Of Course You Aren't Enough

God says failure isn't just an option for mothers— it's a job description.

There's that moment with each child—that "Oh my word, I am in over my head," moment— right when you feel them in your arms for the first time. I don't care if the child has just emerged, still warm and wet, from your own body or been handed to you by a social worker in a shopping mall**. In that moment, you look at that child and you want to do right by them. You want to be the best mom you can be. You want to be up to the job. And you know in your bones you can't.

There's something about a new child that sends us all into panic mode, puts us all back to square one in the confidence department.

Change a diaper? Yeah, I used to know how. But now I'm looking at seven pounds of newborn and by golly, I can't seem to get my thumbs to cooperate here.

He spit up. Again. They say it's teething, but I just don't know. Should I be worried?

She sleeps too much. Something's wrong.

She doesn't sleep at all. Something's wrong.

His foster mom said he never cries, but all he's done since noon is scream.

Part of us knows the truth, as we gaze into those eyes for the first time. We cannot ever be enough. We cannot ever do it all. We cannot get this perfectly right. It's not possible.

But we try, anyhow.

We will sleep in fits and starts for months, nearly motionless, with a squirrely baby perched on our chest, lest she have to cry it out alone, without us, in a crib that seems too vast. We will pepper our healthcare provider with question upon question, then hit the internet at 11 p.m. and research again, on our own, just to be sure. We will cut diary, wheat, egg, life from our own diet. We will buy organic, grass-fed local beef at $14 per pound, then painstakingly grind it with non-GMO, unsprayed apples we picked ourselves. We will suffer through Baby and Me music classes and learn signs to ease the communication gap.

We will try.

We will try knowing— knowing!— that it only gets worse. If we can't be enough for a helpless infant, how then can we even hope to be enough as they age? We will try even as the baby becomes a toddler who demands to be the center if attention. We will try even as the preschooler lies to us for the first time. We will try even as the adolescent rolls his eyes. We will try even as the teenager thinks it's all our fault.

And in the end, no matter what we've endured, no matter what we've sacrificed, no matter how little is left on the plate for us... we will wish we had done more.

Every.single.time.

We were never designed to meet every need. We were never meant to soothe every hurt. We were never called to be their everything.

But we were created with the desire to try, anyhow. Over and over. Without stopping to consider the madness.

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. —2 Corinthians 12:9

I don't get it. Really, I don't. The things God built into us make no sense. To be a healer, a caretaker, a counselor, a shepherd... to be so much, just to point them, ultimately, to the fact that what they need is not available in our arms? That what they really need is Jesus?

My human mind can't comprehend.

And yet, we know this. We know this as we breathe through the worst pain of our lives, birthing our child. We know this as we tell our life story, again, to yet another stranger in the hopes of finding the child God has called ours from the beginning of time. We know that we are destined to fail at this mothering thing.

But we do it anyhow. Because that's how God designed us. We are set up for a painful refinement from the very second we put our feet to the path that leads us to call someone son or daughter. And somehow, on the worst days, we measure our failures and think it's us. We look at how we're doing with our kids and we wonder if we're the only ones not getting it right. I'm not succeeding. I'm not the perfect, patient, fun, practical, spiritual mother.

Of course you aren't. You were never meant to be. Failure isn't just an option for mothers— it's a job description. It's part of what God expects when He entrusts us with these people: that we will be fallible, and that He will not. That we will miss the mark, highlighting in the process how He never does.

It's just how it is in this topsy turvy economy of Christian life. So keep moving. Give yourself some grace. And fail, knowing that He will redeem even this.

In Christ,

Heather

**We may or may not have an actual member of our family whose Gotcha moment took place in a suburban shopping mall, right between the JC Penny's and the Sanrio. You decide.