Years ago, I was asked, “If you could be a mother of your daughters again, what would you do differently?Mistakes and failures invaded my mind, but in an instant I got the answer. “
I wish I had more faith in God.
- One of my favorite verses is Psalm 37.
- 3: “Trust in the Lord and do good.
- “However.
- In my daily motherhood.
- I have sometimes approached this verse upside down.
- Put? Doing good in the face of “trust in God.
- “.
Not that, in the end, I didn’t trust God, but sometimes doing good happened and trusting in God was repelled. I was focused on what I was doing (or not doing) for my children, and I was only vaguely aware of it. what God was doing in their lives. Trusting in God has become a late occurrence, and I will take care of my children as if it were all up to me.
As I said well before I trusted God, guilt persisted in following me in my motherhood. If my young son had a tantrum, I thought: My discipline is not consistent enough. If my teen was spiritually lethargic, I believed: my state of discipleship is not convincing enough. If a child falls, makes a mistake, or sins in any way, I water myself: you’re not helping him enough.
I stayed awake at night, remembering my flaws, reviewing my plans to be a better mother the next day; I became obsessed with my failures and neglected God’s faithfulness; although I put the good first, nothing good I did was good enough.
When I put good before trusting in God, fear persecutes me in my motherhood; I feared my efforts would fail. I was afraid that my limitations would restrict my children. I feared that my sins would frighten them for life. I feared that my hopes and desires for my children would end in a bitter disappointment.
When my good deed was motivated by fear, I would panic if my teenage children broke the rules and then insisted on warning them if they showed no signs of repentance. I have tried to be the Holy Ghost for my children, and we all know how to do it. Works.
“Burdened with guilt and full of fear, I flee to you, my Lord. ” Isaac watts
What should a tired, guilty, fear-driven mother do?We must do what Isaac Watts did: run away to God. We must trust that God will do good. Trusting in God does not deny doing good; on the contrary, it reinforces all good deeds. Trusting in God erases our fears and directs our own efforts toward Him. Trusting in God floods our positive action with energetic peace, joy, and hope. In fact, trusting in God and doing good go hand in hand. We can’t have one without the other. Only when we trust in God can we do good to our children.
We must trust in God because although we are far from perfect, we are the perfect mother for our children. We must trust in God because, although our good deed is insufficient, he does much better than we can imagine (Ephesians 3:20). We must trust that God hears the cry of those in need, that exalts the humble and rewards fidelity (Psalm 34:17; Jacq 4. 10; Mt 25:21) We must trust in God because our poor efforts to do good are only beneficial because He actively and enhatically does good (Psalm 23:6).
So when my daughters lament their maternal failures and fears, “Am I not coherent enough to discipline my baby?”What if I can’t talk to my teen?I say, “You’re acting like your mother! At certain times I also felt worried and worried, but the good thing for both of us is that our merciful God always for us. So, trust him and keep doing good?.
One of the advantages of growing old is that, in retrospect, I see that God has done what I could never have done and I believe that God will continue to do more and more than I could do. I look at my four adult children, and see that they succeed in a way far beyond what I could have expected. They excel in efforts above everything I have taught them. This is not to say that there have been no setbacks or detours along the way. But be one thing: God is trustworthy.
Eighteen years after the first question, “What would you do differently?”, My answer remains the same, but I would add one thing: I wish I had more confidence in God because he is trustworthy and would declare him more confidently than ever, because I am more confident than ever that God is faithful; and that’s why I tell you, dear mothers, burdened with guilt and fear, run away to him today and trust him.