Ever since I can remember, I’ve felt immense pressure to seem like I have it all together. Negative emotions were not well-received in my home growing up… we didn’t have “pity parties” or show our weaknesses. I wasn’t allowed to fail and when I did inevitably fail, I felt that I needed to hide it instead of talk about it, because I didn’t want to be a disappointment. We didn’t talk about things that scared us or made us sad. We didn’t talk much at all. I have always been used to bottling up my emotions, pushing them down, and moving on with my life.
Even now as an adult – as a happily married mother and Bible-believing Christian – I still feel that pressure to seem like I have it all together. I feel pressured to have all the answers, to say all the right prayers, to feel joy every day, to be smiling and happy and not make mistakes. I feel an expectation to be a perfect mother and that if (when) Spencer makes a mistake, people will be quick to blame me as his mom for not raising him right. I’m overwhelmed by the weight of that responsibility. Having a baby was easy… babies can’t talk back or use critical thinking. But Spencer isn’t just a baby… he’s a future adult. We’ve been given the responsibility of raising a future adult – that’s scary.
When I dwell on my responsibilities and think about that daily need to keep my home, my marriage, my family, my job all in order and functioning properly… I feel so inadequate. I feel like I’ll never measure up… I’ll never be enough. I’ll never be perfect in any way.
And you know? That’s ok. I’m inadequate, and that’s ok. I am not enough on my own. I have flaws and weaknesses. As long as I’m living, I will never achieve perfection. And that’s a great thing, because where I am weak, God is strong. Where I am inadequate, God is more than enough. Where I have flaws, God is perfect and holy. If I could do everything on my own… if I had all the answers… if I were perfect… I would never have a need for God in my life. As Jennie Allen says in her book Nothing to Prove, “I am realizing it’s not my curse that I believe I am not enough; it’s my sin that I keep trying to be.”
Kristen Stewart, Writer 