“I Can’t Be Honest about My Faults.”
written by Abbey Wedgeworth
“You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it;
you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.
My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart
you, God, will not despise.”
—Psalm 51:16-17
“Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God?
Or am I trying to please people?
If I were still trying to please people,
I would not be a servant of Christ.”
—Galatians 1:10
“If you mess up, play it off. These kids can sniff out weakness with the best of them, and they’ll eat you alive. They’ll never respect you.”
With that, my new boss at the afterschool program for under-resourced families turned the handle to enter the pre-teen room. I stepped in and lifted my eyes to meet the stares of a group of 11 and 12 year olds, dressed in pimples, school uniforms, and ear-muff style headphones. They were clustered in corners and lounging on bean bags. But the statement ringing in my ears made them seem more like lions ready to pounce on wounded prey.
Her counsel resonated with me. My experience growing up conditioned me to think of exposing weakness sort of like handing someone the blunt end of a dagger, leaving myself vulnerable to the blade of my confession. To admit fault was to hand over a weapon to fight your credibility—to wound or dismiss you. And so I concealed my faults with an air of pride and competence. This attitude followed me into motherhood.
I want my children to think that I’m perfect. I don’t want them to see my faults. I fear that they’ll think of me as unreliable or untrustworthy because of my many failings. I want them to respect me. I want them to one day say “My mom was the strongest, most capable person I’ve ever known. She raised us with consistency and an even temper. She walked what she talked.”
But I worry that one day they’ll be sitting on a therapist’s couch, tracing all their problems back to me saying, “My mother had no idea what she was doing. She was a complete hypocrite. Weak and inconsistent.” I am weak and often have no idea what I’m doing. I am dreadfully inconsistent and the hormonal surges and lack of sleep that accompany the little years have exposed an aptitude for moodiness in me I didn’t know I possessed. I want to be able to say with Paul, “Be imitators of me as I am of Christ.” But so often I feel as if more appropriate words to say to my kids would be “Do as I say, not as I do.” And I hate that.
Perhaps you too fear that owning your failures will cause your children to not respect you or think that you are a hypocrite, but being honest with our children about our shortcomings is actually one of the greatest gifts we can give them for two reasons.
Being Honest about our Shortcomings Teaches our Children to Depend on Christ
When we justify our actions and blame shift, we teach our children how to run from and cover their sin, but when we are honest about our need for grace, we have the beautiful opportunity to show them where to find it. We can take a cue from Paul here, who told his spiritual son Timothy, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost” (1 Timothy 1:15). We should not be Pharisees standing over our kids saying “Thank you God that I’m not like my sinful children.” We should be kneeling next to them, tearing our clothes, beating our breasts crying, “Have mercy on me, a sinner!” Though it seems counterintuitive, this is the best way for us to guide them: in humility, on our knees, because it is in that posture that we can lead them to the throne of grace.
Were we never to admit our shortcomings to them, our children might view us as perfect in our own right and be tempted to believe that they must be perfect on their own as well. Being honest with our children about our failures protects them from placing their faith in us or in themselves. Christ is their only hope for their salvation, and their only hope for change. They cannot ride our coattails of perfection, but they can follow our footprints of confession.
So what does this look like in everyday life?
Let’s say you raise your voice at your child using shaming language when he disobeys. After delivering the consequence for his disobedience, you kneel next to him and say “Mommy was wrong to raise her voice at you that way and to shame you. Even though it is loving for me to discipline you when you disobey, my words and tone were not loving. We both need God’s help. Mommy needs help to obey God by being kind and wise with her words, and you need God’s help to obey Mommy. We can’t do it on our own. That’s why God sent Jesus. Let’s pray and ask for his help.”
Would our children learn their need for a savior as we demonstrate our need for our own. Would they learn from us the humble confidence in the work of Jesus that enables us to say, “Christ is my righteousness.” And would they come to treasure the grace, mercy, and changing power of God as they see their mothers transformed more and more into the image of Christ.
We may not be able to model perfection for our children, but on the occasions that we fail them, we can model humility and reconciliation. Each time we humble ourselves before our children, we teach them how it is that sinful people are restored to one another. I pray that as I confess to my kids and humbly ask for their forgiveness, the Lord would cultivate a culture of restoration in our home. As they speak over me what I speak over them, “I forgive you and I will not hold it against you,” I pray that they would learn to love to extend the grace we’ve received in Christ. I pray they would be practiced in forgiving.
But however well we raise them, one thing is certain, our children will not be perfect. They will wrong their siblings. They will wrong their future spouses, their friends, and their churches. On that occasion, I pray that my children will be fast repenters because assuming a posture of humility and admitting that they are wrong won’t feel so foreign to them. Even when they aren’t solely at fault, I pray they would see and confess the speck in their own eye before they point to the log in their neighbor’s, because they know the great grace they’ve been given, because their mama modeled it to them, and because the language of apology was often spoken in our home.
Hypocrisy and Humility
A few years ago my pastor led a fall retreat for our local Christian academy. He asked the kids what their main deterrent from Christianity was and discovered their answer to be “hypocrisy at home.” If you fear those words being the words of your children, be encouraged: Falling short of God’s law doesn’t make us hypocrites. It makes us members of Adam’s race. Hypocrisy is behaving as if you don’t need a Savior. Authentic humility is being honest about sin and admitting your need of one. At every turn, each time we fear that our kids will point to our flaws, rather than point out our own righteousness or a scapegoat, we should point away from ourselves to our perfect Savior, the spotless lamb of God.
Teaching our children to live the Christian life isn’t done by concealing our shortcomings or modeling perfection, it’s done by admitting our own need and modeling dependence. God forbid a ruse concerning our own competence cause our children to depend on us rather than look to Christ, or to be puffed up with pride and alienated from others.
If I tell my kids my faults, my children may not say of me one day “My mom was the most consistent, capable, and strongest person I’ve ever known.” But I pray they would be able to say, “My mom knew her need for Christ. She was honest about her failure. She was the fastest repenter I’ve ever known.” Oh that we, in accordance with God’s upside kingdom would crave the second accolade more than the first. But more than that, would we desire to please the Lord more than to earn the respect of our kids.
Abbey Wedgeworth is a wife, mother, and nap-time writer living in Hilton Head Island,
South Carolina. She is passionate about helping young moms apply the riches of Christ to the realities of motherhood. You can find more of her writing on gentleleading.com or connect with her through Instagram at @gentle_leading.
This post is part of the Lies Moms Believe series.
To read all the posts in this series, click here!