This is a guest post by Courtney Reissig, author of The Accidental Feminist: Restoring Our Delight in God's Good Design. Courtney and eight other trusted authors have contributed to a 14-day email devotional for women called Refresh. Sign up for free today on Crossway.org!
1. Remember that God is God and we are not.
Often as moms we can feel that we need to be God to our children and do everything for them. But only God is God, so only God gets his to-do list done at the end of the day. We need to learn not to rest in completeness like God rests in completeness. Instead, we should rest in our humanness. This means that we rest in the acknowledgement that God is God, and we are not.
2. Learn to embrace limitations.
Everyone has limitations. Some people have capacities that other people don’t. And we need to learn to embrace those limitations, not fight against them. How often do we buck against our limitations, trying to push through and do things we really can’t? Instead we should embrace our limitations and use them as an opportunity to depend on God and not on ourselves.
3. Don’t compare yourself to others.
We are indeed limited beings. And we are limited beings with different capacities. My friend next door might have a different capacity than me. So as I am perceiving how I’m limited, I don’t need to compare myself to her. I can be who I am in Christ as an image bearer and know that I’m being faithful. God doesn’t call us to be God to our kids. He calls us to be faithful.
4. Show your children that they need Jesus, not a perfect mom.
At the end of the day our kids have an abundance of needs that we simply cannot meet. This fact presents us with the opportunity to show them that they cannot find everything they need in us. Further, it’s an opportunity for us to look at our kids and say, “Mommy is a finite being. Mommy is limited. But there is One who isn’t. And you can depend on him.”
5. Realize that God is calling you to faithfulness.
God is not calling us to busyness. He is not calling us to perfection. He is calling us to faithfulness. We want to get to the final day and hear Jesus say, “Well done, good and faithful servant,” not, “Well done, good and busy servant.”
5 Tips for Being a Faithful (and Not Just Busy) Mom from Crossway on Vimeo.
Written by Courtney Reissig, author of The Accidental Feminist: Restoring Our Delight in God's Good Design. Originally appearing on Crossway.org.
Courtney Reissig is a wife, mother, and writer. She has written for the Gospel Coalition, Boundless, and Her.meneutics (the Christianity Today Online blog for women), where she is a regular contributor. She is also the assistant editor for Karis, a women's blog hosted by the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, and the author of The Accidental Feminist: Restoring Our Delight in God's Good Design. She lives in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Publication date: July 20, 2016