30 Days to Being a Purposeful Mommy, Day 9

Day 9: Cut Yourself Some Slack

This is an appropriate post as it is officially five days late. I have a UTI and have not been feeling up to blogging, but today I decided to try to get caught up. :)

Here´s the thing about being a mommy. For some reason, when we do everything right we feel like we can sleep at night, but if we do one thing wrong we feel like the parenting police are going to swoop down and take us to bad mommy prison. Somehow even people who have never been perfectionists in their whole lives (I am not one of those people, however) give birth to a newfound perfectionism when they give birth to their first child.

It doesn´t help us at all to put unrealistic expectations on ourselves. God has entrusted us with children so that we can train them in the way they should go, which is a high calling. However, perfection is a journey, not a destination. We continue to become more like Christ, but we won´t go from human, imperfect mommy to perfect saint in one day. The important thing is to keep improving.

I think we all have people in our lives that we look up to, and I doubt that any of them are perfect. So cut yourself some slack. I don´t mean we should be easy on ourselves. I think we really should demand a high level of excellence from ourselves as women, wives and mothers. But at the end of the day, try to put it all in perspective. If today you made progress, and got a little closer to your goals as a mother, then count the day as a success, despite its failures. If today you felt like you took two giant steps backwards, well, that will happen sometimes. Confess it to God, make it right in your home, and do better tomorrow. Ultimately, focusing on our failures will only lead us to fail more, because we will begin to feel like we are not able to succeed.


Each day when you wake up, decide to do two things: First, decide to make an effort at having a purpose behind your words, thoughts and actions today. And second, cut yourself a little slack!