By Peyton Garland 
I threw up all nine months of my pregnancy, including in between every single push that brought my wrinkly, precious son into this world. Despite the persistent nausea and embarrassing public messes when I didn’t make it to the restroom, I was comfortable with motherhood. I was excited, sure of myself, ready—I thought.
Ten months later, as a work-from-home mama whose husband travels nearly 75 percent of each month, I can firmly say I wasn’t ready. I’m still not ready. In truth, I have no clue what I’m doing.
Once I master one phase of infancy, another rears its head. I eventually discovered tips and tricks to combat colic symptoms, only for them to quickly end and welcome intense teething into our home. I’m always navigating unknowns, second-guessing a certain baby snack’s ingredients, or doubting myself on days when my patience wears thin. As one of my mama friends, Alicia Searl, has said, “The hardest season of motherhood is the one you’re in.”
This calls me to consider if motherhood’s relentless unknowns—a balancing act that never, well, balances—is the point. Perhaps God created mothers not as steel forces to fend our children from RSV, sketchy girlfriends or boyfriends, and car wrecks. Perhaps God designed mothers to be the ones to tell the world, “We don’t know what we’re doing. But He does.” In fact, “We can’t. But He can.”
The more I try to defy imperfection, the louder, the nastier, my headspace grows. I easily compare myself to those mom influencers who didn’t burn their little one’s organic zucchini muffins. I see another mom on Facebook whose baby already sleeps through the night at four months old. Meanwhile, I’m co-sleeping with a 10-month-old Bronco who hasn’t slept through the night since he upgraded from his swaddle wraps.
My attempts to earn Wonder Woman Mom status leave me hating others and myself, which, in turn, catalyzes impatience, frustration, and fear that I release on my family. It’s certainly not on purpose, but it happens. When you spend 24-hour stretches confined to the four walls of your home, where else can you go to process and release wild emotions?
So is there an antidote for the woman who just wants to do her best as a mom but finds herself depleted? I think so. Better yet, I think the answer is simple. It’s whispering, “You weren’t made to know it all and do it all.”
You see, mama, you weren’t designed to master motherhood. You were only meant to love and be loved, to receive and extend grace, and to understand that all of this will be messy, gray, confusing, hard, and wonderful. The highlights will live between low, hard moments. But that doesn’t discount your worth as a mom. This doesn’t keep your children from loving you any less. This simply frees you to accept your humanity, showing your children that perfection is a worthless pursuit on this side of Heaven.
Of course, you are free to continue pursuing perfection. That’s the mystery of free will. But may I share with you what changed my perspective and saved what little sanity I have left? It’s not only recognizing but accepting that life’s tornado of good and bad—these precious giggles wedged between sleepless nights—can’t be tamed by you, me, or anyone else. God allows life’s imperfections as a reason for us to look to Heaven for hope.
There’s freedom in accepting our limitations. It creates boundaries that don’t block our paths or stifle our dreams but grant us access to try our best and rest in that.
Our children will watch the way we treat ourselves when we come up against the hard days. They’ll embrace the ways we do or don’t reach for hope when there seems to be none. Scarier yet, they will define themselves as we define ourselves.
You can take them to church all you want and even put them in Christian school, but if they don’t see you resting in grace and living in the freedom of human limitations, they’ll one day think they were meant to carry the weight of the world.
Don’t place that burden on them, mama. Don’t keep carrying that burden yourself. Jesus carried the weight of the world millennia ago, all so you and your babies could know freedom despite failure. What a hope, what a gift, what a God.
by Nicole Domitro 
by Rebecca Horgan 
