I almost didn’t go to this girl’s night out at my friend’s house. It had been a LONG week, my husband was out of town, and it had turned off freezing cold suddenly.
But I made myself go because sometimes your soul needs to have some girl time no matter how exhausted you are.
All of us but one, have kids, and of those, we all have kids that have some extra special needs. We spent a good deal of time while we played games talking about issues we were experiencing with our kids, our husbands, and plain old life. I expressed my feelings of failure as a mother that I have been feeling lately. You would think that with my son doing so much better these last couple of years that comparatively, it would be a breeze and I would feel like I had everything under control.
But life doesn’t work like that.
This wonderful woman without kids, whom I barely knew, suddenly spoke up and brought tears to my eyes.
“I just want you to know you aren’t a bad mom. I’ve been listening to you, and I felt like you really need to hear that.”
I needed to hear that. I SO needed to hear that. If for nothing else, this is why I needed to go that night despite my exhaustion and the freezing cold. God knew this and impressed on my heart that I needed to go and on hers to speak up and say it. I appreciated her bravery, saying that to someone she barely knew, and speaking up while not having kids of her own.
A couple of days later, I was sitting in church. A man and his family sat next to us. God said, “You need to tell him that he’s doing a good job bringing his family to church each week without his wife being there.”
I thought, “God, don’t make things weird. My husband isn’t here today. His wife isn’t here. If you want me to say this, you’ve got to make it not weird.”
And God said, “Remember how much you needed to hear that you were a good mother?”
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