Faithful Friday 03
Mom Guilt vs. God’s Grace: Why Your Worst Days Don’t Define You
Good morning… a little late!
When I started these Faithful Friday notes, I had grand visions of them landing in your inbox every week at 7:15 AM—a gentle nudge to pause, breathe, and wrap your week in truth.
But then, reality. (Because, hi! I’m a mom.)
This week alone, I’ve been:
Activities director to two wild boys with zero summer camps
Hostess for my brother, nephew, and MLB All-Star chaos
Wine-pourer and soul-filler with friends
Packing mule/SUV driver delivering kids to grandparents for the weekend (Bless you, Mimi and Papa!)
Which is why I’m finally writing this (coffee in hand, silence humming around me) on Friday morning instead of Thursday night. Funny thing? The topic simmering in my heart all week? The quiet anxiety that shows up daily in motherhood.
Because even in the sweetest chaos, the “what-ifs” creep in…
So I wanted to continue with our friend, Peter, as he reminds us that we have a place to lay those “what-ifs” down. This is a passage of scripture that I am sure you have all heard at some point in your life. I think this verse is so well known because it holds an essential truth for all of us… We do not have to carry the weight of our worries alone.
“Cast all your anxieties on Him. Because He cares for you.”
1 Peter 5:7
The Silent Battles We Fight Before Breakfast
Some mornings, I wake up already exhausted. The thought of refereeing another sibling battle or repeating ‘please don’t shoot the Nerf gun in the house’ for the 47th time makes me want to hide under the covers.
And then the guilt hits: Shouldn’t I love this more? Am I not equipped to parent and lead two boys? Why do I feel so overwhelmed? What if my impatience breaks them?
But Peter is gently reminding us that God isn’t asking us to fill in all of these holes by ourselves.
The Lies We Believe (And the Truth That Shatters Them)
I’ve realized my anxiety whispers two lies:
You have to handle this alone. (You don’t.)
Your worst moments define your kids. (They don’t.)
Let’s talk about these two lies and how scripture counters them.
The Lie: You have to handle this alone.
In a world that insists we hold all the answers within ourselves, parenting has become a never-ending test of willpower. Wake up earlier. Read one more parenting book. You are a model for your children, so if you regulate your emotions, they will regulate theirs! Just get it together, and the anxiety will magically dissolve.
But here’s the truth, which no algorithm will tell you: You weren’t meant to carry this weight alone. The pressure to perform, perfect, and endlessly optimize? It’s not a calling, it’s a cultural lie. And it’s time we stopped believing it.
On top of all of this pressure, motherhood can feel isolating if we let it. We pack lunches in the kitchen (by ourselves). We drive to and from every activity imaginable (by ourselves). We schedule the dentist, we track screentime, we help with homework, we play baseball in the backyard (by ourselves). And even though we may be doing it with little people around, we still feel alone.
But solitude breeds anxiety.
The Truth: God gave us community & the Holy Spirit
Hebrews 10:24-25 tells us, “And let us consider one another in order to provoke love and good works, not neglecting to gather together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging each other, and all the more as you see the day approaching.”
Find Your People
We were not meant to walk through life managing things on our own. The lives of God’s people have always been intertwined. This new era we live in makes it so easy to slip into a routine of seclusion, but this is not how we were designed to do life.
So, how do we combat this lie? We find our people, we hold them close, and we lean into our relationships.
A few weeks ago, our oldest had an epic meltdown at the end of the day. It was like an atomic bomb went off inside his little soul. I didn’t know how to handle it, and we both ended up in tears. I needed a break… and a precious friend reached out and gave it to me in the form of a listening ear and a glass of wine at her house.
I’ll say it again, in case you skipped this line ;) You have to find your people. People you can be honest with. People who don’t embarrass you or shame you. People who pray for you and with you. People who dig into the dirt and get messy right alongside you. If you are one of mine, and you are reading this… give yourself a squeeze from me.
Lean Into The Holy Spirit
Scripture is also clear in its instruction to lean into the Holy Spirit.
In John 14:16-17, Jesus says, “ And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells within you and will be with you.”
Jesus called the Holy Spirit the ‘Helper’ (paraklētos), which literally means, ‘one who comes alongside.’ Ever felt that sudden peace reading to your child in bed after a long day of parenting? Or the inexplicable strength to apologize after you snap? That’s the Helper. He’s with you, just as Jesus promised.
Romans 8:26 tells us, “Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.”
I don’t know about you, but this specific verse makes me tear up with gratitude. There are so many nights when I crawl into my bed exhausted and overwhelmed, ready to pour it all out to God, only to find my thoughts so jumbled that I can’t find the words.
Here we are told, when we are too weary to even mumble a coherent prayer, the Holy Spirit is taking our fears, our desires, and even our tears and crafting prayers specifically for us… all we have to do is ask.
The Lie: Your worst moments define your kids.
One just asked you, “Mom, why are you being so mean?” You accidentally switched their lunches for camp so neither of them ate. They both learned a word they shouldn’t have because of a show they watched while you were upstairs folding clothes. These are the scenarios that run through your head at night and now you are convinced that they will need therapy for the rest of their lives… sound familiar?
This is when fear magnifies our failures and minimizes God’s power and grace.
The Truth: You’re Seen, Helped, and Never Disqualified
In Philippians 1:6, it is written, “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”
Psalm 139:16 tells us, “My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there were none of them.”
God knew and designed our children before they even existed. Before we rocked them to sleep, fed them their first solid meal, dropped them off at school for the first time… He already knows and has crafted who they are. Their lives are not solely dependent on our perfect parenting but on His love and His purpose for them.
Proverbs 22:6 says, “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.”
Training up our children doesn’t just happen in our solid parenting decisions. It also happens when they see us apologize after snapping, praying about our mistakes together, and modeling mercy just as Christ offers it to us.
For the Mom Who’s Praying
Lord,
I have this weight on my shoulders.
Walking this path of life is hard, and I never know if I am doing it right.
I don’t just walk it for myself anymore. I now hold little hands on my path, and I can feel the weight of guiding them, the heaviness of their futures.
Help me remember that I don’t do this alone. That my job is to guide them towards You, and You will number their steps and carry them as they go.
Help us remember that these children are not just ours but are Yours.
What a beautiful burden to have lifted off our shoulders… knowing that we don’t walk this path of parenthood alone.
Amen.
This prayer is pulled from my prayer book for motherhood, Full. If you are interested in grabbing a copy, click here!
Until next Friday, Blair