Megan I'm 26, the oldest of eight living and still present at home: any childrearing or household-management experience I have comes from that source! View all articles | Contact author

I have a position in my family - one I never realized an oldest daughter was in a prime position to fulfill: Official Mom Encourager.  I expected Mom to be Official Daughter Encourager - and she definitely is! - but it's a special thing to know the support goes both ways.

Now, there's more than one such person that fills this position in most moms' lives and mine's no exception.  Dad is Chief Official Mom Encourager, for example.  But all encouragers usually have something they often remind the encouragee of frequently: and for my mom, there's a piece of essential encouragement I've learned about.

"Mom, you're not a failure."

When I first realized Mom might think she was a failure, it was a bit of a shock.  She's a wife of thirty years and the mother of nine.  Her teenagers are loving and helpful, her adult children are capable and mature, her kids are a joy, her babies don't scratch, hit, bite, or run around restaurants terrorizing patrons, she and her husband have a good marriage and take care of each other and their children, and she has the deserved reputation of being kind, gentle, and loyal.  Sure, there's always ongoing things with the kids that need work ,and things with herself she wants to change, but this is not a woman who'd ever be nominated for the Worst Wife/Mom Award.

Except in her own mind.

There are two ways people can have trouble recognizing the actual fulfillment of their duties in life: they can think they're doing good when they're not; and they can think they're doing rotten when they're not.  Many people tend toward the latter-- to the point that they think everything is so bad, they never fix the things they really could've if they hadn't been so paralyzed by discouragement.  The diligent fight against discouragement goes hand-in-hand with being a mom.  Discouragement is a big problem because it's a liar: it blinds a person to what is really wrong just as it blinds them to what is really right.  I think that's why God makes such a point of telling his people to "be strong and of good courage": God is Truth and you can't follow Him - and have that peace that passes understanding - if you're not truthful.

When one of my sister was ten or eleven, she was extremely discouraged about a piece of music she was learning on the violin.  Discouraged to the point of crying at her lesson.  Our violin teacher then did something I've remembered ever since: she said, "Leah, what's wrong with this piece?"

"Everything!" Leah said.  "It's all wrong!"

"No it's not," our teacher said.  "Tell me exactly what's wrong with it."

"Well...this whole part," Leah said, pointing to one page.

"What part of it isn't right?" our teacher prodded.

She worked with Leah to narrow it down to - ready for this? - one note that was out of tune.  One note!  Because that one note wasn't right, Leah wasn't confident about the rest of the piece and played it like she wasn't confident.

So many moms have the same feeling about their kids, their marriages, their housework...their life in general.  For me, encouraging Mom often comes down to playing a sort of twenty questions game with her to put whatever the thing that's bothering her into focus: instead of life being a mess, it's just the fact that the eight year old has to be told every single morning to make her bed instead of doing it without a reminder.

By saying everything's a mess, it's almost impossible to narrow down what really needs to be worked on and fix it.  Analyzing what's really wrong - bringing it down to one flat note - is the key to getting out of the mindset there's nothing you can do to fix whatever problem is discouraging you.  All "fixes" are made up of very small adjustments in the end, like the millimeter Leah's finger had to move on one note to get it sharper.  Sometimes it's a series of small adjustments, but they're all doable once you see what the real problem is.

Are you discouraged about a note that's messing up the whole song?