For all the imperfect mothers out there...

Do you ever feel like a failure? I am definitely feeling that way today; the heavy-hearted,lingering ache that tells me I have hurt someone I love. It's a little thing, really, that started it, but doesn't it always start out that way? I forgot the tooth my nine-year-old daughter left under her pillow. She told me last night that she didn't think she believed in the tooth fairy anymore, that she thought it was me all along, and I told her that kids who don't believe might not get anything under their pillow. Why did I say that? I wanted her to keep believing, to stay little for just a little while longer, even though I can tell from everything else about her that she is growing up. I said that unnecessary (and, let's face it, kind of mean)thing, and then when there was nothing under her pillow, her world of belief and trust crumbled. She was so brokenhearted and angry. I am sure she felt betrayed. I took her aside, closing the door so my seven-year old would not overhear us, and I said, "You are right; there is no tooth fairy. It was always me. I wanted losing teeth to be fun and exciting, not scary or gross. I'm sorry." She then told me she was angry at being lied to. She was angry that she was right about the tooth fairy. She wanted Daddy. The tears kept on coming all the way to school. We did have a later conversation about how we know God is real, and she knows that in her heart. But I still feel like I handled it all poorly: I forgot her, I tried to make her feel like the failure was because of her unbelief. Ugh. If I could do it all over again, I tell myself, I would be better. It's times like these that I feel like a failure. Like when I have dinner ready on time and I'm so proud of myself, only to serve my family dry chicken and find out for the seventeenth time that they all hate rosemary. Or when my younger daughter just wants a snuggle from me without the baby, but I just have to put a load of laundry in, and when I finally sit down with her, the baby wakes up from his nap. Or when I forget to put a love note in my daughter's lunch but the one I wrote for her sister made it off the counter and into the lunchbox. God, please turn my meager, measly fish and dry loaves of bread into a feast for my family. I know I am precious, loved, redeemed by you. Why does it not gush out onto my loved ones all day, every day? As I drove home today, I forgot to look up at the mountains. I always look up at them, the morning fog that swirls around them in the fall too stunning to miss, but today I was lost in my thoughts of the morning I had ruined, my child's broken heart, my inadequacies as a parent. The mountains were still there, but I failed to look up. The analogy to my faith today is too obvious to miss. I feel like a failure because I'm too caught up in my inadequacies to see the One who made me, who sustains me, who cares when I am brokenhearted, who can make me enough for my family if only I will ask. Psalm 121:1-4 was written for a day like today: "I lift my eyes up to the hills--where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. He will not let your foot slip--he who watches over you will not slumber. Indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep." In my Bible, right under the heading "Psalm 121" are the words "a song of ascents." Let my heavy heart ascend today, let my eyes look to the mountains. Let me remember that the One who shaped them in his hands also shaped me and gave me this family to raise and love. Let me love them out of His grace and mercy, and let my trust and joy in Him be what shows them that, beyond any doubt, He is real.