Hey hey, it's Sarah Mackenzie!
I am here with a bonus episode. I host another podcast — it's called Circle with Sarah— and it's a short, weekly podcast that helps all of us become the peace-filled, joyful mamas we're called to be. It goes up at RAR Premium every Monday during the school year.
Recently, I recorded an episode for that podcast called "God is Not Disappointed in You." And not only did it really resonate with RAR Premium members, but we got several requests from members to please post this on the Read-Aloud Revival podcast so they could share it with their friends even if their friends weren't inside RAR Premium.
Here's the episode:
In our recent Circle with Sarah Retreat, you were all invited to submit questions about maintaining peace in your homeschool, because of course that was our theme, and so many of you did!
It has been just a complete joy to read through those and consider them. Almost 120 questions came in actually, and we were only able to touch on a few during the retreat, and then we touched on a few more in our last Circle with Sarah Live.
But as I was reading through your questions and just prayerfully considering how to answer them, one thing jumped out at me over and over again. I mentioned it, actually, at the very end of the September Circle with Sarah Live. It's this pervasive fear that so many of us have that really feeds into our anxiety about our homeschools and our kids and our parenting and our worry that we're not doing a good enough job with any of it. And the underlying belief that is a problem here is that we believe that God is disappointed in us as homeschooling moms, that we're failing Him, and He's disappointed.
And I think this fear is probably exaggerated somewhat for us if we had a father or really any authority figure over us at any point in our lives who did express chronic disappointment in us. I think then it's very easy to translate that into feeling like God must also be feeling disappointed in us. That seems like the easiest thing to believe, like the truest thing.
But listen to me, God is not disappointed in you.
He is not surprised by anything you are facing in your life, your motherhood, your homeschool, your marriage, any of it. He's not surprised by any of it. On your absolute worst days, He's not surprised by how you acted or reacted. He already knows the worst and hardest and most challenging things that you are facing right now, and He loves you and He's calling you to this work anyway.
He actually never asks us to be good enough. And He never asks us to get this just right. And I think it's worth remembering that He didn't actually think you would do a better job than you're doing. He's all knowing. He's sovereign. He didn't think you'd do a better job than you're doing at anything, in any part of your life. And He's not disappointed in you.
I wonder if you can sit with that for just a second, like really sit with it?
I want to read from Psalm 103:
"The Lord is merciful and gracious,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love."
Later in that same psalm we read,
"For He knows our frame;
He remembers that we are dust."
So He knows who we are. He knows our capabilities, He knows our limits, He knows our frame, and He remembers that we are dust. And yet He is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love.
I wonder if you can say that out loud to yourself. God is not disappointed in me. Try it.
How did that feel? Did it feel true? Did your voice wobble? Did you feel choked up? Did you feel like, I don't know if that's true?
Listen, this is what you can say to yourself and know it is true. God is not disappointed in me.
He is not disappointed in my kids. He is not disappointed in my homeschool. He is not disappointed in how I cook or how badly
