The Excellent Mother
The path to becoming an excellent mother may be a tumultuous and difficult one. One familiar quote says, “By the time I got parenting figured out, they were grown and gone.” We all know that we learn so much as we go through life experiences, each one building on the other. One key to growing and maturing as a mother lies in how we respond to each twist and turn in our path. But where is that path taking us. Let’s explore!
When my oldest daughter was born she fell into a rhythm of sleeping and eating with so much ease. I crowned myself a confident and wise mother to have such a content baby. Surely I was meeting all her needs.
My second daughter was slightly different. She was very cat-like in the beginning, preferring the night and sleeping all day. She cried demandingly and relentlessly when she was upset. My parenting prowess was starting to slip. Was I losing my “mothering touch?”
When my third daughter came into this world, I received a big wake up call in humility. This girl was mad about everything. She was not colicky, just crabby…all the time. All my motherly “tricks” which I accumulated through the years amounted to…well…nothing. This bundle of joy took me to my physical and emotional limit every single day. What I learned finally by baby #3 was that I utterly and completely needed the Lord to help me be an excellent mother. I began to pray though my frustration. I began to pray for my children in a more real and desperate way crying out to God on their behalf. I felt after six years of being a mom that I was absolutely incompetent at it apart from God.
Now, many of you may be thinking, “Gee, she’s a slow learner!” and you would be absolutely right. But if we are all honest, we’d have to agree that we all have the tendency to try to do things in our own strength FIRST. It’s only when we are pushed to our limits do we realize we are inadequate without Him. This is the first and most important step to becoming an excellent mother: complete dependence on God. We must cultivate this attitude in our devotional time and in our everyday decisions.
I remember when I was in college I knew a girl who was deeply devoted to God. She told me that she would even pray about which mascara to buy in the beauty aisle! She wasn’t being overly devoted. Indeed, she was remembering and living on God’s promise to care about every detail of our life. As mothers, we attend to hundreds of little details in the lives of our children. Remembering that God cares for these as much and even more than we do is a great way to begin to live out our growing dependence on God.
We often will put on ourselves unreasonable expectations when parenting. We should always have the right response to our children’s needs or the perfect answer to their questions. How impossible is that to achieve?! That is a great way to go through the day- feeling like a total failure! Our life becomes much less stressful when we lift that burden to the Lord by going to Him for the guidance and direction we are seeking. We don’t have to know all the answers because we are close to the One who does. What a valuable lesson to pass on to our children when we say “let’s take that question to the Lord first.”
Excellence in mothering begins with God. Cultivating your love for Jesus and demonstrating your dependence to him on a moment by moment basis is a great way toward achieving that excellence we all attain to. 2 Corinthians 12:9 says, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Begin today to cultivate the one skill I believe is most important to being an excellent mother…utter dependence on God. He is the giver and sustainer of life.
