Answers to How to Be a Good Mom

Did I put the laundry in the dryer?  Should I try to put the baby down for a nap?  I forgot the diapers are almost out!  I need to make a grocery list.

Moms have hundreds of things on their minds every day.  But even in this sea of confusion, the question of how to be a good mom, a better mom, is always in the back of our minds.

If you are anything like I was, you are scouring the Internet hoping to find the answer to not just how to be a good mom, but also what is your purpose in motherhood.

What is the beauty of motherhood and how do I get a hold of it?  How do I become that beautiful vintage mother surrounded by flowers and innocent, happy children, joyfully playing by my side?

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Don’t you love those fantastic depictions?

Because that’s what they are – Fantasy.

It is all fantastic until you experience the pain of childbirth, deal with daily stomach-turning diaper smells that only increase in bulk over the years.

It is all fantastic until you are a zombie that only thrives on coffee as a drug and leaves you to later overeat and end up feeling like a slug by 4 pm.  Those ideals of motherhood are great until your innocent angels become so human that they lie straight to your face – several times.

It’s at that point that we all start to wonder if we’re doing this thing right… or if we’re doing anything right.

Yes, the garden pictures of the esteemed barefoot mother, so fulfilled and relaxed, are laid to rest when you are grinding away at your paying the bills or trying to start a side-business while balancing your 8 year old’s questions with doing the laundry and making sure your toddler is not playing in the toilet (that’s purely for example, of course).

Ahh, the beauty of motherhood (sarcasm).

Wait, what?  You didn’t come here to read about that?  You want to hear how to be a good mom, not how your current motherhood reality stresses you out.

The Secret about Being a Good Mom

Well, you don’t know it but you did come to hear about the stresses.  Us moms need to know we aren’t the only ones who struggle with motherhood.

Maybe you did know that, but simply don’t want to give up on the chance that there is something more to this journey than struggling to survive.

Good.  Because there is more.

I mean, it’s just like what my friend Joanna said in her post, Wondering…Am I a good mom?

We are always going to wonder if we are good moms [because] it’s hard being a mom.

Many times in early motherhood and I count that as the first 10 years, you are convinced into thinking motherhood is only

• making homemade meals (and cookies!)
• keeping your kids busy in many different activities
• having some type of slave-to-your-child mentality – constantly tending to their desires, while
• rejecting your own needs and leaving behind your other relationships

RELATED: How to Mindfully Take Care of Yourself and Beat Burn-out

There are so many messages out there about what motherhood is it’s quite easy to get confused.

The real secret to being a good mom is knowing who you are and your purpose.  Whatever your purpose was before motherhood, still is, but now it includes those little ones.  It’s as if you are on a journey (as I like to call it), and your journey includes twists and turns but it’s the same journey.

Let me share my story and you’ll start to see what I mean.

My Not-So-Awesome Mom Story

Plainly, I DIDN’T GO INTO MOTHERHOOD WITH ANY PLAN.

I mean, no forethought about how it would go or what the purpose of motherhood was or what it would look like for me.

Between teenage drama, entering the Internet-age, college, boyfriends and creating a career track for myself, I just never thought deeply about in motherhood. Haha, I was the last person thinking about how to be a good mom.  I didn’t even think about how to be a mom at all.  You may be thinking that I’m the last person you want to

Of course, I knew I wanted children and to eventually stay home with them but that’s where the idea ended. Without younger siblings or cousins and never have babysat I lacked the much-needed exposure to children under 5.

I simply had no grounding for the practicality of motherhood.  That’s why I created a simple but straight-forward e-course giving you a crash course in the major tasks moms are to do.

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So as you probably expected, my first year of motherhood was a rollercoaster of highs and lows.  I was so busy stumbling into things, and dealing with my first-born’s health issues, that I still wasn’t interested in how to be a good mom, but more like, how to survive motherhood.

The simplest of things escaped me, from budgeting for diapers to what kind of curtains I should have at what windows.  I couldn’t understand how to organize my days at home and keep from being bored.

After that first year of trauma and drama, I then started to wonder how to get rid of guilt, selfish ambition and yes, how to be a better mom.  I can’t believe how much I yelled or was just plain ol’ discontent.

It was a time of depression (brought on by post-partum) and a time of self-revelation.  God showed me who I was inside and it wasn’t pretty.  It took me a while to sort out the important from the unimportant and realize what motherhood was truly about.

Motherhood Changes You

I looked up and suddenly was a mom, and in the back of my head, things started to surface about what I wanted, what I lacked, and what I was going to make sure my kids had that I didn’t.

MOTHERHOOD HAS A WAY of making you review your life and what life means.

So instead of just winging it at life, I started to see a purpose to not just my life as a part of theirs, but a purpose to the life I had before they came around.

Strangely, just the fact that I had kids created in me a spark of something more. I was becoming someone that I hadn’t been before and, I dare say, could not have become without kids.

When you become a mother you are really becoming someone else.
That’s the part that no one really says out loud.  It may be the same journey, but you are a developing character on that journey.  I envision Luke Skywalker or Frodo Baggins.  We are maturing not just as women, but even in motherhood itself.

