The Kind of Mother My Kids Need

Today is Mother’s Day and like most women, I really want to do right by my kids. I “study” motherhood. I put time into it, reading about every stage, keeping my eyes and ears wide open as I navigate life with each child. I invest, pray, sacrifice and prioritize in order to meet my high ideals.

I want to be a good mom, but I am not good. I am sometimes impatient, irritable, distracted and self-serving at home. I do good things for bad reasons, and bad things with good reason and I have a thousand-and-one excuses for my mixed-up behavior.

Often my desire to be seen as a “good mom” is really a mask for the underlying idols that already reign in my heart. 

To make matters worse, the “good mom” persona is celebrated and encouraged in our churches, making its grasp even more subtle and ensnaring when coupled with my own sinful motives. It looks oh-so good on the outside, but the underlying symptoms are no way for the godly to live: Irrational fear that becomes all controlling and masks itself as “conscientious”; people pleasing that parades as being “others focused”; controlling pride that rejects God given authority in the church and masks as “family centered”, or over-investing in our kids because we are under-satisfied in God.

The Bible says that my heart is deceitful and wicked. It says that I am a sinner and I know it to be true. BUT, I sometimes want to think of myself as less of a sinner–a not so bad sinner. I rationalize, compare myself to others and try to declare myself good. I don’t want to agree with the Bible. I want to look good.

Paul Tripp has some insight in “Whiter Than Snow”:

Ask yourself…

Why do we spontaneously rise to our own defense? Why are you and I devastated when our weakness, sin and failure are pointed out? Why do we find confrontation and rebuke painful when they are done in love? Why do we want to believe that we are deprived, but not depraved? Or that we are depraved but not totally? Why do we find comfort in pointing to people who appear to be worse sinners than we are? Why do we make up self-atoning revisions of our own history? Why do we erect self-justifying arguments for what we have said or done? Why do we turn the table when someone points out a wrong, making sure that they know that we know that we’re not the only sinner  in the room? Why do we line up all the good things we’ve done as a counter-balance for the wrong that is being highlighted?

We find this all so hart to accept because we studiously hold onto the possibility that we’re more righteous than the Bible describes us to be. When we look into the mirror of self-appraisal, the person we tend to see is a person who is more righteous than any of us actually is!”

I am not good, and I know it. I don’t have to be.

WHEN I pursue goodness, its driving force must be devotion to and immense love of Christ which desires to please Him in my parenting efforts.

Grasping for perceived goodness that elevates me as a person is warped, unholy and rooted in pride.

The goodness that I need is a result of His righteousness. It is a goodness that knows its own badness, which keeps me focused on Christ and not on outward appearances.  I can rejoice in my badness which keeps me at the foot of the cross, clinging on to the only One who is good.

I can only be a good mother when my life is bowed low, bent in worship

and my whole heart is seeking to know and love God

and to find

my satisfaction and meaning in Christ instead of motherhood.

That is the kind of mother my kids need.