Yippee!! I am a failure!

It was the end of a wonderful day.  My sons were happy and playful for most of the entire day.  The weather was turning from winter to spring and the temperature and blooming grass and flowers in our yard reflected just that.  Although both sons had runny noses there were some humorous and memorable moments of 5 inch snot worms dangling from my toddler’s nose as he ran round the kitchen giggling as I tried to chase him with a tissue.  Our family enjoyed a nutritious and delicious meal, which creatively used some random items in my fridge and pantry.  My toddler came up to me and asked for a bubble bath, “mommy, bubble baff peas.”  As he was playing in his bubble bath I sat down next to the tub with my kindle fire.  I put my feet up and realized I was happy.

I decided that the next best thing to relaxing with my feet up, next to a tub full of bubbles and a two-year old at the end of a happy day was to relax myself and get caught up on reading some blogs I follow.  The blog I came to was my dear friend’s blog.  She was explaining how elimination communication (teaching your baby how to use the potty) was encouraging her and working really well for her baby.  There was nothing wrong with her post at all.  It was just a mother who found an answer to something and was able to address one of her own frustrations.  She was joyful and excited and she was just sharing her joy.  But my response was far from the same. 

As I came to the end of her blog post I immediately thought, “I need to do this too!  How can I do this as soon as possible?”  All of a sudden the blog I just read was condemning me and making me feel guilty.  I twisted my dear friend’s excitement into some sort of righteousness badge and I needed the same.  All of a sudden I looked at our disposable and cloth diapers and thought that they made a statement about me and that statement was that I was not a good mother.  But just as quickly as I had the burden of teaching my baby to be potty trained I felt overwhelmed and had a spiraling turn of thoughts in my self-righteous brain.  “No!  I can’t do this, not another thing to consume my mind and time and distract me.  But this is the latest thing and if I can teach my baby to be potty trained imagine the proud badge of power and control that I can add to my motherhood achievement wall?!”

But thankfully God providentially saved me from myself.  Just as these crazy thoughts were combating against each other in my mind my kindle fire ran out of battery so I had to shut it off and recharge it.  My son was done with his bath now and playing with Daddy.  I told my husband that I read something that overwhelmed me.  He knew exactly what I was talking about and let me go downstairs to read and redirect my thoughts on truth (oh my sweet husband who knows me so well and understands what entices and entangles my heart!)

I was shocked and humbled at how quickly the pride and lust of my flesh twisted such a wonderful day!  One moment I was basking in the happiness of a great day and the next moment I was twisting my friend’s excitement into a grotesque badge of honor that I needed to obtain.  When I went downstairs I grabbed a book that my husband recently got me called Grace for the Good Girl: letting go of the try-hard life by Emily P. Freeman.  My husband picked it up for me at the recent pastor’s conference he attended at our church.  He said when he saw it he thought, “I didn’t know my wife wrote a book?”  Let me quote a chapter I read that evening:

Occasionally, I was able to live up the rules I thought God wanted me to follow.  Then I would look down my nose at those who didn‘t or couldn’t, while only a week later finding myself in their same condition, unable to perform anymore, defeated from all of the effort.  Instead of facing the failure and allowing the law to show me my need for a Savior, I consoled my failure with new and improved intentions to prove myself by myself.  And the cycle continued. (page 70)

My friend was merely explaining what was working for her in her parenting, she didn’t claim in anyway that others had to follow suit or even that such effort brought any sort of righteous.  It was my own heart that twisted her words into rules that I thought would bring me righteousness as a mother.  I immediately got overwhelmed after the thought that I needed to follow her example and implement the same in my own life because like this quote above says, I knew that only a week or so after trying to potty train my baby I would realize that I couldn’t do it without allowing it to consume me and distract me.  And I knew that during that week I would try to obtain this motherhood badge I created that I would be full of pride in my own efforts and full of condemnation towards other mom’s who didn’t follow suit.  And once I failed in my own strength then I would have malice and jealousy at those moms who were able to potty train their babies.  What a vicious and ugly cycle!

The quote above is in the chapter about rules and the Law of God.  She then explains the real purpose of the Law that God gave in the Old Testament. 

Man without God is totally without hope.  As if this isn’t problem enough, there is yet another obstacle: man did not know he was totally without hope.  Prior to the law, man was born unaware of his condition before God.  So God decided to make us aware of our heart problem.  A person won’t seek help until they are aware of their need.  The way God chose to reveal this heart problem has always seemed strange and cruel to me.  But since I have come to know and understand his grace, I have been awed to discover that his giving the law to humankind was nothing short of another gracious, magnificent act in human history. (page 72)

There is no hope at all for me to gain any sort of merit from God or advancement in the Kingdom from being able to potty train my baby.  The Law of God given in the Old Testament were given so that once we tried to accomplish them we would see the hopelessness of being able to follow them completely.  I feel like this is the way I approach motherhood, looking at various aspects and disciplines and turning them into some sort of merit or advancement as favor before God.

What a blessing that God allowed my kindle to die right after I read that blog post!  What a blessing that He gave me a husband that understands how my heart works and allowed me to go and read once he saw I was overcome with things of this world!  What a blessing that this author, Emily P. Freeman, is following 2 Corinthians 1:4 and comforting others with the comfort she has received from Christ in her struggles and suffering in this world! …  And what a blessing that all of my failures as a mother with all of things I strive after thinking will make me a “good mom” show me that I am without hope and need Christ!  I have never been so excited about my failures before!  Yippee, I am a failure!  “Quit striving Sandi and know that your hope does not lie in being crowned a ‘good mom’ but your hope lies in Christ!”

“The Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith.”  Galatians 3:24