Motherhood - whose opinion counts?

I’m sure we are all guilty of at some time judging ourselves by the world’s standards and finding ourselves wanting. There have been times in my life when my skill level at this has been nothing short of expert. 

One of those times was when I was a much younger mother, and my kids were under six. 

By the world’s standards – which were my standards – I was a CRAP mum because I didn't measure up to my friends, or the other mums around me. Into that mindset bounced my pastor who suggested with great enthusiasm that our church needed a MOPS group. (No, MOPS has nothing to do with cleaning, he was talking about a  Mothers of Preschoolers group). At MOPS, mums come once a week or fortnight, bring their littlies who are cared for by the team so the mums can be adults together  with other young mums. Often there would be guest speakers and always a scrummy morning tea. The ideal was that MOPS was run for mothers of pre-schoolers by mothers of pre-schoolers. 

So who does our pastor approach to co-ordinate such a group?

Me.

The CRAP mum.

I thought to myself, "God, are you nuts? Why me, of all people?"

But God is very good at using the bad stuff for good to accomplish His purposes. For me, my negative experiences had given me a passion for the mums who weren’t residing in pink fluffy motherhood land. The ones whose friends all seemed to be going great guns at this motherhood thing, but they themselves were struggling and felt like failures. Society expected women to automatically know how to be awesome mothers, and that something was very wrong with us if we spoke out loud that it wasn’t the thing we loved best in the world.

As this struggling mum came alongside other struggling mums, God gave me one of the most valuable pieces of wisdom I have ever received. I will never forget it. He said:

The only person whose opinion counts about how you’re doing as a mother is mine. Not even the opinion of your children counts against mine.

Have you ever thought about asking God how you're doing?

I had the absolute privilege of coming alongside a beautiful young friend of mine in church a few weeks ago. We had been messaging the night before as she was upset that she had lost the plot with her little one, and I could see she was still struggling with it. Of course there were deeper layers, her fears went back to her own childhood and a terror that she would repeat those ways with her own children. “What sort of a mother am I” she asked.

And I was able to give her the same piece of wisdom God gave me about twenty years earlier. To remind her to ask God for His opinion on her mothering before she listened to anyone else’s. I can give her that advice because I trust the Heavenly Dad we share to give her the wisdom she needs. 

We all have days where we don’t like who we are, how we look, how we’re doing. Days when the voices of this world are deafening – TV, movies, magazines, advertising, the Internet and the list goes on. If we don’t look or behave or achieve in a certain way, if we aren’t picture perfect, if we make mistakes or don’t have it all together ... or if we think we have to be someone else’s version of ourselves to be acceptable or worthy of love.

It’s against that backdrop that it's a blessing to be one of God’s kids. Because God can't lie. He always tells the truth to His kids and that has saved my life and my sanity over and over again.

The world is all about the outward appearance. God looks on our hearts – on our insides. It doesn’t matter if I’m a great mother or not. What matters is the relationship I have with the one that told me. 

If you have children under school age and would like to connect with other mums, see if there's a MOPS group near you. Check out this blog post from the current Chair of MOPS, Karen Dickson, you may relate to her feelings about mothers groups. 

Song for this occasion: Press on Mums by Colin Buchanan. I clung to the last two lines more times than I could count.