A teenager called me a good mom yesterday.
In fact, they said just by the way I speak about my kids, they know it to be true.
I’m not sure he had even finished the sentence before my brain started proving him wrong. Good? I respectfully disagree. I mean I make mistakes. I get too tired to keep the house clean or always make sure they have what they need for school (Ugh: reminder to self, form due today!!!). I got grumpy when they disrupted my morning routine yesterday. I worked late last night and wasn’t there to put them to bed. It’ll happen again tonight. They’ve had a pretty boring few months as we’ve pretty much only done work and school.
The internal dialogue went on and on.
It was like I instinctively had to prove or earn the statement the other person was offering for free.
Why do we often feel like we have to earn a compliment – especially one that calls us “good”? After all, didn’t God look at all he created and said it was “good”? God didn’t qualify that people were only good if they never messed up, kept the house cleaned, remembered deadlines (totally gonna forget that form).
I think God reaches out everyday to compliment us in some form or another, to remind us that we are good, that we are loved simply for being ourselves. So often, however, we are so busy qualifying how something could not possibly be true… we miss it.
When is the last time someone called you good and you rejected it before the word was even out of their month? It happens, right. It’s almost a reflex.
What if next time, we shh’ed our inner voices and reminded ourselves that what God makes is good! What God loves is good!
And God made and loved us!
My prayer this morning is for us to know our innate goodness and own it. May we silence the voice that seeks to tell us we are not enough, just as we are. And maybe that’ll be the beginning of something wonderful.
