When You Feel Like You Don’t Measure Up…

When Joshua was a toddler he accessorized every outfit with a bulky silver tape measure. 

Clipped to his waistband or hooked through a belt loop, the shiny carpenter’s tool was handy for appraising just about anything—toy tractors, cereal boxes, diaper pails and skateboards.

 Despite the fact that the measurements were useless to a three-year-old who had no grasp of numbers, Joshua spent much of his day measuring random items of interest. 

“Would you like a bowl of cereal for breakfast?” I’d ask when my sleepy-head stumbled into the kitchen. 

“Maybe, if it’s seventy-seven,” Josh would reply, as he whipped out the tape measure and carefully assessed the size of the bowl holding the Cheerios I’d just poured. 

“Do you want to ride your bike or walk to the park?” I’d query as we packed water bottles for our morning excursion.

Josh would squat on his haunches and stretch the tape measure from one end of his training-wheels to the other. Then, with the expertise of a well-trained mathematician, he’d mumble numbers under his breath. “Twelve o’ five; fifteen-seventy-nine, eight…“

Eventually, he’d lift his little head and point his chin heavenward in deep thought. 

“My bike’s too big today. I’ll just walk.”

One night when I was growing impatient with my little boy’s computations, God invaded my frustration with a convicting slice of truth. 

Maybe your little boy will drop his measuring tape when you get rid of yours!

“I don’t see any tape measures hanging from my belt loop,” I argued.

“You’re right,” my Father gently replied, “Your measures just dangle in your mind.”

At first, I chose to ignore the heavy sense of conviction that hovered over me every time Joshua stretched out that yellow ruler, but eventually, I asked the Lord to help me to see my own faulty measuring sticks.

photo credit

And when He answered, God showed me that my mental tool kit was just as ridiculous as my young son’s meaningless calculations.

 When I took an honest look at my heart, I found mommy-measures that led to daily destruction.

A doer by nature, my natural default was the ruler of productivity.

This appraiser gauged my value based on palpable accomplishments.

It measured my daily successes and failures in the light of my to-do list, a checklist borrowed from Super–Mom herself:

• Did I read to my children, fold the laundry, and wash the van?
• Did I prepare a meal for the new mom down the street?
• Did I scrub the mold off the shower-head or organize a cupboard?
• Did I volunteer at school and work on letters with my preschooler?
• Did I add flax seeds to my muffins or make bread from scratch?

When I pulled this gadget out of my mental cache, I made a silent pact with guilt. 

No matter what I may have accomplished in a day, this ruler highlighted my shortcomings and re-enforced that looming fear that I wasn’t ENOUGH.

This measuring stick only bred confidence when I completed tangible tasks.

It assigned no value to immeasurable investments. 

Time spent on living room dance competitions and backyard picnics, on pacing the floor with a fitful baby or building a Lego tower with my budding engineer counted for nothing according to the ruler of productivity.

And since most of my hard-won accomplishments were quickly undone in that exhausting season of motherhood, even the accolades I gained from this faulty ruler failed to truly fuel my confidence.

The sheer thrill of completing a task was shredded as soon as my work was ruined by the little hands in my midst. 

If I cleaned the refrigerator, my gleaming success was quickly marred by peanut–butter fingerprints or streaky ketchup blobs.

If I prepared a meal from scratch, the main dish usually just ended up in clumps beneath the high chair. 

And if I actually cleaned a toilet at the start of the day, it was dotted with golden dribbles before the sun set.

The ruler of productivity made me feel like a D student in an A+ world.

It diminished my joy and made me a slave to my to-do list.

Like my son murmuring about his too-big-bike wheels, I grumbled about the big hassle of motherhood when I assessed my life with this ridiculous measure.

Of course, the ruler of productivity wasn’t the only tool looped around my mind.

When I grew tired of to-do-list failure, I’d reach for the gauge of physical fitness. 

This furtive tool took my mind off of the sticky bathroom floor and fixed it on the slippery slope of self–image. 

But like my first measure; this one, too, failed to produce any lasting satisfaction.

The gauge of physical fitness computed the minutes I clocked on the treadmill, but failed to record the hours I spent running after speeding toddlers. 

It made me notice moms at the mall with toned arms and flat stomachs and incited my ongoing debate of whether or not pushing a double stroller counts as a weight workout. 

When I applied this relentless ruler to the woman in the mirror, I fell prey to pressing doubt and unhealthy self-scrutiny:

• Do I look more put-together than I feel?
• What product could cover the black rings beneath my eyes?
• When was the last time I shaved my legs?
• Does that lingerie beneath my nursing bras still fit?
• Does my husband even want to find out?

