HOME / PROCLAMATION! MAGAZINE / 2014 / SUMMER / HOW I GAVE UP BEING A PERFECT MOTHER
As for God, his way is perfect: the Lord’s word is flawless; he shields all who take refuge in him. For who is God besides the Lord? And who is the Rock except our God? It is God who arms me with strength and keeps my way secure (Ps. 18:30-32).
Perfect Preparation
Before I gave birth to my son Daniel, I read every pregnancy book I could get my hands on and scoured the internet for articles on pregnancy and child rearing. I imagined bliss-filled days—my baby and I. We would cuddle, read endless stories, and play and laugh together. Part of the way through my pregnancy I quit my job. My husband Jonathan and I bought a house, and we moved out of the city. I was going to be the perfect mother, the perfect homemaker, and the perfect wife. I would always be skinny, yet there would always be warm, homemade cookies in the cookie jar! The house would be perpetually clean, and my family would be content in all their physical and emotional needs, having my undivided attention. Of course, if you had asked me, I would have told you that I knew this dream was not possible, and that I would fail in one way or another, and that even if I could live up to my expectations for myself, my family could probably not live up to my expectations. But that didn’t stop me from aspiring to this vision of perfection deep down inside.
Preparing for baby Daniel was new and exciting. I meticulously researched baby products, making sure he would have the safest environment and the coolest toys. Keeping in line with my expectations of perfection, I started having early labor pains at 12:01am on my due date! We had taken a natural childbirth class because I had decided I wanted to experience the full weight of the Genesis curse, and give birth without any pain medication. I wasn’t convinced it was safer or healthier for the baby or for me; I just got a kick out of trying! By the time I hit seven centimeters, I am sure the whole hospital floor could hear my screams. One epidural and four hours later, little Daniel popped out with rosy cheeks and a full head of hair. He had big blue eyes and tiny baby acne on his nose. The first time I held him was surreal: he was just a little stranger in my arms even though he had been with me in my belly for nine months.
I wanted to be the best mommy ever for Daniel. I was going to self-sacrificially give him my whole life—everything I could for this little goober. I would raise him to be the cutest, brightest, politest, healthiest home-schooled child on the block, if not on the continent. Boy, was I setting myself up for disappointment!
For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you (Rom. 12:3).
“Breast is Best”
We had taken a breastfeeding class at the hospital, and naturally I was going to breastfeed my baby. The class made nursing sound so essential and so easy. My mother had failed to breastfeed me, because, as she says, “It hurt!” In my mind I don’t think I had forgiven her for what might have been a lack of two IQ points (according to studies!). There was one complication, however: Daniel would not latch. We spent two days in the hospital trying to get him to nurse, and four lactation consultants later I found myself at home, tethered to a breast pump with my little goober screaming for his milk.
Jonathan and I were both sleep-deprived by this point. We were still learning how to take care of Daniel, and I had to wake up three to four times during the night to pump. Between pumping and feeding I would have been up all night, so Jonathan quickly took over bottle-feeding at night as well as during the day, and I just pumped milk. I became a veritable milk-making machine.
I cannot rationally explain to you the instinctual desire I had to nurse my newborn infant. The fact that I was struggling to make it happen broke my heart. Just a few more days, I’d tell myself, and surely he will latch. We would visit the lactation consultant, and with her help plus six hands, we could get Daniel to nurse. However, as soon as I would return home, we could not reproduce the phenomenon! Days turned into weeks, and the doctors encouraged me to “keep trying!” The people closest to me, however, could see me quickly deteriorating. I was losing sleep… and sanity.
So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don't fall! (1 Cor. 10:12).
At moments I felt near to giving up, but I had become a slave to my own expectations. When I would consider quitting and switching my little goober to formula, the guilt I would feel was overwhelming. I would cry myself to sleep—I would cry at the thought of the trials of persevering, and cry at the thought of quitting. I felt that if I were to give up and switch to formula, it meant I did not love my baby. I would be giving up on him, denying him, and somehow missing out on a special mother-infant bond. The most important thing to me was that my baby was drinking breast milk. It didn’t matter at what cost. Formula was “poison.” If I were not able to feed Daniel my own milk, then certainly I would be a failure.
It is surprising how quickly I replaced my unmet expectations with new ones. If I wasn’t able to breastfeed, I could certainly control every other facet of my existence. Ironically, I was barely spending any time with my baby. The house had to be clean, the laundry done, and I rarely took the time to hold my newborn son.
Subconsciously, I had an all-or-nothing mentality. If I could not be perfect for him, I wanted nothing to do with him. Jonathan, who had already taken copious amounts of time off of work, was relegated to 90% of baby-care, and when I was not sitting in the corner, suctioned to a breast pump, I was furiously running around the house doing chores.
“Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her” (Lk. 10:41,42).
An Idol Is Born
I never meant for my list of rules to trump loving and caring for my son. That list existed because I loved him! I can imagine how offended I would have been had you told me that I was neglecting Daniel. I did not realize that the list had become an idol in my heart. I had unwittingly replaced the object of my affection with a set of rules. I had begun to love my idealistic view of “the perfect mother” more than my actual family. All this time I thought I was being a good mother and wife.
