We All Need a Little Grace

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  Last Wednesday night after church, a lady that I’m casually acquainted with asked me how the boys were doing and I said, “Great, fine!” Then she asked how I was doing, and I fell apart. You might could chalk my answer up to the fact that I was dead tired (for example: I fell asleep twice while attempting to pray during the service. Sorry Brother David, you’re awesome!) and was also in the midst of getting sick. But I said something like this to that poor woman who I barely know:

  “I am not fine. I feel like I’m falling apart. I’m sooo tired. Those boys have run me ragged today. And did you know that there are little old ladies that come up to me in the grocery store with tears in their eyes and say, ‘You better enjoy every moment of this time because it just goes by so fast’? It makes me feel SO guilty because I don’t enjoy every moment. I’m tired, need a bath, and would like to scream some days because I’ve hit my breaking point. I’m not enjoying every single second. Is every single second of parenting supposed to be marvelously filled with joy? Because I’m just not feeling it.”

  First, this sweet lady hugged me. And then she said some things that really helped, God bless her. She told me that she felt the same way at times when her now college students were preschoolers.
  She said, “You need to give yourself some grace. Jesus didn’t die on the cross so that you could do this mama-thing all alone, He died so that you would have help. You need to recognize that falling apart isn’t going to harm your kids. Jesus extends the same grace to mamas as He does to everyone else when they’re falling apart. His grace can cover every single bit of it. As mamas, we think we have to take everything on ourselves, but all we really have to do is abide in Him”.

  So this is my gift to you friends. If you are tired, sick, falling apart, and maybe even stinky- give yourself some grace. He’s extending it to you, Mama.

   

  “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 Corinithians 12:9

   

  
  
  January 23rd, 2012 | danielle_polk | 1 Comment |