The gauge of physical fitness made me bemoan my stretched-out-skin. 

• Obsess over diet. 
• Lament my external appearance.  
• And fail to view myself through the mirror of the Word. 

When I wielded this self-made tool, my quest to be beautiful fell as flat as my post-nursing chest 

Of course, when I grew weary of work-out plans and face creams, I grabbed the last of my measures and tried to divert my discontent with a hearty dose of magazine-worthy homemaking.

My happy homemaker assessment combined the ambition of Martha Stewart with the crafty creativity of Pinterest.

This handy tool spurred me on to late night baking sprees and glue-gun marathons.

According to this clever measure, I scored high when I baked cookies for the church potluck after the kids went to bed and I secured rave reviews for the tissue-paper rose bouquets we delivered to the nursing home.

My assessments soared when I insisted on making class Valentines out of doilies and lace, even though my daughter really just wanted to sign her name to the shimmery Barbie cards she’d seen at the grocery store. 

If a woman were made out of endless energy, this tool might be her secret weapon. But unfortunately, a happy homemaker eventually grows harried. And tired. And crabby.

Sadly, my super-mom score sunk when I chose to curl up and read a good book rather than create a scrapbook page. 

It plunged when I purchased gift bags in bulk rather than making homemade wrapping paper with the kids. And it spotlighted my inadequacy when I had to admit to my four-year-old that I didn’t know how to sew on that missing button on his shirt. (But Grandma does!)

Left unchecked the Happy Homemaker tool fueled my passion for theme parties and family game nights while surreptitiously reducing my focus on relationships. 

Rather than celebrating my daughter on her special snack day at preschool, I’d find myself vying for Mom of the Year as I served chocolate dotted dinosaurs for “D” week and snapped pictures for the class newsletter. 

Martha Stewart may be able to carry this handy gauge with ease, but it simply rendered me fatigued and frustrated. 

After months of identifying my own faulty measures, I realized this simple truth: 

Our own measures will ALWAYS leave us feeling like we’re not enough, because our self-made measuring tapes point to our inadequacy rather to God’s sufficiency. 

Measuring tapes may be fun for little boys, but they are dangerous in the hands of mommies.

The real peril in hauling around our own little cache of measures isn’t that we constantly fall short, but that we fail to grab hold of the only stick that really matters.

Until we drop our self-invented gauges, our hands won’t be free to reach for the stick of grace mounted on Calvary’s hill. 

And when our gaze is fixed on ourselves—on our successes and our failures—our eyes can’t see clearly the One who hung on the cross in our place.

The One who declared with his death and resurrection: It is enough. I AM enough.

In the wise words of Mary DeMuth, “When we choose to give up, we begin to grow up.”

So maybe it’s time to give up our futile assessments.

Maybe it’s time to exchange our imperfect rulers for God’s perfect gauges and let God grow us into the women He’s dreamed us to be.

When Joshua turned four, he traded his canary yellow tape measure for a plastic tape dispenser. 

And as I watched my young son apply a patch of transparent tape to his favorite book, his baby sister’s bruised forehead and his broken matchbox car, I was reminded of what happens when we let go of our measuring tapes and embrace God’s immeasurable grace. 

God’s metric system reminds us that a clean bathroom is an admirable goal but a clean heart is of greater value.  

A well-planned meal is venerable, but so is a spontaneous feast of love and laughter. 

Firm abs are fine, but a firm faith is eternal.

God’s girls don’t need to earn His approval with midnight cleanings or super-mom schedules. 

We can rest in the truth that regardless of how we spend our days—changing diapers or changing the world—our significance is unchanging in Christ.

In fact, when we let God’s definitions be ENOUGH, we will undoubtedly discover that God’s grace is like a roll of cellophane tape.  

It patches our holes of self–doubt and mends the bruises of guilt that have battered our weary minds.

Best of all, it affixes us to the One who can do immeasurably more than we ask or imagine (Ephesians 4:32), and that’s an adhesive that’s even stronger than the sticky toothpaste on my bathroom floor!

Grateful today for…

• 1985. Little boy legs running just because they can.
• 1986. A husband paying the bills at 11 pm
• 1987. A long walk and talk with an old friend; being known in the best of ways.
• 1988. Snow that MELTS in May.
• 1989. A God who parts the waters upstream and beckons us to step in the Jordan with faith!
• 1990. A game of family soccer in the yard with our favorite college student.

 

Happily linking with Ann for multitude mondays, Laura for playdates with God,  Jen for soli deo gloria,  The Mom Initiative, and Jen at Rich Faith Rising