Is anyone out there actually physically able to stop when somebody says “don’t do that“? I mean in the sense of piling things up on yourself and feeling guilty. When you place too much responsibility onto yourself and you feel like you are the worst, lazy, and not worth it because you couldn’t handle it. Someone comes along sees -or at least think they see- you are hurting yourself and they say something along the lines of… “Well if you keep feeling that, stop feeling that.” All I think of is ‘gee, thanks, I’ll get right on not feeling that anymore’.

Can someone get around the emotional and physical of that? To be able to get over your pride and listen to that command. Does that have anything to do with our pride? 

I am definitely guilty of Mom guilt. When it comes to wanting to be SuperMom, I want to be able to do it all and yet I don’t even know what that all encompasses. For a while I didn’t even realize that that’s what I was doing – trying to be SuperMom. To me, taking care of my kids is the priority. But for myself – I tend to take a backseat priority. Or not even get in the car at all sometimes. I’ve been told by many moms to give myself grace; to make sure that I give myself grace for my shortcomings. However, I give other people grace and I tell them not to be so hard on themselves. I tell them to talk to God and pray about it.

I am such a hypocrite! How many times do I actually take my problems to God without feeling like a failure. Without feeling like I’m just coming to him with problems even though I know he can shoulder them and I know he will embrace me. Is it shame? My dad reminded me last night that I need to look at the Proverbs 31 woman in seasons. He never gives me advice so I took this with a full heart and I realized what he was saying. I’m trying to be everything the Proverbs 31 woman is not realizing that that is her whole life. Raising her children is one part, her business is another, taking care of her family is all of it, but in different ways along the different seasons.

I then realized how much I hold onto the guilt that doesn’t need to be there. From that phrase ‘you are your own worst critic’ I definitely felt it. I am very harsh on myself. And I think it’s because of the way I thought my mom saw me growing up. I needed to be perfect. There were no allowances for grace because if I messed up, she made sure I knew. Looking back, maybe she was just correcting me for next time, but it didn’t feel that way. I needed to do everything the right way the first time. I realized today though that’s not at all what I want my kids to be. I stepped back and saw how much of her is coming out of me onto them in that way. “I opened my mouth and my mother came out.” I saw it as soon as I started yelling at my son for not paying attention because he didn’t want to be doing schoolwork. He didn’t understand I was giving him my time. My own personal time. And it felt like he didn’t care and didn’t respect it.

At this point now, I’m very sure he did not care or respect it. Because I haven’t taught him how to care and respect for time. I know what my goal is now for tomorrow and the day after in order to raise decent human beings. To be respectful, you have to have seen what it looks like. If I’m not respecting myself in my own time, and showing my family how to respect my time, my day will completely fall apart like it has been. Again this is all easier said than done. But it’s worth a try. My kids are definitely worth me trying even if I’m taking time out for myself. They should know what it’s like. What it looks like. I can choose me without feeling guilty and honestly, it feels like a revelation when I think it shouldn’t. I think part of it stems from a moms talk I went to recently, many of the mentor moms were encouraging us younger moms to take time for ourselves in order to be better moms. I know it, thats a step. Now I need to keep applying to actually get it.