There Are Better Moms Than Me

I love to cook but I don't manage to cook dinner every single night. Sometimes we eat PB & J or leftovers.

Photo Credit: Mrsdkrebs, Creative Commons

I get really mad sometimes and yell.  Loudly. Then I have to apologize...again.

I couldn't help the kids with math homework after about the second or third grade. I'm a waste when it comes to math. I failed algebra. Thank God price tags say nothing about "x" or "y" or what they equal. My shopping days would be over. 

I work a lot.  They get peeved at times and ask me to do fun things more. They say, "Mom, you need to learn to chillax..."

Photo Credit: Emmadiscovery, Creative Commons

There are mothers who appear to cook Pinterest recipes every night.  While I'm still writing a worship chart or am on a conference call, they are stirring their organic spaghetti sauce while simultaneously making a dessert platter of fruit shaped like cartoon characters.

Some women have patience that would rival Michelle Duggar. They always use their inside voice. My inside voice never developed. I've always been an outie, never an inny.

My homeschooling friends patiently sit at the table and help their kids with homework. After they sewed their clothes and grew their vegetables that contributed the ingredients for their organic spaghetti sauce. I homeschooled for a year and was a huge flop. My kids still laugh their butts off about it and say, "What was mom thinking?!" No kidding!  

 Amazingly when my three kids were growing up, nobody ever said, "Deanna,you need to face it...there are better moms than you. Women who have it more together. Women who are more prepared to parent. Your children could have such a better life. Have you considered giving them to another woman who would do it better?"

 Of course not. That would be ridiculous...right?

Photo Credit: Original Nomad, Creative Commons

 Yet it happens all the time.

Girls and women experiencing unexpected pregnancies are encouraged to relinquish babies because there are those who can give their babies something better, or someone better than they are, at least right now. Women who are "prepared".

The truth is adoption doesn't guarantee a better life, just a different one.

 

I'm in reunion with my birth mother, brother and sister now. When you compare the two families -- my original family and my adoptive family, the outcome isn't something I can describe as better, just different.

I cringe every time I hear someone say that a girl or woman, needs to "give their baby up for adoption so they can have a better life." 

Because if having a better life or a better mom is a requirement to keep a child -- I wouldn't have been able to keep my children. 

Although none of them were unexpected, I was very young and didn't know my head from a hole in the ground when I had them. Who the heck is really prepared to be a parent before they actually are one? I read every parenting book I could get my hands on. Because I knew NOTHING.  And I was desperate to learn.

Surely another woman could have given them a better life by the standards of some. Should my kids have been raised by a stranger or strangers, because those strangers could do some things better than me, or had arrived to a different level of maturity?

 

So many times I fell flat on my face.

Thank God for grace. For patience. For forgiveness when I faltered.

Dustin & Me

I've said many times that I'm so proud of them -- despite all my faults and weaknesses, my kids have turned out to be amazing human beings.

Many of my friends who are "better moms" could have outdone me in so many ways.

But kids don't seem to be concerned that their Moms "out-do" others.

Jordan & Me

I've said I'm sorry what seems like a bazillion times.

One thing I did right was live authentically before them.

When I swing from being the woman that they hear pray for them aloud, to being the one who screams, "Why the hot place did you click that pop-up after I warned you not to?? You've crashed the frickin' computer!!!"

They forgive.

They know I'm not perfect.

Savanna & Me

They don't expect me to be.

They just want their Mom.