Hard Is Not the Same Thing as Bad: The Perspective Shift That Could Completely Change the Way You Mother

by Abbie Halberstadt

“What part of my death on the cross for your sins was easy? And yet, behold, what good has come of it.”

What if my twin girls’ seemingly meaningless melodramas were not a punishment but rather a mercy from the Lord? A daily opportunity to die to myself? To root out impatience and self-indulgence. To grow my capacity for both empathy and tenacity. To make me a more creative mama. And ultimately, to drive me to my knees at the foot of the hard, painful, bloody cross my Savior endured, not randomly or without purpose but for my ultimate benefit. What if good could come from being dragged through the emotional wringer on the daily? What if, instead of despising the hard and kicking at it in contempt and disgust, I embraced it with open, if faltering, arms and leaned into its potential to transform my view of God and of His goodness in allowing me to walk a difficult path? What if I truly let myself believe that hard is not the same thing as bad?

“Just because this is hard,” I reminded myself, “does not mean it’s bad. The Lord is doing a good work in me, and He’s going to complete it…eventually (Philippians 1:6). He’s upholding me with His righteous right hand (Isaiah 41:10). I will reap a good harvest if I do not give up (Galatians 6:9).”

“I told him she was ruining the peace of my home, but God made it evident to me, over time, that it was not my out-of-control daughter who was wrecking our home’s peace. She was just being a sinful child. It was my rage-filled reactions, as the adult in the scenario, that were the main peace stealers. God was so gracious to teach me, through each battle royale with my girl, how desperately I needed Him and how much the victory belonged to Him, not me.”

Memorize and meditate on 2 Timothy 4:7: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” Write five sticky notes with “hard ≠ bad” on them and post them in high-traffic areas of your home as reminders of this tiny perspective shift. Pray about one friend who could help hold you accountable in changing the way you view the hard things in motherhood. Reach out when the Lord brings someone to mind.

the ultimate issue with our mothering struggles is not our bad days or our hormones but instead our inability to be anything other than mediocre without Christ.

One of the most miraculous things that walking with Christ does for every believing mama who will receive its gift is to grant us not only a right view of hardship but also the strength to choose that perspective day after day instead of defaulting to victim status.

Suffering is real. Hard things are inevitable. But conflating the two within the context of motherhood is a surefire way to “lose heart” and lose sight of the unique opportunity every hard day gives us to throw ourselves onto the safety net of Jesus’s new morning mercies, firm in the knowledge that it will never break.

Romans 12:1-2 says, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” Spoiler alert: God’s good, acceptable, and perfect will for every Christian is to be “transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:18 NIV).

God calls us to embrace the struggle (James 1:2-3) and allow the difficulty to produce fruit both in us and in the children He gives us.

1 Corinthians 10:31 (NIV) does say, “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.” Cooking every meal from scratch may not be feasible. But an emphasis on real, unprocessed ingredients over convenience-enhancing chemicals is a way to honor our earthly “temples” (1 Corinthians 6:19), which brings glory to the Lord.

Galatians 5:13 declares, “For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.” Just because something is allowed does not mean it’s beneficial, especially if it becomes an idol for us or our children.

Hebrews 12:6 is clear that “the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.” Forgoing the hard-but-good work of helping our children learn to exercise self-control fails to recognize God’s example and standard of care.

Hebrews 12:2 reminds us that Jesus endured the cross because of the “joy that was set before him.” The prospect of honoring and obeying His Father and saving sinners like us from eternal separation and death spurred our Savior on to lay down His very life in a manner that was at once excruciating and humiliating. What a wretched world we’d find ourselves in if Christ had forgone the pain and shame of the cross for the sake of a perfectly understandable preference for the “easy road” (otherwise known as not death).

We also see Jesus’s willingness to put in the hard work of studying God’s Word (Luke 2:46), discipling (Luke 6:13), preaching (Matthew 5), and ministering to the sick and hurting (Luke 4:40). He did not simply coast through life on earth, marking time until His sacrificial, saving death, but instead He worked faithfully, even reaching a state of depletion from pouring Himself out for the benefit of others (John 4:6).

Philippians 3 altogether, unless we’re looking for a big wallop of conviction. It contains too many phrases like “share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death” and “straining forward to what lies ahead” (verses 10, 13) for us to justify the mantra that simply showing up in motherhood is the equivalent of pursuing it with a dogged commitment to Christ’s example. Will we have hard days? Yes (John 16:33). Will we fail? Yes! (Philippians 3 acknowledges that too.)

ultimate problem with easy is that, when we love it, we settle for whatever we can achieve in our own strength in any given moment. The good news about hard is that we never have to do it alone or in our own power. For as Paul points out in Philippians 2:13 (NIV), “It is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.”

