Where I am today

Why does everyone have an opinion about what sort of a mother I should be? Every book I read seems to assume that if I am not doing parenthood the way you do, I am wrong, or at least falling short a bit.

Yet none of those assumptions seem to help me much. I already know that I don't have what it takes. I already know that I can't love my little girls perfectly, or rejoice at every dirty diaper I have the privilege of changing, as one author suggested. I am just here, hanging on to God's grace and asking for the strength the get through another day.

I know what I do is important. I love my little princesses, my husband. But I still need God's mercy to get up again tonight when little Rose is throwing up again, the forth night in a row, while Daddy is gone all week. I need love to pick her up again when she falls down and won't get up until I come and help her up. Or the patience to think through how I will react when my Princess says "no" for the 100th time tonight.

Sorry, but telling me how to be a perfect mother is kind of pointless. I will never get there. I don't even want to think about trying. Today, I need to hear about how God still loves me anyway. I need to know that I can go back to him again tonight with the same complaints, same needs, and same weaknesses as I do every night, and know that he will not reject me. I need to know that I can tell him honestly how I feel, the way I can with no one else, and he will still love me wholly.

I know that the ideal mother should be. I see her in my head, seemingly mocking me at times, telling me that my house isn't clean enough, I haven't done enough crafts with my kids this week, and how everyone else at dinner is thinking that my kids or total brats, as I try to get them to at lease sit through the meal, if not eat.

I should go on a diet from parenting advice. I want to do a great job, oh how I want to! I want my kids to have wonderful, loving memories of their childhood, as I do. I want them to grow into all they can be, to see God in me, to find hope and courage for life. But when I use my failings as a starting point, I get lost.

Can I start with God? Know that he loves me, loves my kids? I don't know how to. I don't know how to accept grace here. Can I feel his acceptance? Joy? Approval? Someday before I reach perfection? I see that place in my mind, a place of freedom, release. A place of grace. I'm not there yet, but oh how I yearn to reach it.