Monday, November 21, 2011

Failure, Fear and Freedom

I was honored to be asked recently to write a guest post for one of my newest favorite blogs: Christ in the Chaos (formerly known as Life with Littles). Kimm is a woman who loves and breathes the gospel--and who graciously lets us read along and be encouraged as she preaches it to herself in the midst of everyday motherhood! I can't tell you how many times I've printed off posts or copied quotes just in the few short months I've been reading. This is definitely a blog to add to your feed reader--or you can follow her on Facebook.

Over at her place today, I talk about the failure I feel as a mother and the ways I'm tempted to fear...
Motherhood has laid me low like nothing else. Over the last four years, God has used two precious little boys to humble me to the dust, to expose just how "false and full of sin I am," just how inadequate and helpless and dependent I am, no matter how much I might wish otherwise. I have, to be totally honest, hated it at times for that very reason. I don't like being brought face to face with the reality of what a mess I am, what a failure I am and how totally I screw up all the time.

And if I don’t like knowing how far I fall short, I certainly don’t like for others to know it. I want to be the mom people admire; I want to have the kids everyone finds delightful. Instead, those around me see me fumbling and stumbling, no more awesome in this parenting gig than I was four years ago when I held a tiny newborn and wondered, “What have we done?”

So when I am full of despair at how little I have grown and changed in the last four years…when I am embarrassed by my children’s behavior or fearful of how other moms are judging me…I have only one place to go.
[continue reading over at Kimm's awesome blog...]

1 comment:

Brenda Jung said...

Amy, I really enjoyed your honesty. Thank you for putting into words so many of my feelings as a mother of three.