All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away (Is. 64:6).
Under all the stress and lack of sleep, it wasn’t long before Jonathan and I started fighting. Being the closest person to me, he could see how my obsession with nursing was destroying me. He went out and bought a container of formula and told me to quit pumping. It hurt me that he was not more supportive. Couldn’t he see how hard I was trying to make the best decisions for our baby? When he would encourage me to quit, I couldn’t see him as trying to help me but only as a wicked temptation to give up. I felt on top of things—I felt in control and coherent. I didn’t realize I was slowly self-destructing.
What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. (Jas. 4:1-4)
When Love Grows Cold
“O love is sweet and love is kind; the sweetest flow'r when first it's new, but love grows old and waxes cold and fades away like morning dew” (lyrics from “The Water is Wide”).
It is shocking how so much love, when filtered through a perfectionist mindset, can turn into so much resentment and hate. The day of reckoning came: Jonathan needed to go back to work, and I was forced to deal with the reality of motherhood. Nothing was going my way. I remember one afternoon trying to put Daniel down for a nap, desperately needing that precious hour of rest. The crying babe would not go to sleep. I could feel the rage building up in me, and I wanted to scream at him and shake him. I was angry at him for having destroyed my body, taking over my life, and taking away all my sanity.
My days used to be spent somewhat selfishly, doing what I wanted, and now this tiny entity was demanding every ounce of my attention and energy. My list of rules hadn’t left any room for him in my life. I wasn’t able to give him what he needed the most: my patience, grace, mercy, and love. I had been trying to show him love through my idol of perfectionism; I wasn’t able to simply let go and joyfully love my baby.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law (Gal. 5:22-23).
Destroying Idols
Those who cling to worthless idols turn away from God’s love for them (Jonah 2:8).
In His infinite wisdom and mercy, God snatched away my idol. After two months of pumping milk—and not having much strength or energy left, I noticed a large lump on my right breast. I had an abscess filled with backed-up milk, and it was tainted with MRSA, a serious bacterial infection. There was a point during this experience where I genuinely thought I might die (perhaps an exaggerated feeling, but very real at the time). I ended up in the emergency room twice, and they put me on a myriad of antibiotics. The doctors concurred: it would be wisest for me to stop my milk supply and switch Daniel to formula. Even though I complied with great sadness, I can’t express the immense relief I felt at the same time. I was truly humbled, yet thankful that my idol had been ripped from my hands.
[Our human fathers] disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it (Heb. 12:10,11).
I realized that I had been rescued from subjugation to a yoke of my own creation! I now had concrete evidence that I could not be a perfect mother, and frighteningly, the more I had tried, perhaps the worse parent I had become. I had barely started down this journey of motherhood and had already failed in every aspect that I deemed essential!
But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. (2 Cor. 12:9).
While I am still saddened sometimes when I think about not being able to breastfeed Daniel, I am far more thankful for God’s grace in rescuing me from my bondage of perfection.
But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law [in my case, my made up law of perfect motherhood], but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith (Phil. 3:7-9).
Seeking Satisfaction in Christ
For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus (Rom. 3:23,24).
As I write this, Daniel is 9 months old. It has still been quite an adjustment. Even though I would probably call him “the best baby in the world,” being a mother definitely has not lived up to my unrealistic expectations. He isn’t the perfect baby, and I am far from the perfect mother. I am surprised by how often I feel like I am failing him or doing the wrong thing, or how often I find myself frustrated by him, or acting selfishly towards him (wishing I had more time to myself, or wishing he could appreciate all that I do for him).
I know I can’t base my worth on fleshly accomplishments: how clean my house is, how soon my baby walks or talks or feeds himself… I have humbly accepted that I can’t be the perfect mother. The only way I am perfect is through Jesus Christ, and knowing this frees me from the cares of worldly pursuits, as well as my unrealistic expectations of motherhood.
Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory (Col. 3:1-4).
I am only able to love truly and selflessly through my faith in Christ. I will always disappoint me, and my family will most likely disappoint me at times, but only in Christ lies true satisfaction and rest. Only in this satisfaction, through the work of the Holy Spirit, can I truly give selflessly and expect nothing in return.
We love because he first loved us (1 Jn. 4:19). †
Copyright 2014 Life Assurance Ministries, Inc., Camp Verde, Arizona, USA. All rights reserved. Revised August 25, 2014. Contact email: proclamation@gmail.com
Lisa (Gilbert) Winn graduated from Adventism’s Pacific Union College in 2002 with a B.S. in graphic design. After college she moved to North Hollywood, California, where she worked as a video editor. She was baptized at Grace Community Church on February 10, 2007, and later met her husband, Jonathan Winn, at Calvary Bible Church in Burbank. Lisa now lives in Yucaipa, California, with her husband and their new baby boy, Daniel. They are currently members of Trinity Church in Redlands.
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VOLUME 15, ISSUE 2