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3 More Ways for Weary Moms to Rest

3 More Ways for Weary Moms to Rest

To weary moms, continued…

Last week, I posted the first part of a letter I wrote to any moms wearied by the work of raising children. Today, enjoy part 2!

Dear weary mom, you have permission, in Christ, to stop…

  1. trying to be supermom. God designed us to be interdependent with others. Accept help and ask for it.

Are you trying to nurse a baby, help a first grader with homework, and cook dinner while your husband is sitting on the couch checking email? Ask him for help. It is true — he’s had a long day at work, but you’ve had a long day at work too. These days won’t be this busy FOREVER!! He won’t regret his involvement, and you won’t either.

Your next-door-neighbor loves to stay and watch mini-mite football practice. You have two other drop-offs to make. Why not ask him if he minds driving your son too?

God provides us with rest in the most practical of ways — we are members of a body with different gifts and in different seasons.

  1. saying “yes.” Practice one eloquent way to say “no” to the zillions of requests sent your way:

Someone else will be room mom (or dad), or maybe no one else will step up. The teacher does need help, but you’re caring for your aging grandmother — can you really do both without exhausting yourself?

It will require making some people unhappy (see number 1) and trusting that God will provide a way (Isaiah 43:19), but it will allow you the rest you were made for.

Dear weary mom, you have permission to make people unhappy. Click To Tweet
  • Other things you may pronounce a guilt-free “no” to:
    sending homemade cupcakes to school for your child’s birthday,
  • buying your 16-year-old a new car,
  • and taking responsibility for your child’s failure or sin.
  1. saying “no.” Say yes to more play and rest.

Let’s be honest — it can become a habit, right?

“No, you can’t come in past curfew.”
“No, you can’t eat dessert before dinner.”
“No, you can’t watch Leave it to Beaver before you do your homework (TVLand, anyone:-)?).”
(And yes, when I was a child, I watched Leave it to Beaver every day before I did my homework:-)! (While eating Chips Ahoy cookies and drinking full-tilt Coke!)

Say yes to rest by saying no to one of the 40 volleyball/soccer games your two combined children will compete in. If you’re an introvert, stay home and lie on the couch with a good book; if you’re an extrovert, don a lime green feather boa and go to Chile’s with ten of your closest friends.

3 More Ways for Weary Moms to Rest Click To Tweet

Tell the kids to skip the room cleanup and go out for ice cream. Let them take a sick day – adults get them – why shouldn’t they (I know – because they get school holidays:-) – but still!)? Tell them they can’t dump a bucket of ice on you for a good cause, but you will help them have a bake sale to raise money.

Rest, weary mom, because God created rest and Jesus gives rest.

“ And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done.” Gen. 2:2

Come to him, you weary and heavy-laden mom, and rest, for truly his yoke is easy and his burden is light.

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SHARING IS CARING :-)!

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5 Things Moms Don’t Need to Feel Guilty About

This is an update from 2004, because we still need good news for guilty parents!!

First of all, I don’t know why the new issue of Parenting Magazine seems to show up in my mailbox once a month.  I suspect there is a mom out there who has judged me the worst mother in the state of Florida and has taken me on as a mercy ministry. She probably sponsored my subscription hoping the articles will help me.

But I don’t read it.

I make it a practice to throw it in the recycling bin along with the other 90 percent of the mail that lands there.  This time, though, I had grabbed the mail on the way to wait for a child, and since there was nothing else decent in the mailbox, I had kept it in the car.

Then, on the way to school this morning, one of the headers on the front cover caught my eye:

5 Things Moms Don’t Have to Feel Guilty About

ONLY FIVE?  (I have recently prided myself on upping the number on my list to 7 and a half.)  I couldn’t wait to see which ones this author had discovered.

But at this point I was driving so I asked my 11-year-old to find the article.

While she looked, I mused, “Why isn’t it 5 things Moms and Dads no longer have to feel guilty about? Is it because Dads should not feel guilty about them, or because they would never bother to feel guilty about them?”

The list deeply disappointed. I wouldn’t have felt guilty about the mothering failures she described:

…either because I would never have done them – oohh…mothering righteousness!
…or because I don’t find them worth my shame…
…or because I had long ago gotten over feeling guilty about them (well, for the most part).

But since you are probably dying to know, here they are

  1. bribing your kids;
  2. having a messy house;
  3. ignoring your kids;
  4. letting your kids watch videos;
  5. not having family dinners…

Okay, I confess. I would feel guilty about some of those things. But by that point I had realized — and you probably know this too —

Guilt, whether over things we shouldn’t feel guilty about — or over sins we truly should…
IS SUCH AN ENERGY-SUCKER.

And, as I’ve written so many times here before, because it’s the only life-giving parenting “TIP” I know that truly “works” on mom-guilt…

The good news of the gospel is that Jesus Christ died for the real guilt and shame we experience over our true failures as moms (and Dads). Real mom’s liberation comes from knowing the hope of forgiveness and renewal…

  • when I have ignored my children because I’d rather scroll through my friend’s Facebook feed,
  • or bribed my kids because I’d rather they like me than suffer the conflict of requiring them to do something they should do (like put down the candy in the grocery aisle),
  • or — something not on her list — treated them like fools by yelling “WHO DOES THAT” when they fingerpaint on paper laid over carpet…

So, here’s the real reason you and I don’t need to feel guilty about that list in Parenting Magazine — Christ has already died for it. He beckons us to come to him, to lay our sins upon his shoulders and to remember the righteousness and hope for change we have in him.

Want more good news about liberation from parenting guilt? Try these articles!

Elizabeth Turnage, not the perfect mom, and still the guilt-tripping mom, but ever becoming more freed from myths and traps, works with parents as a life coach.

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