THE WORTHLESS MOM

I won the "Worst Mom Ever" award this week.  Yup.

I was in car line at Liley's preschool yesterday and saw my little one waiting for me...wearing NOT what I'd dropped her off in.  I was puzzled.  A spill? An accident? Why would she have had to change?  I wondered.

"Hey, sweet girl--why are you wearing that shirt?" I asked as she pulled her school bag into the car and plunked down into her carseat.

"My teacher gave it to me.  Read the note."

Oooh.  There's a NOTE?

I nervously opened her folder and found the words awaiting me:

"Thea, We gave Liley a shirt since her dress was revealing too much."     

Aaaaaaaaand official New Low.  My daughter's PRESCHOOL sent me a note about her clothing being inappropriate.  What. The. Heck.

I'm not at all upset about their decision to cover her up, nor to send me a note about it.  Love her school, love her teachers. It was all frustration with myself.  I just *hate* being THAT MOM.  In my defense (yes, of course I feel the desperate need to explain myself!), it was the first time she'd worn the little sundress she was wearing, and she put it on herself, so I didn't notice that it actually does show a bit of her shoulders and back. I'd also sent her in with a sweater over her dress, but she said she got too warm at school, and ended up taking off the sweater. 

But still.  The fact that I had sent my baby to school in something deemed inappropriate?  It stung a little a LOT.

Later in the day I called and left a message for the teacher to apologize, but despite my valiant efforts to hold my stuff together, I ended up crying in the middle of the message.  So there's that.  Totally didn't even cry when I watched "The Notebook," but was a weepy mess on this call. Faaaantastic.

And I've spent the last 24 hours feeling like a really crappy mom.

To make it worse, I realized I forgot to send in her school picture proofs.  And the fundraiser packet.  Turns out when I set things in a special spot to be SURE I don't forget about them, I end up forgetting about them. 

And even though my son had his school folder neatly packed away in his backpack, I wanted to check something in the folder--and at 9am this morning I noticed the folder I'd pulled out of his backpack was still sitting on the kitchen table while my son sits at his desk at his school across town right now.

I am on one heck of a roll of parental awesomeness. 

On the way home from dropping my daughter off at school today (and ashamedly avoiding eye contact with the sweet car line ladies), my heart was heavy.  And for a moment I surrendered to the song playing in my car, the truth-drenched words a healing salve for my bruised Mama Heart:

I am found
I am Yours
I am loved
I'm made pure
I have life
I can breathe
I am healed
I am free

What a stark contrast to the lies I'd been chewing on all morning:

I am nothing
I am worthless
I am a bad mom
I am useless
I am a mess
I am flawed beyond help
I am nowhere near where I want to be

It's hard and humbling to feel like you've come up short in something that MATTERS SO MUCH to you.  Look, it doesn't bother me that I'm not much of an athlete, and I'm not rattled by the fact that I can't bake to save my life.  But it's because those things don't really matter to me.  But being a good mom?  There are few things that matter more to me.  

But I am found.
I am Yours, God.
I am loved.  Loved.  Even in my flawed state, richly loved!
I'm made pure.  Not perfect, but being sanctified every day.
I have life.  Gratitude!
I can breathe.  You grant me breath to try again!
I am healed.  I am not stuck in my brokenness!
I am free.  My flaws are not my fetters!

I need to be on my game better.  It serves my children when I am organized.  I have a long way to go.

But I am not a worthless mom.  I am who He says I am.  I am what He says I am.  I am not who I am going to be, but by His grace I'm not who I was.
   
Nor are you.  

Because the truth is, you are found.
You are His.
You are loved.
You're made pure.
You have life.
You can breathe.
You are healed.
You are free.  

Maybe it's a good day for you.  You're on your game.  None of your children will open their lunchboxes today to find you forgot to pack a juice box, you didn't have a knock-down, drag-out with any of your children this morning over what to wear, and all is right in your world.  

But maybe it's been a rough day.

Either way....you are who He says you are.  You are what He says you are.  

     Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus.  Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead,I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 3:12-14