A Mother's Cry

By Janelle Hill

Have you ever done a personality test?  I have done several over the years, and I usually come up the same - I like to do well and do things well.  For example, when I hang out the washing all the socks need to be hung in pairs and the tee shirts hung from the seams so no peg marks show.  This can be irritating to live with but the job gets done well! 

Over the years, I have found it easy to become obsessed with doing well and having others think well of me.  As a mother there are thousands of books and pamphlets about how to be a wonderful mother.  The ideal mother feeds her children fun, delicious and nutritious snacks and meals every day and her children love fruit and vegetables.  She deals calmly and effectively with tantrums and poor behaviour at all times, and she is never frustrated and never yells at her children.  She provides her children with educational and interesting activities and is never tempted to use the TV or Nintendo as a child-minding device.  If you have had some experience with children you will of course realize that this is an impossible task.

In my life, I am thankful that the Lord has sent people to me to help me understand who I am, and how I am to be the mother that God always planned me to be.  In the Bible, a young man named Titus encourages the older women to ‘teach and admonish the young women to love their husbands, to love their children.’ (Titus 2:4).  I love this verse because it reminds me of how relationships with those who love, serve and follow Christ are of far more benefit than all the professional books.

I remember a day when all the trying hard to be a wonderful mother left me exhausted and in tears, with a plate full of rejected carrot sticks, a screaming toddler and my own yelling ringing in everyone’s ears.  My image of myself had gone from successful mother to total failure in the matter of seconds.  At this moment I received a phone call from a faithful Christian friend.  With gentleness and love I was reminded of God’s love for me and how He had made me to be His child and to be a mother to my children.  The image of myself as good mother, doing everything well and succeeding by my own efforts had to be removed, as did my image of being a failure.  The true reality was and still is, that I am a true child of God as I trust Him and follow Him.  I am thankful to God and to my friends in Christ that they continue to hold up the true mirror of God’s knowledge of me.  My own ideas of what I want to be and what I think I am, can be finished, and at last I can find peace and security as I start to become what God always planned me to be.