggie was still crying over the rips in her coloring page, so I tipped her chin and asked her to watch as I placed that picture, holes and all, against the window.

Morning sunbeams streamed right through those holes in the paper and cast a glorious rainbow of light upon the carpet at our feet. Maggie grew quiet staring at the shimmers on the floor and slipped something small and purple into my hand. “I don’t need my crayon anymore, Mommy. I like my picture just like that.”

So we stood at the window together, watching glory stream through the gaps.

What has shaped your definition of a “good mommy?” What is one unrealistic line of expectation that you can trade for the comforting contours of God’s grace today?

Stephanie Shott
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