Category: Raising Girls

Are Mommy Bloggers Contributing to a Homemaker Culture of Perfectionism?

Just now I looked to see how my pages I “liked” on Facebook. I follow 396 pages. I’m actually embarrassed to admit that. That’s a lot of pages. Most of those pages are blog fan pages, and most of those blog fan pages are from the blogs of my friends.

I’m on Facebook a lot. Mainly because that is where the writing/blogging groups I’m in “meet” – they meet on Facebook. I actually read more blog posts from Facebook pages than I read from the blog site itself. Yes, I’m slightly addicted.

I love blogging and even more so writing. I love my blog friends. I love reading their posts. I love their ministries and businesses. They are really, really good at what they do, and they are doing a great job. They are providing for their families. They are raising up young moms through their instruction. They are helping marriages thrive.

But I’ve noticed a trend with bloggers – you may call them mommy bloggers because they mostly write on motherhood, homemaking, and marriage – and this is it: As a reader, I’m being dropped off at the ideal without being taken through the grace.

Are mommy bloggers contributing to a homemaker culture of perfectionism?

Image courtesy of koratmember/ FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The other day I painted my toenails for the first time since my baby was born – seven months ago. Not ten minutes later I was on Facebook and the question popped up, “Do you use toxin-free nail polish to paint your nails?” It was followed by a question on a separate blog fan page – “Do you use a dishwasher or wash your dishes by hand?”

Quite possibly it’s my own insecurity, but when I see a post about toxins in fingernail polish or asking whether I use a dishwasher, I want to throw my hands in the air and scream, “I give up! I’ll never be good enough!”

I think of the single woman who’s raising her children on her own or the woman who wants to be a full-time homemaker but her husband doesn’t agree or the one who’s single and just wants to be married. How are they feeling? Do they feel like they can’t measure up in this seemingly perfect homemaker culture?

I also wonder if there’s a back-story. Actually, I know there’s a back-story. I’ve lived long enough now to know that everyone, and I mean everyone, has a back-story because we’re all just that fallen. So what is it? What’s the back-story? I’m exposed to the ideal, but where is the grace?

I want to know about the grace.

The grace-filled story is where the power of Jesus lives. The power that changes perception and gives us truth – that only through Him are we ever enough.

I want to read about the woman who can’t afford toxin-free nail polish and doesn’t have time to wash dishes by hand – along with how to do these things. That’s what I want.

We write about how Pinterest and Facebook and Twitter and Instagram are all making us crazy with comparison and this perfect picture and how we feel like we won’t ever measure up. But are we as bloggers contributing to the problem?

And I could be just as much to blame. I don’t know what people think when they see a Facebook update from my blog fan page. But I hope they don’t perfection because perfection isn’t here. Perfection is no where near this broken-soul of a woman who each day realizes more and more and more and more that she is completely nothing without the Cross. Each day my life depends more than the previous on Jesus’s grace.

Grace to get up out of the bed in the morning after being up with my baby a few times during the night. Grace for when my husband’s pants for work aren’t washed by the time he needs them – again. Grace for ordering take out three nights in a week. Grace for the professional baby pictures we spent tons of money on that still aren’t hanging on the wall. Grace for not reading to my baby for the fourth day in a row when I’m the reading teacher – I know better!

In my world, it’s nothing but grace. So I want more of the grace – the real, the messy, the mistakes, the out-of-control, the humanness – along with the picture-perfect.

I want more of Jesus.

June 6, 2013
Embracing Your Gifts, Letting Go of Perfection

As a child I was raised by a master organizer. An A-type personality, if you will. I remember my childhood home so well. No shoes left on the floor downstairs. Every t-shirt neatly folded and placed in its assigned drawer. Even food had its own place in the refrigerator.

Then there was my bedroom. I was fortunate to have a mom with a “shut the door” policy. Even though the rest of the house knew no junk drawers, messes, or clutter, I was allowed to keep my room how I wanted it. When I was about eight years old I remember asking for permission to mess up my neatly folded drawers of clothes. My best friend didn’t have nice and neat dresser drawers, so I didn’t want them either. “Sure,” my mom said, “but I don’t know how you’ll keep anything free of wrinkles that way.”

That was my goal – to keep my life free of wrinkles like my mom. And I wanted to just as good at it as she was. However, that wasn’t me. That was the pseudo me.

Today I am featured at Encouragement Cafe Devotions talking about When Perfectionism Steals Your Identity. Read the rest of my story there and how I am overcoming an identity stolen by perfectionism.

