No More Perfect Moms: Learn to Love Your Real Life - Softcover

Savage, Jill

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802406378 ISBN 13: 9780802406378

Verlag: Moody Publishers, 2013

Inhaltsangabe

If you have ever forgotten to pick up your kids, accidentally worn two different shoes to the grocery store, or lost your cool over a messy house, YOU ARE NOT ALONE!

In No More Perfect Moms, Jill Savage says it how it is: All moms struggle. We fall short of our own standard of excellence, and then we feel insecure about not being the perfect wife with the perfect kids, perfect husband, perfect home, perfect friends, perfect marriage, and perfect body…

Jill speaks to the root of the insecurities mothers feel and points to a better way. 

No More Perfect Moms will help a mom:

• Change her unrealistic expectations to realistic hopes
• Give grace and love to her husband and children even during struggles, and discover the beauty of grace when she stops judging herself and others
• Find freedom from disappointment when she embraces her real family, her real challenges, and her real, but imperfect, life

With refreshing honesty, Jill exposes some of her own parental shortcomings and helps mothers everywhere shelve their desires for perfection and embrace God’s beautiful grace. When moms do this, they can learn to love their real but imperfect lives.

GROUP RESOURCES: FREE video curriculum, a leader’s guide, and additional group resources are available for No More Perfect Moms at www.NoMorePerfect.com.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

JILL SAVAGE is an author and speaker who is passionate about encouraging families. She is the author of nine books including Professionalizing Motherhood, My Hearts At Home, Real Moms...Real Jesus, Living With Less So Your Family Has More, and her most recent bestselling release No More Perfect Moms. Featured on Focus on the Family, Crosswalk.com, and as the host of the Heartbeat radio program, Jill is the founder of Hearts at Home, an organization that encourages moms. Jill and her husband, Mark, have five children, two who are married, two granddaughters, and one grandson. They make their home in Normal, Illinois.

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If you have ever forgotten to pick up your kids,

YOU ARE NOT ALONE!

Jill Savage in No More Perfect Moms gets honest—all mothers struggle. We fall short of our own standard of excellence, which causes us to feel insecure about being the perfect wife with the perfect kids, perfect husband, perfect home, perfect friends, perfect marriage and perfect body . . .

ThisPerfection Infection attacks when we compare our insides to others outsides. No More Perfect Moms speaks to the root and reality of the insecurities mothers feel, and it provides The Antidote.

No More Perfect Moms will help a mom:

o   Change her unrealistic expectations to realistic hopes

o   Give grace and love to her husband and children even during struggles, and discover the beauty of grace when she stops judging herself and others

o   Find freedom from disappointment when she embraces her real family, her real challenges, and her real, but imperfect, life

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NO MORE PERFECT MOMS

Learn to Love Your Real LifeBy JILL SAVAGE

Moody Publishers

Copyright © 2013 Jill Savage
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8024-0637-8

Contents

Introduction....................................................91. The Perfection Infection.....................................132. The Antidote.................................................253. No More Perfect Kids.........................................474. No More Perfect Bodies.......................................715. No More Perfect Marriages....................................856. No More Perfect Friends......................................1077. No More Perfect Days.........................................1238. No More Perfect Homes........................................1459. No More Perfect Homemaking...................................16510. One Perfect God.............................................181Appendix A: This Is Who I Am in God's Eyes......................201Appendix B: Where to Find Help When Feeling.....................205Acknowledgments.................................................209Note from the Author............................................211About Hearts at Home............................................213About Knock It Off: Stop the Mommy Wars.........................215About No More Perfect Moms Resources............................217

Chapter One

THE Perfection INFECTION

The phone rang in the chaos of the "after-school-almost dinner-time" hour. I was making a dinner salad (translated: I poured a bag of lettuce into a pretty glass bowl and threw some cherry tomatoes on for color!), helping two kids with their homework, and trying to keep my four-year-old busy enough not to whine for dinner.

I grabbed the phone and shoved it between my ear and my shoulder, answering with a quick, "Hello, this is Jill!" The voice on the other end of the line was obviously emotional. "Mom, this is Erica. Did you forget me?"

I quickly did a head count: one, two, three ... four—oh my. Erica's not here. I thought all my chicks were in the nest, but there was one at basketball practice, and it completely slipped my mind that she wasn't home and I needed to pick her up!

I couldn't lie. "Erica, I am so sorry!" I apologized. "I completely forgot to pick you up. I will be right there!"

