For the Mom who Admits She wasn’t Good at it

During our recent travels we seemed to have a young child on every flight. I watched some exhausted, heroic mothers work hard to keep their children from driving the rest of us crazy and still manage to show kindness toward their children. As I watched them, I felt a strong sting in my heart seeing children at an age mine will never be again… wishing I had done a better job like these patient mothers. In truth, I wasn’t patient when my children were little. I had a short fuse. I was often the angry mom.

I wasn’t a huge Focus on the Family listener and this was before podcasts, but I remember catching a few episodes. In one, Dr. Dobson said that at some point our children will grow up, look back on our parenting and critique it. He warned they probably won’t be gentle; they will probably be fairly harsh. Then he warned against taking it personally. He said to remember that if moms like me were doing the best we could, then we were to remember that when the day of critique came and to simply let them have their say. For someday they too would have children who would critique them. And so it goes.

The fact that I can remember this almost 20 years later, shows I clearly took solace in this message. But the truth is, when I’m on a plane and see a mother with the patience of Job, I look back and think what would I have done differently? 

This is where the inner reflective work I have done with the Holy Spirit is helpful. If I am being honest, I can truthfully say that at the time I didn’t have it in me to do it any other way. Back then, I didn’t know I was a 5 on the enneagram and that I reserve energy at all cost and when I’m not allowed to do so, I move to anger. I didn’t know how polyvagal theory worked and that I could have done certain practices to help my rattled nervous system get back to “regulation” again. I had never heard of attachment theory… don’t even get me started with how helpful that would have been. And no one had ever told me the importance of allowing children to live out of their humanity (even their need to live out of their ego in formative years) and affirming them as they do so. I have only come to learn about these things in the last 3 or 4 years. 

I share all of this in case there are some other well-meaning, God-loving, Christian mothers of now adult-children out there who did the best they could, and still feel the strong sting of remorse and regret. 

Please know, you are not alone. Mothering doesn’t come natural to everyone no matter what some would like us to believe. But here are 3 things I do know:

1. I believe God’s purposes can be trusted, even the ones He alone knows, for bringing each child into the world through a certain set of parents… in some cases maybe even something as simple as necessary DNA. I say this with great humility knowing some experienced great trauma in their childhood home. This trust in God’s purposes does not mitigate the harm they have experienced or make excuses for it. We live in a truly broken and fallen world. Yet because God so loved… everything is up for redemption.

2. At some point, each of us must allow our Father in heaven to re-parent us. We have to shift from blaming our parents or environment and begin doing the hard work necessary to become emotionally and spiritually healthy adults.

3. God wants to help us in this work. He wants our image of Him to change if needed to one that sees Him as a good and faithful Parent. Not an angry one who is shaming us for our twisted faults. His desire is to re-shape us into the person He envisioned us to be in His divine mind (before He formed the dust of the earth), regardless of how our childhood environment took us off path. And He can do it! Nothing is impossible for Him! He may even use a good therapist as His instrument of care. 

I am blessed that my children have been gentle in their comments and have not come back pointing fingers in my face, angrily critiquing my sad attempt at motherhood. At least not yet…

If that day comes, I pray that God will give me the grace to not defend myself and make excuses but to apologize and honestly state the truth: I did the best I could and I loved you fiercely. 

The best news is that I can take the new information I am learning and use it to engage better with my adult children. Because God doesn’t just want to re-parent and re-form my children into emotionally and spiritually healthy adults, He wants to do the same for me.

Lord have Your way in me! Amen.

Social Image credits: Julien L