Last night, I took my four older children to a friend’s house for a playdate. Her 6-year-old daughter is my 6-year-old’s BFF, and her son is friends with my older son and daughter. All the kids get along together, and it’s always a fun and relaxing time for my friend and me to chat.
We were standing in the kitchen catching up on each other’s lives and finishing preparing supper when Lindsey limped in, dragging her right leg. Her pants were pulled up above a quarter-sized mildly pink spot on her knee. I could immediately tell that whatever had happened was not the grievous injury the limping would seem to indicate, but I was curious. “What happened?” I asked.
“I bonked my knee on that thing that’s next to the couch,” Lindsey said.
“The ottoman?” my friend asked.
“I guess that’s what it’s called,” Lindsey said.
I peered at her knee. “Looks like you’ll be okay,” I said.
I was eventually able to convince Lindsey to return to her play. For a few minutes, that is. A short time later, she returned to the kitchen, still limping. “My knee is hurting badder and badder,” she said.
“It’ll do that,” I said. “Your knee will start feeling worse when you walk funny on it and put stresses on it in a way it wasn’t meant to take.”
Hmm. Sounds like life, doesn’t it? When we put stresses on ourselves in ways we were never meant to, we make life much more difficult than it has to be.
It’s true that some stresses are unavoidable. For example, being a mom brings a certain amount of stress that you really can’t avoid and will have to cope with if you don’t want to go crazy or get burned out. But a lot of times, we moms put more stress on ourselves than what is strictly necessary.
One primary way we do this is by believing the lie that we have to be perfect. Oh, we say we don’t believe that, but our actions show that we do. When the cupcakes little Johnny was supposed to take to school don’t turn out right, or we forget to put the birthday party invitations in the mail, or little Suzy can’t find her favorite shirt because we haven’t done laundry in far too long, we can come down pretty hard on ourselves. What we would excuse as an understandable mistake in someone else seems totally inexcusable when we’re the person making the mistake.
Another way we make things too hard is by heaping unwarranted guilt on ourselves. Whether our misdeed is yelling at our children when they didn’t deserve it, taking the kids through a drive-through somewhere six nights in a single week, or forgetting to go to the school play, we heap guilt on ourselves, and that voice in our head that tells us we’re not a good enough mom cranks up the volume.
I haven’t met a mom yet who says she never struggles with this. It’s completely, totally normal.
It’s also completely, totally sinful.
Whoa, what? Say that again. Sinful?
Yep. Having standards different from God’s is sin.
But doesn’t God expect perfection?
Moral perfection, yes. But there are certain kinds of mistakes that are not sin because they are simply mistakes. Baking the cupcakes at the wrong temperature so that they turn crispy is not sin; it’s a simple mistake. God doesn’t expect us to be perfect in these non-moral kinds of ways. So when we act like anything less than perfection is unacceptable, we are holding to standards that are different from God’s. We are sinning.
When we make the kind of mistake that is an actual sin, such as speaking harshly to a child in anger, then yes, we do need to repent. We need to hold to the same standard God does, that any kind of sin is unacceptable. The problem comes when we act like we must continue to pay a penalty for our offense by beating ourselves up with our guilt even after we’ve repented and sought forgiveness. We must not repeatedly resurrect our offense and rub our emotions raw with it. When we do that, we’re saying that God’s grace only goes so far. It’ll get us into heaven, but until then, we have to live in misery. That’s completely opposite from God’s standard of full, complete, and immediate forgiveness.
Precious mom, do you hold standards that are different from God’s? Ask Him to show you where you are requiring something more or different from what He requires of you. Don’t put unnecessary pressure on yourself that God wouldn’t put on you. It’ll only cause you to limp longer than you have to.
Psalm 103:12—As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.