It’s Mother’s Day, such a great holiday in my opinion. Well, not just because I’m a Mom. I love the opportunity to honor our parents… it’s one of the 10 Commandments after all!
On this Mother’s Day, I think it is a good chance for all Mom’s to remind ourselves of a few things.
God didn’t invent Pinterest.
Pinterest has become the symbol of societal pressure on women the world over.
Mother’s can no longer bake a simple cake for the Birthday party. Move over sheet cake, hello Dora in buttercream.
We can no longer just decorate our homes, they need to be gorgeous, unique and reflect our “personal style”.
Don’t just take your kids to church, family devotions with a craft each night would be better!
Let us remember this Mother’s Day that God didn’t invent Pinterest. The pressure we feel. The expectations we carry. The standards we hold to. Those are not from God. They may be real to us but they ain’t from the Father.
No matter what type of Mom you are, it’s not good enough.
So what about the things that do matter? Well, we fail at those too.
We yell when we shouldn’t. We show endless re-runs of cartoons just to survive certain days. We hold secret guilt over our failures. We hide in the bathroom reading People Magazine while our children fight outside the door. We take pride in things that don’t really matter.
Basically, we can be a bit of a mess.
The good news is we don’t have to hide this. With Jesus, our role as Mother can be enough because it’s not about what we can do, it’s about what He has done and will do.
God made us a Mother and he will sustain us… He was “good enough” so that our “not good enough” can be enough. Got that?
It is a miracle that God would trust any human being in to my care… truly. I think of this every day. Some days more than others, as I’m sure you can relate. On those days that we wonder if we are ruining these young persons lives, remember this: He’s not entrusting us to be good enough. God is trusting us to trust Him.
When it comes to being a mother, let this be our motto: God draws straight lines with crooked sticks. It’s his speciality. That is exactly why he made you a mother.
I’m not succeeding because I’m so great. I’m succeeding because He is so great.
Mom’s need Jesus to survive.
Today, while everyone is celebrating us we can have a different celebration that is going on inside our hearts. A celebration that looks like this: Falling into the arms of the Father.
We need Jesus to survive this journey. We need Jesus to make straight lines with our crooked sticks of a life. We need Jesus to rescue our children from our own inabilities.
Our hearts are willing but the flesh is week. That’s ok. Jesus is in this journey. He knows that secret list we have of “Top 10 Reasons my Children might end up in Prison by their 21st Birthday.” Let us throw ourselves, with all our weaknesses and worries, in to the hands of the Father who will carry our family in to the future.
May our children not remember any craft projects, wonderful meals, or well planned birthday parties. May our children honestly say, “Mom wasn’t perfect but she sure did trust Jesus.”
I don’t know about you but that sounds doable to me. I can throw all my mothering dreams and failures into the hands of Jesus and trust Him with this journey. I can’t trust myself always. But I know He is always trustworthy.
That’s the type of mother I want to be on this Mother’s Day. I’ll leave everything else to Pinterest.