Can I have a little bit of grace?

Every day, I find myself questioning whether or not I am good at enough at any of the things that are currently my responsibility. I question whether I am doing all of the right things as a mom, a wife, a student, an employee, etc.. This morning around 0330, it dawned on me that I don’t have to be perfect at everything. There has only ever been one perfect person, and He understands and loves my imperfections. So why have I been beating myself up about them? As a mom, I think that it is hard for me to be okay with making a mistake. I mean, I have been given the responsibility of shaping my son and daughter into the people that they will be for the rest of their lives. That is a huge responsibility.

I want them to be wonderful human beings and I know that my influence will help shape that, but I also know that everyone makes mistakes. It is inevitable. Parenthood does not come with a step by step manual that you can follow day by day to make sure that you are hitting every single point perfectly. That is unrealistic and could you imagine how long that would take someone to actually come up with that? And who has the authority to actually say what the right and wrong way to parent would be? It is so disheartening when I am on social media and I see women bashing other women about the way that they are parenting their children. Unless someone is abusing or neglecting their child, I don’t think anyone has the right to say that what one person is doing is wrong. It is probably what works best for their life and we have no right to judge that.

I am a strong believer in the saying that you can’t tell me how to live my life unless you have first walked a mile in my shoes. Until you know exactly what someone is dealing with, you will never be the expert on what they should or should not be doing with their children, their marriage, their career or any other aspect of life. I find it extremely difficult to believe that I am doing every single thing in my life 100% well every single day, but I have learned to give myself a little bit of grace. I looked at a pile of clothes that I knew needed to be folded last night and I opted to read my kids two more bedtime stories instead. Normally, I would have stayed up really late folding the clothes, but I had other things that I needed to do and I will fold the clothes. There won’t be any war on laundry happening in the next few hours, so I am sure it will be fine.

I am taking this approach with every aspect of my life. I am going to prioritize the things that matter and make sure that I am accomplishing those to the best of my abilities instead of trying to do everything all at once. This approach makes the planner in me a little bit nervous, but I know that in order to be good at anything, I have to be great emotionally, mentally and physically and I know that being stressed out and exhausted about everything was actually accomplishing nothing. So, I am prepared to tackle today and I will be okay with leaving a few things undone as long as I know that the things I did complete were done to the best of my abilities. Isn’t that what life is about anyway?