I’ve always struggled to feel like I was a “good enough” mom. A mom who deserved the accolade of “Best Mom” scribbled on a card from her kids on Mother’s Day.
I don’t bake bread from scratch (although I have used a bread machine!). I don’t create homemade birthday cakes that belong in a magazine. (But I do make box cake mixes and toss sprinkles on top of the frosting).
When my kids were under the age of 8, I didn’t want playdates to last more than two hours (even better if we just met up somewhere else like a park). During the naptime years, I didn’t use those golden minutes to meal prep or clean the house, but to work out, shower, and read my Bible.
Despite my limitations as a mom, I’ve learned an important lesson: I wasn’t meant to be enough for my kids, but God always is.
We all have limitations, but the God we’re created to point to doesn’t (cue the confetti!). We want our kids to place their hope in Jesus, not us.
Read this next: Why Do I Feel So Stuck as a Mom?
God’s Grace for Imperfect Moms
We can’t be everywhere all the time, especially if we have more than one child. We can’t attend every sports game. We can’t chaperone every field trip. We can’t always be on time, especially when a stray shin guard is left behind. If our kids attend school outside the home, we can’t be with them all day long there.
We can’t get it right every time. We may snap at our kids when we’re stressed and have to seek forgiveness. We might forget to do something we said we would.
We might wish we’d put more thought into a plan for a day off from school. We might miss a family devotion during a busy day—or month.
Experiencing our inability to be everywhere or be everything we imagine we should be reminds us we’re not God—and we were never meant to be.
But our role as parents isn’t to be everything for our kids. Our job is to point our children to the One who will always be with them and never fail.
When we stand face-to-face with our insecurities and shortcomings as a parent, we can draw comfort from God’s grace. Believers can marvel that before the foundation of the world, God chose us to be His:
“Even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him” (Ephesians 1:4 ESV).
The book of Revelation mentions the names of those who were written in the book of life before the foundation of the world (Revelation 13:8, 17:8).
The book of life contains the names of those who will be with the Lord forever. God extended grace to his children—to you and I—before he spoke the world into existence. Incredible!
As mind blowing as this is, there’s more. The name of the book mentioned in Revelation is quite lengthy: “the book of life of the Lamb who was slain” (Revelation 13:8).
Before we took our first breath, God already devised a plan to redeem us and put his grace on display through Jesus. Before the Father created the world, he already knew Jesus would die on the cross to magnify his glory and grace because we would sin and rebel against him and need rescuing.
I struggle to plan out meals for the week and what time we eat dinner on a given night with the moving target of sports practices. But God mapped out how every single one of his children would be reconciled to Him before he spoke a single word of creation!
Point Your Kids to Jesus, Not Perfection
When God created us in his image, we were meant to reflect him to the world. So others can taste and see his goodness (Psalm 34:8) through our lives. That’s our primary role as parents: to point our kids to Jesus!
This side of heaven, we can’t be “good enough.” We can’t be everywhere. We can’t always do everything just right. But we know who is more than good enough and is always with us. We can point our kids to God.
We can teach our kids about the beauty of God’s grace best put on display through Jesus’ death on the cross. God’s love, grace, mercy, and justice collide on the cross and it was ordained to be so before the foundation of the world.
When we feel discouraged or question if we’ll ever be “good enough,” we can remind ourselves how we were never meant to do it all or figure everything out. We’re not God.
We can turn our eyes to Jesus’ death on the cross and stand in awe of God’s grace lavished upon us. Then we can model dependency on God, not us.
This doesn’t mean we don’t look for ways to grow as parents or that we shouldn’t be reliable. As parents, we should be a trusted source of support and a Christlike model. But it does mean we don’t teach our kids to turn to us more than to God. The Lord must be our kids’ firm foundation.
And our lives should emulate this reality to our kids. They should see our reliance on God, not ourselves.
In practice, this could look like stopping to pray to God more together. Acknowledging our shortcomings to our kids and reminding them to turn to Jesus when things don’t go the way they’d hoped. When our kids face challenges, we repeat the truth that God is always with them even when we can’t be.
One day our kids will launch off into the world. And if we’ve reflected clinging to God’s grace well, they’ll be fully equipped to trust and hope in Jesus, not themselves.
Hope in ourselves disappoints. Hope in God’s grace never does.
