How not to be perfect

Rhiannon Goulding says it’s time we stop pretending and allow our families the grace to be real

This Mothering Sunday – or, as I’m calling it now, ‘Celebrating the special person who cares for you Sunday’ – let’s think about our image of family. We all know the mums we see on TV are a fantasy: driving their smiling family in their pristine car, with not a sweet wrapper or empty coke can to be seen; cleaning the kitchen worktop with a single swipe, because there’s nothing on it but a single pot plant. But the image in our heads of the perfect Christian family? We still seem to be fooled by that one regularly.

I remember looking down the row in church and seeing all my children sitting together, and that made me feel great. Like it was some sort of success. Perhaps I was even a little smug.