The Struggles of Modern Moms

What should we expect motherhood to be?

Jamie: A continual surprise. And a continual unclenching of hands over the course of every day. I think motherhood softens all our hard edges because it is forever humbling. It teaches us how to both give and receive love and it also strengthens our faith if we can own our failures.

How can we be more honest about mothering?
Jamie: You have to fight for your honesty these days with Facebook and Instagram and Twitter. Everyone has the chance to create a picture of their lives, and whether it is intentional or not, we want to look good. I think freedom comes when we are first honest with ourselves about our own weaknesses when we don’t live up to the picture we’d like to represent. Nobody wants to see perfection. We connect with others in our faults—our impatience or doubts or exhaustion or distraction. Once we recognize it, we can share it with others, apologize when necessary, and ask for grace.

What are some of your greatest challenges as a mom?
Jamie: Patience and guilt. Those are my two, and they tend to go hand-in-hand. I catch myself trying to hurry through phases with all my children. I hurry through breakfast. Hurry through books. Hurry through potty-training, and hurry through the dead zone between dinner and bedtime. I have to make myself slow down and live with the present. And then the guilt creeps in over the thousand tiny and huge things that I could be doing better. It takes a great deal of reminding myself that I’m already operating under the grace of God not to let the “shoulds” get to me.