You’ve just found your daughter using the wall instead of paper for her artwork. Your son is playing in the toilet. Your house is trashed, and you feel like you haven’t had a shower in a week. I think all of us Moms can identify with feeling overwhelmed, falling short of what’s expected of us and on the verge of failing in this journey of parenthood.
This Mother’s Day, my husband took me to see Sony Picture’s MOMS’ NIGHT OUT, an inspirational and laugh-out-loud family comedy depicting the joys and nightmares of raising children. Exit polls reveal audience reactions: 82 percent of moviegoers say, yes, they’d definitely recommend MOMS’ NIGHT OUT. A million-plus people are talking about it on Facebook. Among females aged 35-49, MOMS’ NIGHT OUT received an A- Cinema Score.
Appropriate for the whole family, the movie identified with real life circumstances and feelings of those living in the trenches of raising young children and teenagers. As a pastor’s wife myself, one of my favorite characters was Sondra, the pastor’s wife, played by Patricia Heaton. As the movie progresses, her mask is taken off, and we see a real, genuine Christian woman, raising her own teenage daughter.
As a mother who is approaching the empty nest, here’s what I took away from the movie:
- Take a break and have fun. Get out the sparkly high heels and go out to a nice dinner with your friends. Having fun and enjoying a change of scenery helps to keep our perspective. It helps us to distinguish between the most important and the trivial.
- Don’t expect perfection from yourself or anyone else. Cut yourself some slack. We all make mistakes and so do our kids. Raising kids is like cooking a meal in a crockpot not a microwave. It’s a journey that involves much prayer and patience as we all seek to grow to become more like Jesus.
- In the midst of the chaos, enjoy every minute with your children. Seasons in parenting come and go. One minute you are changing diapers, and the next minute you’re turning to walk out of that freshman dorm room. They won’t live at home forever, so take every minute to appreciate them and invest in their lives.
So, when you’re feeling overwhelmed, ill-equipped or perhaps
underappreciated, remember, motherhood IS important and one of the greatest gifts on earth. “You are a masterpiece, and that’s enough.”
Photo credit: Sony Pictures