The sun shone through the windows, giving the kitchen a brightness that hadn’t been there in months. My family was up, dressed, and contentedly occupied elsewhere in the house while bacon and scratch-made breakfast potatoes sizzled in the cast iron skillet. Worship music played on the speakers, and in that moment I felt more lighthearted than I had in weeks. The physical warmth of the sun and the emotional warmth of my home filled me with a sense of peace and fulfillment. And also a sense of accomplishment.
In that moment, it occurred to me that I was killing it as a mom.
iStock | Swissmediavision
Sadly, that feeling lasted all of fifteen seconds. No sooner had that thought popped into my head than the next one came to burst my bubble: But you skipped church today.
We’re pretty consistent church-goers. Barring illness or travel, we’re there. But on this particular Sunday morning a wrench had been thrown into our schedule – my daughter was invited to a birthday party that interfered with our normal attendance time. While there were several ways to deal with this, I chose the one that would check off all the to-dos: I’d change my grocery pick-up time to 7:00am so we could attend the 9:30am service and get her to the party by 11:00. I went to bed early the night before and as I set my alarm for 6:00am on Sunday morning I was amazed at how perfectly everything lined up.
Until the next morning. I woke up, got ready, headed out to pick up groceries…and for whatever reason, they were exceptionally slow at bringing them out to my car. Which meant I was later than expected getting back home, and the perfectly-planned cascade of events to follow suddenly became a stressful gauntlet that I had to run through. So I made a decision. I announced that, on this particular Sunday, I’d make a nice breakfast for the family and we’d watch our church’s live-stream on the couch.
iStock | VeselovaElena
After my perfectly-laid plans went awry, I chose to give my family peace instead of chaos.
But it wasn’t enough.
No sooner had I let the peace of the moment wash over me than it was stolen by the inner voice telling me I didn’t do all the things. My successes of the morning – a peaceful home, a tidy house, a stocked & organized kitchen, and a slow-paced family breakfast around the kitchen table – were immediately wiped out by my one failure.
Only, in reality, they weren’t.
Nobody else in the family cared about anything other than bacon as we laughed over my daughter’s breakfast-table shenanigans. Then we settled on the couch to catch the 9:30 service on YouTube, and everyone sank into the cushions with a peace that isn’t always present in our normal day-to-day.
Church is good. But on this particular day, online church was okay, too.
Look. I know it’s not possible to stop hearing the voices that tell us we’re failing. And it’s not wise to completely ignore them, either. After all, sometimes there’s truth to them. I mean, if I decided that every Sunday I should skip church in favor of family breakfast it would probably behoove me to listen to that internal reprimand. But the key is we need to take things in context. Take it in, roll it around in your brain, and set it aside if it’s trying to overshadow everything you do right.
iStock | Geber86
Because if you stop and think about it, I bet there’s a lot more than you realize.
Your house may be a wreck, but your kids are happy and cared for. You don’t do family dinners, but you’ve got a solid bedtime routine. You forgot to sign up for school conferences, but you nailed this year’s birthday gift.
Stop putting successes and failures into the same bucket like they cancel each other out. Stop frantically collecting successes to make up for your failures, and stop letting your failures cancel out your successes.
Because I’m pretty sure your kids don’t keep score, anyway. The only one who does that is you.
PIN THIS!
Read more of Kristina’s contributions to AllMomDoes here.
