Just Keep Trying

If any of you ever watch "Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood" with your kids you might be familiar with the catchy tune: Just keep trying...you'll get better. I love that show for the great lessons it teaches my 4 year old. Each show has a short jingle that they sing to reinforce the lesson of the day and honestly at first I thought they were really annoying but after a while I noticed that I could use them during the day when we encountered those types of situations and they really helped my son. I even started to notice him singing them to himself.
So recently, one of the episodes featured the "just keep trying" jingle and I feel like ever since it's been popping up in my life all over the place.
For example, one day last week I had a terrible day. You know those "I'm crabby, the kids are crabby, and everything that can go wrong does", kind of days. I felt horrible and texted a friend at the end of the night how I wish there was a re-do button for that day because of the terrible mom job I did that day. Of course she texted she was sorry but there is no re-do button, but there is always tomorrow. She was right, and as Daniel Tiger was singing "just keep trying, you'll get better" in my ear, I promised tomorrow I would try harder. And guess what? I did, and I was.
I think sometimes we do a disservice to each other by excusing the act of settling. You'll find a million blog posts about moms who refuse to try so hard and have succumbed to the fact that they will never be supermom. I'm not advocating that its necessary to be supermom, but instead that there's a healthy balance where we realize we aren't perfect, but we keep trying to be better moms, better wives, better Christians. In the strike against trying to pretend like we have it all together or always being the best, some have slumped to the extreme other end of not trying at all and excusing it as them not masquerading as super-mom. It can be easy for me to fall into this slump as we are so quickly to help each other excuse away our mom-flaws and bad habits. But I know at the end of the day when I lay in bed recounting the day, the guilt and remorse I am feeling over the day isn't stemming from comparing myself to any other moms, but from the knowledge deep inside me that I was made better than that. I was made to love greatly, to love better, to love even on my crabby days, even on the kid's crabby days, even when the washing machine leaks all over the floor and the toilet won't stop running. I'm not trying to be like other moms, I'm trying to be like Jesus. It's not an unhealthy thing to compare myself to Him. As our primary example, it's necessary.
So, friends, please don't excuse my bad behaviors. Yes, I'm sleep deprived, and my husband has been working long hours and I can argue with my son to get dressed in my sleep because we've done it every day for a month. But those excuses are so weak compared to the strength of the Holy Spirit that promises to give me what I need for this very important work. This theme flows from motherhood to work struggles, strained relationships, people I fail to love well, the list goes on and on. I know when I am feeling discouraged or beating myself up about a failure, it's not Daniel tiger's voice whispering in my ear "just keep trying", but a much more familiar one. My prayer is that I can always reply, "Ok, Father, thanks for the encouragement and thanks for believing in me, I'll keep trying."

Offering prayers for you in your "trying!"