“The Truth of Who I Am”
Mandy Pagano
Some days I hold it together by a thin, slippery thread. Some days I veritably skip through the day, patting my little cherubs on their heads as we sing and birds tie ribbons in our hair.
Most days it’s a mixture of the two: a few rocky moments surrounded by mostly great ones.
Through it all…whether I’m on my knees, holding my head in my hands, crying out to the Lord that I am so inadequate or when I hold my hands up high, praising God for who He is and thanking Him for this amazing life I lead…I am still the same person.
Somewhere along the line, many of us got an erroneous memo that motherhood, being a wife or even simply a human being on this planet would be easy or that it should look a certain way.
Struggles feel like failures and successes feel few and far between.
We buy into the school of thought that says…
… the way I’m doing it looks different from how you’re doing it, therefore one of us is doing it wrong.
We search for the recipe that will make life go smoothly. We seek out directions for how to have the ideal life with few struggles.
I’ve read books, watched videos, and taken classes, yet I wonder why I still struggle with parenting and why I can’t be the Proverbs 31 wife my husband needs.
There are seasons when I’m healthy: I eat well, exercise, and espouse the correct values about health and wellness. Other seasons, far too many for my liking, I eat poorly, buy the things I shouldn’t at the grocery store, and use my treadmill as a clothes holder.
Letters sit unwritten, emails unanswered, and deadlines missed.
Laundry lies unfolded, random items litter the van floor, and my stress level is through the roof.
It’s a back-and-forth, ebb-and-flow of life.
Once I released the notion that it should “always” go this way or “never” go that way, I am finding more peace.
Who I am as a wife and mother is not determined by the meals I cook, the laundry I do or the company I keep. Who I am as a daughter of the King, however, does.
For too long, I tried to determine my value by reading books, by looking to other people, or by the groups of which I was a part. All of those things made me feel at one time or another that I had fallen fantastically short.
But, finally, I realized, no book, person or group—all comprised of faulty individuals—can determine my worth. Only One can: The Lord.
And when I look to His Word, He tells me that I am a new creation, that the old has gone away (2 Corinthians 5:17). He tells me that I was lovingly formed in my mother’s womb and that He had a plan for me set in place long before I was even created (Psalm 139:13, Jeremiah 1:5).
And He tells me that I am His daughter and He is my Father. I am the daughter of the King (2 Corinthians 6:18)!
I let those words sink in. I rolled them around in my mind like a sweet candy in my mouth. It was almost too delicious to contain. The One and only, The Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the One true King…He called me His daughter.
And He’s calling you His daughter as well. When we embrace God’s love and Christ’s sacrifice for us, we are renewed. Everything we see and believe should go through the lens of God and His Truth. Only then will we see who we are and be able to become who we are designed to be. Only then will we be equipped to be the women, wives, and mothers we are meant to be. Only then will we see how things should really be.
Mandy Pagano and her husband Joe live in the Pittsburgh, PA area where they homeschool 4 of their 6 children. When Mandy isn’t teaching at her church, acting as her local MOPS Coordinator, or juggling soccer schedules, she can be found blogging her heart out at www.SuburbanStereotype.com and www.DeliberateWomen.org and contributing to www.TimeWarpWife.com. www.Ungrond.org, and www.OvercomerOutreach.com. It is her desire to reach women with the love of Jesus and to live a real, authentic life. She desires to reach out to others with the same grace the Lord has lovingly offered her.
