By Ruth Schwenk

One morning my nerves were wearing thin. It was one of those days when I had awakened on the wrong side of the bed. As the morning wore on and the overall volume of my house increased, I became more and more impatient and irritable, and less and less like Jesus. I was responding to my kids’ requests with short, terse answers. I was nagging them about every little thing that was wrong or out of place. After becoming increasingly upset by all the messes and really frustrated by the overwhelming tasks of the day, I noticed that Bella hadn’t cleaned the bathroom as I had asked.

That was it! My voice rose as I tried to hold back my irritation. I listed off to her all the tasks she still needed to do and how she had better “get going.” I let her know there was too much to do to just mosey around and take her sweet old time.

When I saw the hurt look on her face, I knew I had crossed the line. My behavior had been a bit overboard, and I immediately felt the sting of conviction. Realizing my own sin, I backed off and sheepishly apologized. As a mom I had blown it, even if it was just for a moment.

I had crossed the line. It was clear to me that I did not measure up. And I hated the fact that I had failed.

I wanted to go back into hiding. But exposing our flaws is one of the ways God can make us better. It’s how he works. So if this feels all too familiar to you, don’t despair. God uses momming to uncover the places in our hearts that need his grace and truth the most.

The Bible says, “Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account” (Hebrews 4:13). God sees it all. The good, the bad, and the ugly. We may try with all our might, but there is nothing we can hide from God!

Consider, for example, how Adam and Eve first responded to their sin in the Garden of Eden. They didn’t listen to their wise and loving Father. God had told them they were free to eat from any of the trees in the Garden except for one—the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:16–17). And just like little kids, they decided that was exactly the one tree they wanted to eat from.

Instead of trusting God, they wanted to be God. So they did what they wanted and the consequences were deadly. Sin left its mark. And all of creation still feels the effects of that first act of disobedience.

Adam and Eve responded to their first awareness of falling short by trying to hide (Genesis 3:8). Instead of running to God, they ran from God. How much easier, and better, if they had come out of hiding to find God’s grace in their time of need. Instead, they ran from the very One who is the source of truth, love, and healing.

So hiding is as old as the Garden of Eden. And just like our ancestral parents, we too become experts in hiding. We minimize our sin, defend it, pretend it’s not there, excuse it, or just plain deny it. But God is not fooled. Nothing is hidden from his sight.

God is not the only one who sees our sin. Our kids see it too. That’s the way momming works. Our kids have a unique way of pointing out our weak spots. All the grand ideas we had about ourselves get kicked down and uncovered. The pleasant visions we had of being a patient, sacrificial, always caring, and untiring mom get wrecked not by our kids, but by our own sin.

It’s not that we are never patient or kind; it’s that in the middle of momming we discover we are in worse condition than we ever imagined. Our hearts are not pure. Our motives are not always good. Our identities are not always anchored in God’s love for us. Our kids help break down the false ideas of how close to perfect we think we are and reveal that there is a lot of work yet to be done—from the inside out!

But please don’t be discouraged by the process. God isn’t just using us to shape our kids; he uses our kids to help tell us the truth about who we are and how far we have to go. And remember, even when the process feels awful, God is not doing it to defeat us but to provide us real and lasting transformation. What needs changing first is not our husbands, our kids, or our homes, but our own hearts.

Being made aware of our own brokenness is painful. The pain a mom feels when she fails is not only for herself but for her child as well. I am reminded of my friend who called one day to ask what we did when our kids didn’t respond to “no” at an early age.

“I just don’t want to do the wrong thing and mess up my child,” she said. In her mind, messing up as a mom meant messing up her child. Many moms carry that fear. As moms we carry an unnecessarily heavy load when we try to do everything perfectly and try to get everything right. But no one can carry that load for long. Failure is inevitable in momming.

There are countless decisions we make over the course of our children’s lives. Some are small and some are big. We make choices about discipline, diet, sports, friends, church, college, dating, and we even influence our kids as they are choosing a future spouse. Yikes! It’s no wonder our hearts become heavy or fearful as we seek to wisely navigate these treacherous waters. It’s no wonder our hearts feel burdened and sometimes broken when we don’t get it right.

Sometimes our feelings of failure are accurate. We do miss the mark. We say things or do things we shouldn’t. God humbles us. Our hearts get exposed. Our failures might require us to pause for reflection and confession. Our shortcomings and mistakes can provide great opportunities to move in a new and better direction. Our failures, whether big or small, are opportunities for God to do some much-needed work in our hearts.

Taken from The Better Mom: Growing in Grace Between Perfection and the Mess by Ruth Schwenk. Click here to learn more about this title.

Mothering is messy. Our joy and hope in raising children doesn’t change the reality that being a mom can be frustrating, stressful, and tiring. But just as God is using us to shape our children, God is using our children and motherhood to shape us.

In The Better Mom, author Ruth Schwenk, herself a mother of four children, encourages us with the good news that there is more to being a mom than the extremes of striving for perfection or simply embracing the mess. We don’t need to settle for surviving our kids’ childhood. We can grow through it.

With refreshing and heartfelt honesty Ruth emboldens moms to find freedom and walk confidently in purpose; create a God-honoring home environment; overcome unhealthy and destructive emotions such as anger, anxiety, and more; avoid glorifying the mess of momming or idolizing perfection; and cultivate life-giving friendships.

At the heart of The Better Mom is the message that Jesus calls us to live not a weary life, but a worthy life. We don’t have to settle for either being apathetic or struggling to be perfect. Both visions of motherhood go too far. Ruth offers a better option. She says, “It’s okay to come as we are, but what we’re called to do and be is far too important to stay there! The way to becoming a better mom starts not with what we are doing, but with who God is inviting us to become.”

Ruth Schwenk is the founder of The Better Mom, and along with her husband, Patrick, the creator of For the Family. She is a pastor’s wife, mom of four energetic kids, a lover of coffee, and dreamer of big dreams. She loves leading, speaking, and blogging. A graduate of Moody Bible Institute, Ruth is the coauthor of Hoodwinked and Pressing Pause. The Schwenks are the coauthors of For Better or for Kids. Ruth, Patrick, and their children live in Ann Arbor, Michigan.