May 31, 2013
Motherhood Makes Me Question My Faith

From the outside looking in it seems that I’ve proved my faith in God.

First, there was the four-year-long boyfriend who I grew up with but in the end chose a gay lifestyle. I sobbed because I felt robbed – robbed of four years in the most precious time of life. How could this happen to me – the good girl? Things like this don’t happen to good girls, right? But in the end I praised God because the experience made cling to His hem with a fierce might that I didn’t even know was in me. I fell more in love with God that day.

Then the singleness continued. And continued. And continued. My identity was wrapped up in the desire to be a wife and mother. Who was I now? A girl who may never get married? I kept trudging along making lots of mistakes along the way, but never making the mistake of leaving the One I was in love with for life. Again, I squeezed tightly to His hem. I tried to be faithful.

After that my husband lay on the seventh floor of the ICU dying of heart failure. My heart wanted to die, too. This time I learned to surrender sooner. There wasn’t much kicking and screaming – only a little – and I told God that I trusted Him. His will be done. Faith seeped from my pores in a supernatural way – so much so that others thought I was in denial. They comforted me because they knew my husband was going to die. But he didn’t. I found peace in the middle of my faith – and my surrender.

I turn on the news this week and feel in the most minuscule way the heartache of the moms who lost their babies in the tornado in Oklahoma. Then I open Facebook and learn of another mom who tragically and suddenly lost her toddler-girl. She died in her sleep. They think it was pneumonia. I don’t even know these people, but I found myself on the floor sobbing like I had lost my own.

Last November I became a mom. A mom to a baby girl. Motherhood is cliché in its nature because no matter how hard I try to be original when I write about it, I can’t. It’s just that soul-wrenching. There’s no way to know the feeling until it’s in your own chest. My heart pounds for that child. I feel like I was born again last November.

Then I lose my faith.

I watch and listen and walk myself through the shoes of the moms who lost their babies in the best way I can, but the only question I ask myself over and over is, “How do they go on?” I don’t think I could.

The moment those words whisper through my mind I shiver. They reveal a secret in my soul.

Do I really believe in Jesus?

Yes, of course, I believe that Jesus is the Son of God. I know He died on the Cross for the painful sinner that I am. I know I am completely forgiven and redeemed by His blood. I know one day I will see Him and spend eternity with Him. I know all of that.

But do I believe He will take care of me even in the depths of despair I could face?

Having my heart crushed in two by a silly boy, I believed. Spending Sunday afternoons lonely and yearning for a family, I believed. Sitting in a chair in the ICU, I believed. But motherhood is different.

My security is to stand puffed up with how faithful I have been before, but motherhood shows me how far away I truly am.

My tendency is to squeeze hold of my baby girl a little tighter, protect her a little more, refuse to allow anything to happen to her. Or to beg over and over and over again, day-in and day-out, “Lord, please don’t take my baby!”. Then there is fear that I have a lesson to learn. After all, I know God cares more about my holiness than my happiness. What if taking her is the only way I can learn the lesson? The thoughts continue.

Motherhood makes me question my faith.

So my thoughts must move elsewhere – to His truth.

“Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all. Both riches and honor come from you, and you rule over all. In your hand are power and might, and in your hand it is to make great and to give strength to all.” 1 Chronicles 29:11-12

“It is the Lord who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not leave you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed.” Deuteronomy 31:8

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” Matthew 11:28-29

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer. Our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort.” 2 Corinthians 1:3-7

““For there is hope for a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that its shoots will not cease. Though its root grow old in the earth, and its stump die in the soil, yet at the scent of water it will bud and put out branches like a young plant.” Job 14:7-9

“Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” Isaiah 41:10

Hidden in these words is my faith. Without them I have nothing. I might as well believe that I couldn’t go on – because I couldn’t. However, with them is my life.

How has motherhood changed your faith in God?

May 22, 2013
Now I Get It :: Thoughts on a Second Mother’s Day

I had driven five hours that day to be there with her. John and I had only been home from our 43 day hospital stay for a few days, and I was off to see another part of my heart laying there, sick, dying. This time it was my mom.

(more…)

May 7, 2013
Brave is the Woman Who Bears Her Unplanned Baby {Five Minute Friday}

It’s that time again. Time to join The Gypsy Mama – Lisa-Jo Baker – and several other writers to write for five minutes on a certain topic. Today’s topic is Brave. This post comes from the depths of my heart. I am in a season of deep grieving for aborted babies right now. Brave is the woman who makes a different choice. You are the bravest woman I know.

