Mommy, You are NOT Enough!

Becoming a parent has most certainly stretched me beyond my limits…limits I didn’t even know I had!  Being just a touch neurotic, especially after the birth of my first daughter, I immersed myself in the study of how to be the best parent in the world.

You are probably chuckling at this point if you have had kids for awhile.  The perfect parent just doesn’t exist.  It never has, and it never will.

That’s why I get frustrated by some posts I see these days.  Feeling guilty about not being as good of a parent as you’d like just comes with the job description.  There are those out there that seem to feel the need to tell everyone else how they should parent their children and why they are doing a disservice to their children if they don’t.  Yeah, that may be overstepping some boundaries that the social media world we live in has blurred.

Yet, the response to these highly opinionated posts isn’t necessarily helpful either.  I’ve seen so many people try to uplift other parents by telling them that they are enough for those babies. While I agree God gave them to us specifically for reasons beyond what we know, I do not agree that we are enough for them, and I’ll tell you why.

A year of trying to be enough for everyone led to a bout with clinical depression.   I spent 4-5 days and nights with barely any sleep, a fussy nursing baby, a whiny two year old, mounting laundry, and errands (you get the drift).  I realized I can’t do it all.  It’s nice to hear how wonderful you are, but that’s not where you truly find freedom.

All of my intense research and anxious protection of my children in the beginning was NOT enough.  The days and nights of being by myself with a newborn and 2 year old taught me the very valuable lesson that I will NEVER be enough for them.  

I am only enough because of Jesus Christ within me.  He through me gives me the strength.  I just don’t have it.  Realizing this, takes the burden off of me, because I don’t have to worry about how my failures, my humanity, is ever going to be enough to raise decent human beings.  That’s the thing.  I am human.  That’s okay.  Where I fail, Jesus takes up the slack.  I’m glad I’m not enough!  He is perfect, and I can point my children towards him in my successes and failures.  

My kids need their creator.  I need MY creator.  Yes, these beautiful, precious children have been placed in our family, but they are not mine.  They are God’s children first just I am.  I have the mind blowing opportunity to teach them and they me.  That’s enough for me.