Dear Weary Mom,
Yeah you..I’ m talking to you..matter of fact I’m talking to all of you! Me too! This is going to serve as a reminder to myself as well.
I’m sure we have all heard of a call to arms, or a call to lay down arms but today I want to call all of you to lay down your ideals. Yes your ideals! They are holding you back, causing guilt, a sense of Failure, and discontent.
Ideals are rooted in perfection.
They may look something like this……
“My children will be potty trained just after they turn two”
“My home will always be in order when i go to bed at night”
“My children will sit quietly and read a book, while I talk on the phone”
“I will be calm and patient in every circumstance”
Do these sound familiar? I hope so! These were only a few of my ideals. I must confess that my ideals were a mile long when we got married.
Maybe your ideals were a large family, or a small family, or a family, but maybe that’s not what happened. Maybe you had a 5 year plan….with kids every two years BUT All of a sudden you find yourself 4 kiddos in 5 tears (GUILTY)
Maybe you had the ideals for your kids….they would talk by a certain age, walk by a certain age, read and write, college!
They are all things that we tuck into our head….some of them are dreams and goals, but at some point they move from just dreams and goals to ideals. And from there we somehow place our success and failure into whether or not our ideals are met.
Let’s be honest there is only one man and woman who had a shot at living the ideal, but they made a terrible choice.a choice that would affect every person born until Jesus, and every person after him! You see the ideal wasn’t good enough for Adam and Eve….and that is what we long for to have back (yeah it took me a while to wrap my brain around that one). I fight every day for the very thing adam and eve chose to give up.
That’s what the Israelites fought for in the Old Testament and it’s what the Pharisees demanded in the New Testament and it is what we lie to ourselves each and everyday for when we tell ourselves ” i can’t even get the dishes done, i have failed AGAIN”
This is where grace comes in….it’s not until God gave grace through Jesus that the ideal was met. Grace is perfection in Jesus. You won’t be perfect until you get to heaven. So Jesus gave you grace, you weren’t perfect before that, so embrace that grace to yourself, lay down the ideals that were unrealistic to begin with and live each day with one thing in mind…
In whatever you eat or whatever you drink or whatever you do , so ALL to the glory of God
1 Corinthians 10:31
(From memory. Emphasis added)
When this is your focus, those ideals seem to slip away and you know that you are doing your best…..and that’s all that God asks of you.
So today lay down those ideals….at the feet of Jesus, and live each moment to the glory of God!
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