We have only to look at one example—that of Jesus—to discover the answer. Because He prayed, “Not my will, but yours be done” (Luke 22:42) and meant it, we have the gift of salvation and eternal life with Him. Because of His openhanded approach to ultimate suffering, we can be called sons and daughters of God. Because He recognized that easier, in this case, was not in fact better, we have a hope that “does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us” (Romans 5:5 NASB).

Even when God has given us detailed instructions, how often do we find ourselves hesitant to step out in faith—especially if they’re instructions we don’t like?

only one who freaks out a little (or a lot) when God asks you to do hard stuff, may I refer you to the above “heroes of faith” from Hebrews 11?

The clear juxtaposition between the ease of the solution and the magnitude of the frustration highlights just how capable we are of being the architects of our own misery, even in mundane ways. Clearly, the hard things we experience are not always the result of circumstances beyond our control but can arise from our own laziness, neglect, pride, or even willful sins of selfishness and greed.

And I know this because without the transforming work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, we will all cling to our sin. Jesus said that “everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin” (John 8:34). Thankfully, we don’t have to “clean ourselves up” before approaching the throne of grace. Jesus took care of that on the cross, for “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

But the guiding principle of Scripture is that we refuse to unnecessarily expose our parents’ (or anyone else’s) shortcomings in favor of practicing the admonition in 1 Peter 4:8 (BSB) to “love one another deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.”

And C.S. Lewis just keeps the conviction coming: “To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.”

It all seems a bit excessive until we remember, yet again, that there is no bottom to the well of Christ’s love and forgiveness for our sins. And when our own well has run dry, He invites us to drink deeply of His water of life, which never runs out.

If we harbor unforgiveness in our hearts toward anyone, the Matthew 6:15 passage from earlier in this chapter assures us that God will withhold forgiveness from us as well. And that should be enough to drive us to our knees, begging the Lord to replace our hearts of stone with hearts of flesh that beat with His love for mankind.

Hard work is good and necessary, and it will always be there for those who desire a home of peace and order. But we lighten that load when we choose to center ourselves in Christ first. Only then are we able to approach our responsibilities with more joy, more energy, and more purpose than if we were to adopt Martha’s response of fretting and frothing over every last thing on our endless to-do lists.

One simple way to be intentional in our marriages is to make a point of sitting down with our husbands to ask them in which areas they would like to have input before we proceed. Grocery shopping? Work hours? School choices? Potty training? The answer will be different for every marriage. (And if you’ve already made a habit of “doing your own thing” separately, the answer may initially be a blank stare.)

The common denominator in each of these claims is an attitude of victimhood (“the kids make it impossible to…”) rather than a proactive determination to prioritize our marriages by finding routines that restore margin to our overwhelm.

Or as Proverbs 31:17 puts it: “She dresses herself with strength and makes her arms strong.”

but sometimes all a toddler mom needs to snap out of victim mode is the reminder that tantrums are for tiny people, not adults. We know better (or, at least, we should) because we’ve had more experience and more practice at life.

“I’m the adult. Not only that, but I’m also the mama. I have been given the ability by God to choose the good in His strength, no matter how much easier it would be to dwell on the hard.”

Similar to the need to acknowledge ourselves as the adult in the situation, it’s so important to recognize the very real limitations our toddlers have in their abilities to: communicate, emotionally self-regulate, use linear reasoning, and put anyone else first.

But one thing we’ve made clear from an early age is that kind speech and expressions are a nonnegotiable component of our family culture because we are commanded by Scripture to “be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love” (Ephesians 4:2 NIV). And we strive to lay a foundation for hard conversation on the kind of relational effort that shows we truly love our children with more than just words

Of all the trends I see floating around the child psychology world, one of the most worrisome is the claim that “all emotions are valid.” Or its very close counterpart: “There are no bad emotions.” I don’t expect someone with a secular perspective whose worldview is steeped in postmodern moral relativism to agree with me (although I’m always surprised when some do), but from a biblical perspective, there are multiple untruths tucked into even those two short phrases. I understand the desire to separate shame from emotions that rise unbidden within us. After all, if we didn’t ask for how we feel, how can we label it as either good or bad? Isn’t that a bit arbitrary or unfair? Actually, no. The Bible pulls zero punches about addressing the origin (namely, the sin-filled human heart) of the emotions we desire to protect or excuse.