Happy Mother’s Day friends. Like me, I hope you’re getting some time away with no one asking you for snacks or to wipe their butt. Unlike me, I hope you didn’t have to clean applesauce off your bedroom carpet last night…

It’s been 3 weeks since my book released and if you haven’t, I hope you’ll grab a copy. It’s a strange thing to write a book on motherhood because at least in some way, you are setting yourself up as a kind of authority on the subject. “Author” is, after all, the root of the word “authority.” I’ve questioned a lot if I’m worthy of that title…if I’m a good enough mom.

It’s a question that often swirls in my mind and I suspect in the minds of others. Am I a good mom? Am I good *enough*? Have I done just enough to fall into the category of “good” and escape the category of “bad?” The problem is that perhaps I am good enough one day, but fail miserably the next. Trying to be good enough feels like trying to climb a muddy slope, advancing 5 feet only to slide back 20 and then try, try, try again. And this is why motherhood keeps us very close to our need for the Gospel.

It shows that there is actually something quite wrong with us and not in the simple sense that we sometimes make mistakes, but something wrong at our very core. We have an unshakeable sense of an external standard and a disquieting knowledge that we have not met it. What we are is not what we “should” be. Try as we might, we can never be good enough because there is no good enough. In and of ourselves, we can never reach the top of the muddy slope.

The Gospel of grace changes the questions. While we are wondering, “good or bad,” it is asking “in or out?” The only categories it is concerned with are “dead in sin” or “alive in Christ.” And the difference between the two is not just enough grit to climb the top of the hill, but the sovereign hand of God which has picked us up and placed us there. Trying to merit grace is like climbing back down the hill to slide around in the mud some more. 

The irony is that the “good” mom, the best mom will be the one who sits atop the hill she didn’t climb and rests in the favor she didn’t earn, content to simply be “in Christ.” For In Christ, we have been renamed, not good or bad, but “mine.” In Christ, there is an abundance of mercy and grace and love for moms who have fallen short. And that…is very good news.

In other exciting news, e welcomed Shiloh Stephen 6 weeks ago. Life with 6 kids is…just about as chaotic as you would imagine…but equally as rich. I am so thankful for these gifts.