As Mother’s Day approaches this weekend, author Scarlet Hiltibidal shares some of the best parenting advice she ever received about raising children in a gospel-centered home.
The entire video is above, and the complete transcript is below.
The thing that changed my life, parenting-wise and life-wise, was when I was sitting in this circle of women at this retreat. It was a bunch of moms and I had a little 3 month-old, my first baby.
They were all going around the circle talking about discipline tactics and all these books I should have read. And I was trying to memorize every single book title and author, and thinking, “Okay, how am I going to be a good mom?”
Then it got to this woman I had never met named Elizabeth. And she opened her mouth for two minutes and it just kind of changed my whole idea of the gospel. Because she just described what her home was like and how she had a bunch of kids and a husband. And she said, “My husband and I will argue sometimes and we don’t try to hide our sin from our kids, because we don’t want perfect kids. We want kids who see the gospel in our home. So we want them to see conflict and apologies and repentance. And when I’m mean, I’ll say, ‘Mommy was mean today.’ And I’ll ask their forgiveness and I’ll pray for forgiveness in front of them.”
That was the most freeing advice I’d ever heard. I thought, “Wow. I don’t have to be a perfect mom because Jesus was perfect in my place. I can look at the gospel in how I parent and I can look at it in how I do everything and I can rest in it.
So for moms or parents who are raising kids and trying to do it in a gospel-centered way, I would just say, rest in what Jesus has already done. And when you fail, just tell your kids you failed and apologize and point them back to Jesus and His perfection and what He’s done for us.
