When You Feel Like a Failure

I could feel it slipping through my fingers. Any hope of the person I wanted to be falling away as my voice got louder and my fists clenched tight by my sides.

This wasn’t how I wanted motherhood to look. This wasn’t the mother I wanted to be.

There are plenty of examples of the scene above:

• The seemingly hundredth time my kids fought over the rules to the game they were playing.

• The time the milk spilled all over the table and floor after I had asked them to stop fooling around.

• The endless times I’ve told everyone to get their crap out of the car because it wasn’t a trash can on wheels.

I could keep going.

The problem

Anger comes too easily to me. I’m reactive, and while that makes for big love and joy and fun, it also makes for big anger and frustration and surprisingly little patience. Today was just another instance in the list I was certain God was keeping of all the times I’ve failed at this motherhood gig. I’m sure there were indexes of the scrolls by now.

And all of these times made me feel big feelings of exactly who I thought I was as a mother: a failure.

What was really going on

We could talk about how shining a spotlight on those moments don’t account for the hundreds of other moments with goodnight kisses and homework help and hugs for scraped knees. We could argue that one bad moment does not make a bad mother. But feelings don’t care much for reason. Feelings have reasons of their own and mine were a mess.

In all those moments of mom failure, I found myself questioning my very worth. I wasn’t thinking about what God says about me. I wasn’t making sense and using reason. I wasn’t giving myself grace. 

I was taking my worst moments and using those to define my whole life. As if I had the power to define myself.

The truth

We may live our lives thinking we have power, and in some ways we are right. But nothing we do, say or even think about ourselves can negate what God says about us. We are simply not that powerful.

Nothing we do, say or think can negate what God says about us. We are simply not that powerful. Share on X

God sees us, in all of our messy places, with big feelings and terrible reactions. He sees all of who we are and who we think we are and still declares us worthy. Not because of what we do or say, but because of who He is and what He says. 

Maybe it’s time we believed it, too.