As I write, I’m listening to children’s music about the color yellow blasting from the CD player in the kitchen. The kids have been in the kitchen and dining room for an hour now, alternately dancing to the music and playing with other toys.
Are they having a good enough time?
There’s a lot of laughter at our house. We make silly faces and tell silly jokes; we say silly things and laugh together. Sometimes, we chuckle in delight or laugh so hard we can’t stand up straight.
Yet at times, I wonder…on the whole, are they happy enough?
Every night, I tuck them in bed. Sometimes, I sing over them. Always, I pray for them. Then, I tell them, “You’re great kids, and I love you, and God loves you.”
But are they secure enough?
Most of us moms struggle, at least from time to time, with wondering if we’re doing enough. Are we providing our children a good enough childhood? Are we good enough moms?
The question is so important because the answer matters so greatly. We don’t want to fail our children. We want them to be deeply convinced that they’re loved and lovable, to have the right kind and amount of self-esteem, and most of all, to love God and be like His Son Jesus.
But how can we know if the job we’re doing as parents is sufficient to produce these results?
The issue becomes especially complicated for a mom who didn’t experience love, stability, and security in her own childhood. This mom knows what kinds of things not to do, but she doesn’t fully understand how a strong and loving bond is produced because she never saw it in action. When she makes a mistake, she’s never sure how bad of a mistake it is. So she lives with the constant, nagging fear that the things she’s doing might not be enough to give her children what she never had.
Precious mom, let me share with you what God, in His grace, taught me.
We don’t have to live in constant torment that we might not measure up. Our life as mothers is meant to be so much more than endlessly trying to measure up to society’s expectations, our best friend’s abilities, or even our own standards. The only One we have to please is God, and He does not make it difficult to know whether or not we are pleasing Him.
For one thing, He sets forth some clear, specific guidelines in His Word, the Bible, about how we should treat our children. We don’t need to wonder whether or not we should forgive our children or treat them kindly. That’s spelled out as plain as He could make it.
For another, when we have the Holy Spirit in our hearts, we have God Himself and His wisdom available right inside of us to tell us when we aren’t doing right. And we can be completely certain that He will tell us when we’re doing something wrong, and He’ll tell us specifically.
God’s ultimate desire for us is that we be conformed to the image of His Son—in other words, that we act like Jesus. So if anything we are doing, or failing to do, gets in the way of that, He’ll tell us what it is so that we can repent of it and uproot it from our lives. God won’t leave us with some vague, undefined sense of guilt. He won’t tell us we’re doing something wrong or insufficiently, then refuse to tell us what, exactly, He’s talking about.
What that means for us as mothers is that since God is the only person we ultimately have to please, if He’s not telling us we’re doing something wrong, then we are good enough.
The next time we wonder whether or not we’re being the kind of mom we should be, let’s simply ask Him. If we’re not, He’ll tell us. If we are, He’ll tell us that, too.
May we learn to rest in the fact that though we’re not perfect, we can be the kind of mom who pleases God. And ultimately, that kind of mom is good enough.
James 1:5—If any [mom] lacks wisdom, let [her] ask of God, who gives graciously to all without finding fault, and it will be given [her].