I do not have any inkling of what it is like to carry an unplanned baby. I will not even attempt to describe that feeling except to say there must be fear. There must be uncertainty.

But when I held my own first-born for the first time I had a glimpse of what it might feel like for someone to come by and take her out of my arms. For permanent. The thought made the tears well, my stomach knot, even fighting gloves come on.

I thought about all those women – those brave women – who make the choice to bear their unplanned babies only to have someone take them away – for good.

Brave.

Those women who selflessly lay their own ridicule, belittlement, and shame aside to deliver into this world the soul placed within them when they could have made a different choice.

Brave.

Those women who for nine months endure the glares, listen to the lectures, stand in the face of the unknown knowing that they can’t provide in nine months but there’s Someone who can.

Brave.

Then I think of Mary. Wasn’t she one of these women? Sure, the circumstances were different, but were the feelings not the same? One thing that she had further against her was an even more relentless culture. But she trusted. She trusted God.

Brave.

For any woman who decides to bear an unplanned baby only to give him to someone else to hear the coos and see the smiles and smell the sweet baby breath, you are brave.

For any woman who decides to bear an unplanned baby only to keep her not knowing how you will provide, not knowing where the food will come from, not knowing if you’ll be safe, you are brave.

You are brave for taking the more fearful path. You are brave for not accepting a quick fix. You are brave for taking responsibility. You are brave for looking head-on past this temporal world and into eternity. You are brave because you trust. You are the strongest kind-of-a-woman I know.

You are brave.

May 3, 2013
What Shade of Red Does Your Heart Bleed?

Every time I open my computer another need reaches out and tries to grab my heart. Most of the time it’s successful.

A picture of starving children begging for clean water reminds me of my short trip to Africa. Parents beg for prayer as their child fights for his life. A news article proves how many babies really are dying every day from abortion. The eyes of a young girl caught in human trafficking peer back at me. There’s one more plea to become an organ donor. Finally an online friend redeems an orphan through adoption.

My heart begins to bleed, and I want to go into super-frantic mode to do something – anything. But that quickly ends in exhaustion as I contemplate how vast these needs and how small I am. Then comes the guilt.

Guilt for not doing more. Guilt for not selling everything and giving it to the poor. Guilt for not filling my house with orphans. Guilt for not being an advocate and standing up for those babies who will die today. Just plain guilt.

But sometimes the guilt comes from another place. A place of not having a bleeding heart but just a heart that hurts. I don’t like the injustice I see. I want it to be different. I’m sad. I even ask Jesus to come back quickly so that it will be over. But my heart doesn’t bleed. So I ask myself, “Why isn’t my heart bleeding over this?” And I feel guilty.

I read a blog post that Beth Moore wrote recently, and it was liberating for me. First, because it showed me that I’m not the only one who feels this way. And secondly, because of this:

“What do you look like when you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength?” ~ Beth Moore

The person I look like has a heart bleeding with her own shade of red. It’s a shade of red different from anyone else’s because it’s the one God gave specifically to me.

My heart bleeds for unborn babies who die from their imaginary lack of grown-up dignity. It bleeds for women who go on and on believing lies from the enemy instead of experiencing God’s redemptive power. It bleeds for children with bloated stomachs and shoe-less feet. It bleeds for single people who have the opportunity to serve God whole heartily and plan for a future marriage that glorifies Him, but they don’t take advantage of it. It bleeds for the orphan who thinks she’s not chosen. It bleeds for a culture that says raising children full-time is not using a woman’s full potential. It bleeds for the Seventeen magazine article entitled “Tips for a Better Make Out Session”. It bleeds for the woman stuffed in a wooden box to be transported to another country through human trafficking. It bleeds for the infant waiting for a heart transplant. It bleeds for the face that I know is so far from God.

This is the shade of red my heart bleeds. For everything else it hurts, but this is what causes it to bleed.

What makes my heart bleed gets the first of me.

When there’s a 5K in my hometown to support the Crisis Pregnancy Center, that’s where I spend my Saturday morning. When a young college woman from the singles Bible study I lead breaks up with her boyfriend, that’s who I invite over. When a missionary friend who lives in Africa needs support, that’s where I give it. When my baby daughter wants me to hold her just a little bit longer, that’s when I sing just a little bit louder.

And when I wake up each morning to a new day, my bleeding heart gets the first-fruits of my prayers. I pray with focused intention knowing that this is what I look like when I love God with all my heart, with all my soul, with all my mind, and with all my strength. He assigned me each of these to make my heart bleed.

Where would they be if I let guilt stop me.

What makes your heart bleed your shade of red?

April 22, 2013