Today’s article is brought to you by my friend, Beth Harrell. She serves as the Women’s Ministry Director at Old North Church in Canfield, OH.
I am on a one woman crusade to do away with the phrase “Bad mom.” It really does make me crazy. I’m guilty of saying it when my kids were little . . . . When I would sit around with friends and we would discuss if not allowing Timmy to go to the party made me a “bad mom,” or we would tell a story about something we had failed to do and jokingly say “I’m such a bad mom;” or worse, we would self righteously ask each other if we had seen what Susie's kids did and then proceed to not say it out loud, but think in our heads, “She is a bad mom.” And now as a mom of older, almost adult children and a women’s ministry director, I'm hearing it again, from moms of all different ages, and in many of the same ways and with the exact same amount of unhelpfulness.
Even though I’ve come to hate the phrase, I know why we say it. Mothering is hard, and we all have a mother. Good or bad, we start by comparing our skills to our own mother. Then we start to go out in the world or, heaven help us, read and watch what other women are doing (social media interface and “bad moms” is a topic for another article). We are not only worried about how we compare to others but we are also petrified about the future ramification of choices regarding playdates, screen time, and lunch. Is this going to make my kid run away from home someday?
We believe our choices are of the utmost importance for success or failure and that our decisions have direct correlation to outcome. But if that were solely true, what do we do with the “good mom” whose child grew up to be an alcoholic.....or the “bad mom” whose child grew up to be a beloved pastor? Perfect parenting choices are great but they don’t seem to lead to perfect children.
The Bible isn’t silent on parenting, of course. Deuteronomy 6:6-7 says “And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.” We are supposed to be talking constantly about God’s commands and his ways. So that, at least, is one thing we can do. But the Bible isn’t prescriptive about parenting. It doesn’t say a lot about the seemingly endless barrage of daily choices a mother has to make.
I don’t know much, but I can confidently say to the question of “Am I a Bad Mom” that there isn’t a satisfactory answer. The answer is based on what? Whose definition? What are the standards? I’m not sure it’s ever even worth asking.
This might be a stretch but it reminds me a bit of the wrong kind of desires I’m looking for when I read Psalm 37:4: ”Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.” What I want that verse to mean is that if I follow God, he will give me all the things I desire; and at the very tippy top of that desire list is obedient children who love Jesus, are kind to others, and are a joy to be around.
But you don’t need me to tell you that those are not at all the desires being addressed. The emPHAsis is on the wrong syLLAble. Hehe. “Delight yourself in the Lord and HE will give you the desires of your heart.” So if I delight myself in the Lord, if I serve and love and mature in Him, then the things I desire will naturally transform into His things….love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, etc. Those are the kinds of tangible things that I can sink my teeth into when all parenting hope is lost. God’s desires may not give me the number of minutes per day a child should be allowed on screens. But praying for His patience gives me measured responses when that child is driving me crazy and screens feel like the only option. God’s desires may not spell out the specifics of punishment I should dole out when my 4 year old just told me they hate me. But praying for His self-control, will help me to not throttle said child. God’s desires may not tell me exactly what to do when my kid has become the class bully and is hitting other children. But praying for His goodness will help me understand just how undeserving I myself am, which in turn helps me deal with my child.
It’s not always as satisfying though, is it? It doesn’t always give us that immediate gratification that we are seeking. It is true that we have to live in the world and we have to make constant decisions about our children and how we are going to parent. And thankfully, God has given us Proverbs, and 1 Thessalonians, and Hebrews, and Titus. He gives us commands to sharpen, build, spur, and urge one another. God puts other people in our lives to help us. These passages might not talk specifically about parenting decisions, but they talk about a community of believers supporting each other. Practical problems require on the ground help, and I hope that you are engaged at your local church. When my kids were itty bitty, and I was new to town with my mom far away, church women of all ages saved me. Not because I wanted to emulate their style of parenting. I didn’t, and I don’t parent in the same way that some of them do. But church was a lifeline because I had wise women around who loved and helped me in very practical ways. They babysat or offered a meal or listened to my overtired ranting. They also gave me perspective. When I would listen to their conversations about aging parents, or wayward children or health issues, my relatively small struggles seemed less like actual struggles.
So as we move along in our own Christian maturity today, I hope that the relentless “Am I a bad mom?” question gets suffocated by the much more helpful “How can I rely more on God’s desires today?” Don’t dwell on when you’ve had a good or crappy parenting day. Rather, know that on those good days, your strength came directly from The Lord, and on the bad days, you NEED strength directly from The Lord. The dark moments and the parenting doubt will come, but rest in this sister: “My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever” (Psa 73:26).