I’m becoming someone more than I was

When those thoughts come you do feel a bit of identity crisis.  It’s the woman that stands back and says almost in shock, “I’m a mom?” Then the wonder of, “But what is that supposed to look like?”

The process of becoming a mom isn’t something that happens at conception, birth or the first breastfeeding.  And yet, you are forever changed by the fact that you are a mom.

No matter the circumstances of the conception…no matter your preparedness, your maturity, your desire for it or your desire against it – God chose you to be a mom.

What does being a Good Mom mean?

So there’s been talk, for years actually, about what it means to be a “good” mom.  So much so that most moms in western countries are familiar with the term “good mom”.  They strive to achieve this notion.

Don’t let the pressure in and around you control what you think.  Being a good mom isn’t about a checklist!  Being confident, exercising and listening to your kids isn’t going to make anything any easier.

Ideals about motherhood that media and the Internet give only work to make things more complicated.

It’s expectations that moms need to be working outside the home, as well as in.  According to them, we need to be at every field trip and bake sale.  We need to gratify our children with their desires to be in every sport, contest, and activity.  We need to bake the best cookies, take out kids to the park every day, be up early, stay up late and everything in between.

It’s exhausting!

Don’t allow yourself to be brain-washed into what you need to be the moment you become a mom.

On one site qualities like humility and patience are what makes you a “good” mom.  When you google the term the first thing that comes up is an article from WebMD (of all places), which gives characteristics of what good moms do.  None of those places will get you to where you want to go.

The Power of Motherhood

Your purpose is so much more than obsessing over how to be a good mom.  Women hold together the relational bonds of life. We create the framework for life; all the moving and shaking in the world would not happen without us.

As a mother, you give life through childbirth. However, you aren’t just a vessel, a bus that empties out at the destination of childbirth and babyhood.

Now let’s think back to those to those Victorian photos.

Remember the mother surrounded by a garden of flowers?  Well, the reality is, you aren’t in a garden, instead you ARE the garden.

Leading your children is leading the next generation.  You will keep springing up year after year, even when you, the mother, aren’t here anymore everything you’ve cultivated will be moving and flowing in the world.

The power of motherhood is the ability to set in motion the direction of our world.

Are you really going to give that up to an image others want to impress upon you?

One thing all of those media messages leave out about how to be a good mom is…in short… YOU.

You are already a so-called good mom and you don’t have to figure out how to be a better mom.  If you are attempting to care for your children and raise them in the best way you know how then you ARE being a so-called “good” mom.  PERIOD.  You don’t have to figure it out by going to some article online, even this one.  You are already it.

But wait!!

You and I can be tempted to think we can just settle here because we are, after all, we don’t have to worry about how to be a good mom.

Don’t just wing it in motherhood.

If you stop here you still won’t see your purpose and without purpose, you can’t make goals.  Without goals in motherhood, you can’t create a plan.

Every decision will be faulty because essentially you won’t know where you are going in life.  And your children won’t know either.

You are their only hope.

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The Purpose of Motherhood

Let’s get one thing straight – not every woman is a mother.  Some women will never be, by the bearing of children – so please don’t feed into Motherhood being a woman’s Highest Calling.

This and several other lies that Moms believe is discussed thoroughly in Rebekah’s book that I highly recommend

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Yet motherhood is a calling and how to be a good mom isn’t even a factor.

You were chosen by your Creator to have those children in particular.  Again, naturally caring for and leading those little (and big) ones means you are a good mom.

Train up a child in the way he should go,
Even when he is old he will not depart from it.   Proverbs 22:6

But what is going on inside of you as you take on this responsibility?

You are becoming less focused on you and more focused on them.

I talk about this concept in my posts about starting a business.  Its how we become more like Christ.  And within motherhood, we do a lot of finding who we truly are in Christ.

At the end of the day, motherhood is about sacrifice and maturing through trials. 

Who knew that by allowing our kids to eat our snacks, lay on us when we don’t want to be touched and ask us a billion questions during our favorite podcast episode that all of this was maturing us to be more like Christ?

The Passion of Motherhood

When we do all of those things we are loving our children.

 so that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children      Titus 2:4

And aren’t we called to love like Christ?

Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children; ² and walk in love, just as Christ also loved ^[a]you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God ^[b]as a fragrant aroma.   Ephesians 5:1-2

But I know, it’s not all lovely, loving days.

Indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.       2 Timothy 3:12

Yes, even in motherhood – or maybe it’s especially in motherhood we are criticized and overwhelmed but…

For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison    2 Corinthians 4:17

Many are the afflictions of the righteous, But the Lord delivers him out of them all.   Psalm 34:19

Motherhood Trials Have Purpose Too

The motherhood trials of life are so we will place our hope in Him – Jesus Christ our Lord.

And not only this, but we also exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance; ⁴ and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope; ⁵ and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.

 

⁶ For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.

 

⁷ For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die.

 

⁸ But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.       

Romans 5:3-8

God uses motherhood to display for us a very vivid example of His love for us, and His sacrifice for us, as we learn to be sacrificially loving too.

So don’t fret when you are having a hard time in motherhood.  You aren’t going to know how to be a Good Mom – You are learning to be much more than that.  Trials are a reality we should embrace because, ultimately, it is how we can change the world.

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