The next day my son takes a dive out of his crib. It is at
least three feet off the ground. Boom. Screaming. Great.

My kid is up all week, every single night between the hours
of midnight and four am, screaming for at least an hour. This isn’t like him at
all. He has always been a great sleeper. Even during his first two teeth
cutting he slept perfectly. Exhausted mama has no idea what is going on.
Besides that now it is 3:30 in the morning and I can’t fall back asleep so I
lay on the couch until the sun comes up watching the Disney channel. Did I
mention it’s Sunday? Great.

My son took another dive. This time he ended up hanging from
his walker, or maybe it was his toy box, completely upside down head stuck
underneath his walker. Run over, console him, we move on. Then I notice the
huge red mark that goes all the way across the side of his head. Great.

That screaming my child has been doing at night every night
for the past week; well it has moved to nap time too. Wait a minute. I just fed
him carrots for lunch. He had carrots every night last week. He is screaming
the same way he was screaming each of those nights. Could this be because of
the carrots? It doesn’t make sense when he can have pureed carrots, but not
canned carrots? Maybe it’s because they’re canned. Has my child been sick all
week because of what I have been feeding him? Great.

I stopped feeding him carrots, but he is still screaming. He
doesn’t want to nap. In fact, he doesn’t want to sleep at night either. I am
exhausted. I just feel like I can’t get it right this week. I wanted a new
week, but it is Monday and I still can’t get it right.

I feel like a crap of a mom.

It felt like one thing after another continued to pile on
top of each other. I cried countless times. I felt terrible. Have you ever had
one of those weeks? Let me assure you, if you have not yet, you will definitely
have your day soon. It is all a part of this parenting thing. We aren’t
perfect, we are going to make mistakes, and we are going to feel like we can’t
get it right. Some weeks we are going to feel like we managed to do more things
wrong than we managed to do correctly.

Out of the blue a friend who had not text me in awhile sent
me a message that basically recognized my terrible week and she said she hoped
I wasn’t dealing with mommy guilt. Boy was I. Just reading that text I burst
into tears because I was feeling just that, mommy guilt, I felt like a crap of
a mom. Then she said something else that really stuck with me. She told me that
in all her mistakes she realizes that her children still learn and grow, and
most importantly they grow in grace.

Those words have stuck with me ever since. I am not always
going to get everything right. Sometimes I am going to feel like a crap of a
mom, but it doesn’t mean I am. I could do everything wrong one week, but my child is still going to love me. Maybe in those times that I feel like
a crap of a mom I can learn to show myself some grace. Mommy guilt is rough,
and it happens, but it is not true. Being a mom is a tough job sometimes. It is
a job where we need to learn more every day. Even more, it is an opportunity
for us to be willing to accept grace, because mamas we need it!

It is in this that I realize, maybe it is not about being the perfect mom and doing everything right. That is a goal that is unattainable. But maybe it is about in our mistakes, asking for grace, and extending some to ourselves that we teach our kids even more about life. In this we teach them even more about Christ. After all, isn’t that our goal in mothering?