They say motherhood is important work. They say nothing is more important. But when I’m in a new group meeting other moms and we’re going around telling what we do, I often get the feeling they don’t really believe being a Mom is enough. I don’t believe being a Mom is enough.

In the pursuit of enough, my kids get lost, pushed aside, and seen as a distraction. They are removed from the center of being my top priority to being seen as interfering with the twenty plates I have spinning in the air in my pursuit of feeling like enough.

I have projects spinning for my job, school, church, home, blog…These things are good! I’m not saying we shouldn’t do them. However, I am saying if our reason for doing them is we don’t without them we are enough then we need to stop and think.

2 Corinthians 9:7 says:

…And don’t give reluctantly or in response to pressure. “For God loves a person who gives cheerfully.”

When we do more in response to the pressure to be enough in the eyes of others and ourselves, it is not pleasing to God. And shouldn’t pleasing Him be our ultimate goal?

If it is, then we need to know what is pleasing to Him. Is it all this more we’re chasing after? Truthfully, it isn’t. His two greatest commands are,

…Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and all your strength. The second is equally important: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” ~ Mark 12: 30-31

Our closest neighbors are those who live with us. Our husband and children. We need to see them not as an interference in our pursuit of more, but as enough. I struggle with this focus so much! I push my kids aside so I can clean house or work on the computer. I resent their interruptions to my projects. This attitude needs to change.

Instead, I want to be confident in knowing not just in being a Mom, but in God I am enough.  Everything else is an outgrowth of my relationship with Him.

In the Bible we read:

Therefore, since we have been made right in God’s sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us. ~ Rom. 5:1

For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ. ~ 2 Cor. 5:21

So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus. ~ Rom. 8:1 (emp. mine)

If we have peace with God, are made right with God, and have no condemnation, we need to let go of the voices shouting at us we’re not enough. In Christ, even before you were a Mom, you were enough. Now as a Mom, you are still enough.

You’re enough when you choose to read one more story and let the straightening go.

You’re enough when you stop cleaning and look your son in the eyes as he tells you a story.

You’re enough when you include your kids in the chores, even when it means less work gets done.

You’re enough when you play games with your daughter after work instead of tackling the laundry.

You are enough.

Yes, work outside the home, volunteer, pursue your passions, but not because without them you aren’t enough, but out of gratitude to God for making you enough and as an extension of your family’s life not instead of it.

Precious Sister, this week stand in the confidence in Christ You. Are. Enough. and let everything else grow out of that one truth.