The sniffling on the other end of the phone made my guilt run deeper. How could I forget my own child? What kind of mom does something like that? How will she ever forgive me?

Welcome to real life! If we're honest with one another, we all have stories like that to share. There are no perfect moms.

INSIDES AND OUTSIDES

Like most moms, I entered the motherhood scene wanting to be the perfect mom. I read. I prepared. I planned. I dreamed. I determined to be intentional about everything I did from choosing the laundry detergent that would be best for their skin to choosing the school that would be best for their education. I was going to be supermom. I would do it all and do it all well. Then life happened.

People often say, "Hindsight is 20/20." Looking back on that late-afternoon scene now, eleven years later, I have a valuable perspective I didn't have then. My daughter Erica, who is now twenty-one, isn't emotionally scarred because I forgot her at basketball practice. She's a welt-adjusted young adult who has a great story to tell, especially when she wants to get a little sympathy or a good laugh at family gatherings.

I now understand that my pursuit of being the "perfect mom" set me up for failure from day one. There are no perfect moms—just imperfect women who will fall off the pedestal of their own expectations more often than they care to admit.

A good friend once told me, "Jill, never compare your insides to someone else's outsides." She shared that wisdom when she heard me unconsciously compare myself to another mom after one of my many failures. That powerful statement still sticks with me. I now realize that most moms play the comparison game dozens of times every day. We constantly look to see how we measure up to those around us. And we don't measure up. But how can we measure up? We compare ourselves to something that doesn't exist. We compare our messy insides—our struggles, our failures, our less-than-perfect lives—to other women's carefully cleaned-up, perfect-looking outsides. It's a game we rooms play that we can never ever win.

So if we insist on playing the comparison game (and most of us do!), then it's time for a new measuring stick. Instead of comparing insides to outsides, we need to compare insides to insides. In fact, that's what I hope to do by sharing honestly in the coming pages.

If we're honest, too many of us wear motherhood masks that keep our insides from peeking out. Sometimes those masks are based o11 outward appearance. We wear fashionable clothes and never leave the house without our makeup done and our hair styled. In other words, on the outside we always look like we have it together. Others of us wear a mask in our conversations with other moms. We would never admit we are struggling in any way, even if others are openly talking about their struggles. Some of us wear masks of pride. We only share the good and never talk about the bad. We pretend we're more confident than we really are.

Authors Justin and Trisha Davis talk further about masks.

We wear masks at church. We argue all the way to Sunday service and paint on a smile on our way in. We pretend to be more spiritual, more put together, more mature in our faith than we really are. We fear that if anyone knew the real ns, they would think less of us ... so we mask our brokenness.

We wear masks at home. We pretend things are okay in our marriage when there is distance. We say nothing is wrong when our feelings are truly hurt. We don't necessarily lie to our spouse; we just shade part of the truth. We don't feel comfortable being our true self with our spouse because we are afraid of judgment or ridicule.

The thing about masks is that they never bring us closer to who we were created to be. Masks always make shallow what Cod has intended to be deep. Friendships. Marriages. Families. Churches. Everything in our lives get cheated when we choose to be fake.

Have you ever thought about the fact that you are cheating yourself by wearing a mask? Have you ever considered that fake smile is keeping you from the depth of relationships you're really longing for?

I'd like to put "being fake" away for good in the journey of motherhood. Masks do not serve us well. They keep us at an arm's length from our friends, our family, and our Cod. Not only that, but wearing masks breeds judgment. It keeps us judging ourselves and others instead of living in and loving through grace.

Are you ready for a new lens through which to view life? Would you like to live a grace-filled life that loves instead of judges? Would you like to leave perfectionism behind and find freedom in authenticity? I know I would!

So where do we start? To understand where we are and where we need to go, it's wise to start with a sense of how we got here. Let's explore this: Just how did our lives become so infected with perfectionism?

HOW DID WE GET HERE?

I noticed it for the first time just a couple of years ago. There was a little box I could check on my boys' school picture order form if I'd like the photographer to provide "touch up services" for their school pictures. You know: remove a zit here, fix an out-of-place hair there. Many of us no longer want a "real" picture of...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Moody Publishers
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2013
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0802406378
• ISBN 13: 9780802406378
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 217
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Moody Publishers; https://www.moodypublishers.com; ; 820 NORTH LASALLE BLVD.; CHICAGO; IL; 60610; USA
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar