How not to be perfect

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.

Yet there’s a problem with that image: it might not have been reflecting reality. What if their bodies were sitting there, but their minds and hearts were elsewhere? What if they were only there because they thought it would please me, not because they wanted to follow Jesus and be part of our church community?

Why should it matter to me whether they come to church with me or not? Perhaps, for them, the best sort of church is three good friends who are Christians, who they can meet up with and share their faith and what is happening in their lives. What they need to feed their spirit may be different from what I need – and it may be different for them at different times in their lives.

They may still be on their own personal road to faith, finding their way and unable to see the plan God has for their lives. They may still have a long road to walk; they may not yet have had the crucial experiences that God has in store for them which will shape their lives and bring them to a real, living faith.

Fundamentally, why was I concerned about how our family looked to other people? It’s so easy to slip into caring about appearances. That’s parenting out of fear: fear of ‘failure’, fear of what others might say about us, fear for our reputations…

Showing our children the way of love

The other week I was in church and a lady told me that she felt guilty because her children had stopped coming to church. She had taught them about Jesus, she had brought them to church when they were small, but now they weren’t interested. She asked me what she’d done wrong. The shame she felt was so strong that it seemed to me unlike anything that Jesus would put on her.

I could relate to how she felt. My children are grown up now and have left home. Some of them have stayed close to us. Others – well, I don’t have the relationship with them that I would want. I can feel that pain of disappointment sometimes.

When each kid left home, we gave them a key to our house and said it was up to them if they wanted to use it. There’s always a meal and a bed for them here if they want it; when we organise get-togethers, they know we’d love to see them but there’s no pressure, and no recriminations if they’ve got something else to do. 

It’s the same with faith. We bring them up in a believing family, we teach them the gospel, we model for them what living in a loving and learning community looks like. We give them the key to faith – and it’s up to them if they want to open that door.

We give them the key to faith – and it’s up to them if they want to open that door

It’s certainly not about conditional love: saying that they can only have a relationship with us if they are Christian. Instead, we continue to make it clear that they are always welcome, and we try to go on modelling faith and love. We can’t make them conform to our ideas of what faith looks like – that’s why we dedicate our children to God. If it was up to us to mould them, we could only do it imperfectly, because we’re human and we fall and fail all the time. The best thing we can model is how to say sorry, repent and try again. Only God can speak to the heart of our children.

Avoiding the pressure

So what can we do to escape this pressure to be perfect? (And, incidentally, avoid passing on that pressure to our children?)

First, we can turn away from the temptation to compare ourselves with others. We never know what the true picture is. That pristine car might have all the sweet wrappers swept under the car seats! I happen to know that if ever I was looking serene, swan-like and in control of my beautiful, riotous family, I was actually paddling furiously beneath the surface!

Let’s ignore our image of the ‘perfect’ family, and instead focus on what’s right for our family, right now. It might be different next week. 

Let’s build up trust with our friends and have the courage to be honest about our struggles – it can free someone else to share their own worries. There are lots of different parenting styles, and they can all be valid. Let’s accept each other.

Most importantly, let’s trust God with our own lives and the lives of our children. We know we can’t do anything in our own power, but he says: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).

Perfection isn’t out of our reach – it just isn’t something we can strive for or worry about. Instead, our perfection is found in Jesus: “the pioneer and perfecter of faith” (Hebrews 12:2).