The Simple Answer to My Complicated Mom Guilt

He tends His flock like a shepherd:

He gathers the lambs in His arms

and carries them close to His heart. 

HE GENTLY LEADS THOSE WHO HAVE YOUNG.

Isaiah 40:11

The fear of how I'm screwing up my kids is a messy thing to untangle every day, which usually just makes the knots tighter and more complicated. 

I know I can’t have all the answers to enact all the perfectionism to make our kids always flawless, strong, kind, and brave. I know. BUT I keep striving for the answers anyway. I convince myself that somebody somewhere has it all figured out, so why am I messing up everything?! Why can’t I do all the good things in just the right ways?! It’s like I think I’ll get a pat on my back in Heaven for making my kids just.like.Jesus, unlike any other human ever, IF I could just get my act together. Yikes.

• Working in the home or in a career
• rich or poor
• optimistic or depressed
• different paths of faith
• varying levels of health concerns
• a spectrum of family of origin issues to unpack and reorder
• impactful personality quirks
• regrettable pasts
• No matter the Mommy, we wear so much weight and shame about how to do the best for our kids. 

How do we move past the fear birthed by shame in ourselves and bitterness toward others to claim present joy for future strength? That’s a mystery I earnestly want to discover to the depths of my heart. And I think the answer is much simpler than I want it to be, peaceful instead of restless. 

I spend most of my finite soul energy believing if I could just figure out those exact answers (the false ones I imagine those people have, the ones with aesthetically hospitable homes or dysfunction-free families or courageous faiths or impressive accomplishments), then we’ll have always-excellent hearts, with no sin or struggle. Then we could not only be fulfilled in our walls, but we could also pour light out on all the dark places outside. [In my victorious commentator voice:] We can end world hunger and give homes to all the orphans and peacefully mediate all the warring countries, save the babies, heal the wounded. When I get it (all) right, then we’ll matter, and until then, we’re useless is this lie I believe. I keep waiting for assurance from an illusory audience that I have what it takes to perform on a stage that doesn’t exist.

Through all these little struggles, like the baby’s digestive and teething woes (must be my fault), the 4-year-old’s loneliness (must be my fault), the 7-year-old’s constant forgetfulness of consistently taught manners (must be my fault)...

... I wonder how screwed up they’re going to be as adults, especially considering how much more intricate the emotions and trials will become as their minds and bodies develop through puberty in this world spilling over with distractions. Ugh.

And then throw my own body, mind, and relational shortcomings on top of it all...

I sometimes can’t see the happy moments right in front of me through all the imagined fog of therapy sessions, where my adult children are going to wonder with their counselors why I didn’t know or do better for them.

And then I read on social media about the horrible choices people I knew as innocent kids with compassionate parents... 

I read how the world’s poverty and sorrow are all my fault because I was too spoiled to even think past my own existence...

Guilt emerges. 

Hope fights back. 

Fear tackles it all.

Sigh.

I spend all my days trying to figure out the exact issue(s) I am causing to ruin their futures, to make the world even worse. Instead of being useful to the future, we’re just leeching off it even more. I try to live by “Don’t bother anyone, don’t be bothered; and then at least you’re neutralizing the problem, Nicoll...” (That's all wrong for so many reasons.)

My limitations haunt me, like specters multiplying as I take each step down life’s hallway. The doorways of past and future hold the most fearful of the condemnation-spewing demons.

Is it something in my household management skills, the reactions I have in emotional moments, the ignorance in my Bible teaching, the boundaries I set with the surrounding world, the fears I don’t even realize I’m afraid to face?

My heart rate and blood pressure rose just writing this post. I’m sorry. Hear me on this: I am living my dream, and I constantly thank God that my husband and I have been provided the details we need to raise our children the way we believe is best with our unique stories. When I am well-rested and everyone is pooping regularly, I know we are building a spiritual legacy for our kids that will glorify God’s plan. I am thankful we have flexible options for strange seasons. And I am thankful to see how colorfully God can be glorified because many of our friends do things differently than we do, and they all have different personalities and dynamics in their homes.

I just want to be present in my story as the character who supports those closest to me in their stories. I want to strongly and graciously adjust to new chapters, settings, plot lines, characters.

We compare ourselves, dangerously, to what we imagine others are doing better. We make Pinterest or That Family at church or school or on Facebook our models for what must be right. We want them to acknowledge us as successful, to not only “Like” our moments, but “Love” them or “Laugh” at them. What a complicated ladder to climb toward a place that doesn’t exist and therefore doesn’t matter. We remember things that person said or does and hold ourselves to that random standard, meanly berating ourselves for our different approaches when struggles hit.

But everyone struggles. Everyone fails. And every person can seek unique excellence without entering a false rat race of human standards.

All along, our whole lives, through every Bible story we’ve ever heard, even if poorly taught, we have been taught that none of us will get it all right. We mommies can’t predict it all. Our husbands can’t do it all. Our babies will break their own hearts and/or someone else’s. We all need the righteousness of Jesus to be our True North because we can’t find The Way on our own. We will get lost. Our babies will get lost.

But we'll be found.

Jesus is the only righteous One, and we have been given what we need to point our children in His direction through good, bad, and ugly times. 

That’s it.

A friend shared a Gospel Coalition article with me earlier this week that so simply answered all this grotesque guilt I needlessly feed every day.

"Only in the past decade am I learning that my main role is to be a disciple of Jesus, pointing my children to him as the source of all they need." (Kathryn Maack)

I want and need to make it less complicated than it is. Jesus is the answer. We freely have Him to walk with us through all the kinds of steps that don’t shock God.

Let’s give Jesus to our children in our strengths and weaknesses, in our striving and rest, in our questions and confusion, in our answers and our silence. That way they can get back up every time they fall. We are building them through storms and fires, not demolishing them or giving up on them. Let’s do the same for ourselves as parents.