Encouragement for Moms Who Are Overwhelmed or Discouraged: We’re All Broken

One of the biggest things I have learned over my years as a mother is that we are two imperfect people raising imperfect people in a world that often works against us.

This can sound like a sober realization and a hopeless proclamation but I’d like to take the opportunity to explain why it is actually a huge encouragement for moms who are overwhelmed or discouraged or who just feel like God made a mistake when He made them responsible for such tiny creatures. 

We were not designed to be broken. Our world, our bodies, our souls, were created to be pure and in perfect harmony with the Creator. A phrase I was taught at a youth retreat a couple decades ago is that “God doesn’t make mistakes.”

 

He didn’t make a mistake when he made you a mother. On the contrary, He gave you the exact children that you were meant to have, in the exact amount, and with the exact personalities He wanted for them. None of them were accidentally put into your heart, home, and family.

 

That is one aspect of this concept. The next is the acceptance that we will never be able to raise perfect children. We all have our own childhood issues from when our parents raised us that we need to deal with, some are more traumatic and some affects us less but they are all part of our story and who we are today. Our children will also be affected by their childhood, for better or worse. 

 

I have met amazing parents whose teenage and adult children chose to follow dangerous or heartbreaking paths. I have met parents who neglected or abused their children whose children found healing and hope and have gone on to become incredibly stable and hope-filled adults. 

 

Does this mean that parenting doesn’t matter? Absolutely not. When children grow up with a stable, consistent, and loving caregiver, they always remember what security and safety feel like, no matter the direction they take in life. 

Down to our very soul, God made us in His image to be amazing and world impacting people. His original design and desire for us is to worship Him in wholeness. Unfortunately we are attacked on a daily basis by the broken world we live in. We believe the lies that tell us we’re not good enough. That we are worthless because we don’t measure up to an arbitrary standard or because we are terrible sinners.

 

I will admit that I am not a thorough housekeeper. I don’t enjoy it and often do just the minimum to keep my house respectable. After 15 years of keeping my own house, I still haven’t found a way to actually enjoy it. (I’m guessing many of you can relate.) Does this make me any less of a person? Not in the slightest. We would never say that someone is worth less because they can’t manage to keep all the laundry cleaned, folded, and put away! Some days it is a struggle just to keep it all in the house! (Please tell me my kids are not the only ones who leave socks, shirts, and muddy jeans outside under the swing set.)

 

Whether you struggle with minor things like math or laundry, or with more life-altering habits and sins, what you do does not change the fact that God did not mess up on you. The devil’s trick is to make you believe the lie that you are not enough. It is the same lie he will tell your children through their lives.

 

Do you remember when you first looked on your child? Born into this world and full of beauty and innocence. Potential. Wholeness.

 

All of that is still there.

As someone who is constantly battling the devil whispering in my ear and telling me that I’m not good enough, as someone who has been pushed down and trampled on by brokenness too many times to count, I can still confidently say that the world may break me but God still owns me. He is still the foundation, the core, that I am built on. And He keeps rebuilding me. I beg Him regularly to keep rebuilding me.

 

That same core is built into you and your children. We would never say there is such thing a worth more or worth less when it comes to our children so why do we believe the lie that there is such a thing when it comes to God’s children? 

 

Knowing this lie will attack our children, are there any measures we can take to prepare them? 

The number one thing we can do as parents is to fill up our hearts with so much Truth and Love, to allow ourselves to accept that we are broken but can be built up, that it can’t help but spill over into our children. They need us to fill them up with so much of God’s perfect Love that they can reject the lie that will be whispered to them, shoved at them, and sometimes even shouted from the rooftops, throughout their lives. 

 

No matter what way I look at this parenting gig, it always cycles back to my childhood song of “read your Bible, pray every day.” Always back to starting with good, faith building habits.