I once was the mom who couldn't believe someone could ever get frustrated or impatient with their child. I once was the mom who couldn't imagine not wanting to sit and play on the floor with my baby all day. I once was the mom who held tight to the wisdom passed on from the ages that "they will grow up in the blink of an eye" and tried to seize each moment of mommying. Now...now I am many things I wish I wasn't. I am not the mom I thought others should be or the mom I hoped to be.
I am the mom who checks her email when she could be playing dress-up. I am the mom who uses words carelessly and makes lots of peanut butter sandwiches and gets irritated by whining and crying. I am the mom who sometimes counts the minutes until naptime. I get angry. I get tired. Sometimes I wish I could call in a substitute. Sometimes I let them keep arguing instead of stopping what I'm doing to go help them learn to share. Sometimes I feel like the worst mom in the world. I am the mom who goes to bed most nights wishing I could do the day over again, wishing I had loved them better.
And if you're not that kind of mom and I sound simply awful to you, well, that's what I used to think of moms like myself, too. So I get where you're coming from. Maybe you never will be the kind of mom that I wish I wasn't. And it should sound awful to some extent because, aside from salvation and marriage, is there any gift as great as the gift of a child? Is there any job more valuable than being entrusted with the very lives and hearts of little people who will one day grow up and live lives that could completely change the world?
Maybe someday I will be the mom who doesn't waste time, who always chooses to invest in my kids instead of myself, who never gets angry and always patiently loves. I want to change and I need to change. But even if I did all of that, I still would not be a perfect mom. And no matter how hard you try, you will never be a perfect mom either. There is no perfect mom; there never was and there never will be. But there is a perfect Savior who loved perfectly in our places, that we might be forgiven for all of our lack of love and that our children may be loved perfectly by a parent who will never fail them. He is my only hope amidst my continual failings as a mom.
Father, thank you for always being a perfect parent even though I am not. Please, make me more like you as I love these little ones you've given me.
