I’ve been rereading Sarah Mackenzie’s, Teaching from Rest (and what a powerful little read it is) and this simple sentence stopped me in my tracks.

“There’s more than one way.”

She was referring to the teaching styles and techniques of homeschooling mothers, but as is often the case, homeschooling advice extends into mothering advice.

I’m nearing the five year mark into this lifelong journey called motherhood. Half a decade of being someone’s mommy. Of having my heart, indeed, a piece of my very being, walking around outside of me. Tethered to me and yet wholly other, simultaneously. And as I reflect on these past five years, there have been two themes to my mothering thus far.

One is simply: God’s grace. His gift of unmerited mercy and favor despite my brokenness, weakness, and wrongs. Some moments of weakness have been by my own choice: sin. Others have been anything but my own choice: tribulation. Through it all, though — day by day, moment by moment — His grace and new-morning mercies have met me and covered me. Because He is good.

The other anthem of my motherhood journey is this very sentence I quoted above: there’s more than one way.

When I was a brand new mother, with my two week old babe nestled in my arms, her sweet, silky head resting underneath my chin, I sat bleeding, fevering with mastitis, and weeping because breastfeeding just wasn’t working. I had tried everything and none of it was solving the problems we were dealing with. I was, quite simply, at the end of myself.

It was then that my husband and my own mom lovingly and gently sat me down and said, “You’re killing yourself, Ali. You don’t have to do this anymore. We will support you through a formula-feeding journey if it’ll help you to heal and be healthier mentally and emotionally.” But everything in me revolted at the idea, because isn’t nursing what good mothers do? Aren’t I failing my baby if I don’t feed her my own milk? All of the information I had taken in over the last nine months had taught me that breastmilk was nutritionally superior to formula. I fought so hard over those two weeks, while freshly on the heels of a traumatic birth and in the midst of severe postpartum depression, all during the tail end of a global pandemic in which the world was anything but normal. I tried creams and ointments, nipple shields and green tea powder, I pumped, I held her in different positions, I called lactation consultants and waited days for them to return my voice messages. Her latch looked good. The doctors hadn’t seemed concerned about oral ties. Yet, none of it was stopping the excruciating, toe-curling pain I experienced each time she latched. And now, fevering and aching with a hard, angry lump in one breast, I felt like a battle worn soldier slumped down in a cold, muddy trench. I had a second degree tear. A dinner plate-sized wound still healing in my uterus. A broken and traumatized brain. And now, cracked, bleeding nipples and mastitis to boot.

And I thought that by conceding this fight, I was stepping into the camp of bad mothers and had already irreparably failed my baby. All within two weeks of her arrival. So soon into her brand new, precious life… it was already ruined. Because of me.

I carried that shard of deadly toxicity as a piece of my identity because I thought I didn’t have a choice. I thought, by undeniable fact, that I had failed as a mother and that nothing could possibly change that. Then, every decision that affected my baby afterward felt like a test I had to pass in order to gain back some shred of the good motherhood title I’d lost when we bought our first can of formula and I placed the cabbage leaves inside of my bra.

How did I figure out if I had passed each test? If I was gaining traction toward the title of Good Mother Award?

By this: the approval of others around me.

If my friends, my mother in law, my cousins, and even strangers were pleased with my decisions regarding my child, I soared. “See?”, I wanted to shout in victory, “I AM a good mommy!” And if one piece of criticism, perceived or otherwise, entered my awareness, I crashed to the ground in defeat and worthlessness. I was convinced that they saw it, too, and that everyone was secretly disappointed in me.

In the middle of it all was my precious baby. She started smiling at me. She gained weight and outgrew her clothes size by size. She giggled at me, she held up her head, grasped her toys, cut her teeth, and gazed in wonder at the big, bright world around her. She learned to sit up, to clap, to crawl, and to walk. She was thriving and she looked at me, her Mama, with eyes of nothing but love. She trusted me. She wanted me. She pressed her weight into me, patting my back and giving me slobbery kisses. She was happy, healthy, safe, and loved. Her world was beautiful and herself beautiful in it.

Somewhere along the way, as my baby grew into a toddler, I learned to stop listening to all of the voices. The information and opinions that had paralyzed me by their conflictive and pressured nature lost their power. I can’t explain exactly when it happened or even exactly how, but as the weeks turned into months and my life fit to the shape of my girl, the weight of the world’s thoughts on my mothering fell away. When my eyes were only on my daughter and my ears were only listening to the Holy Spirit and His Word, the rest of the world faded into nothingness, right along with my need for their stamp of approval.

And I realized something: I never had failed my baby. I wasn’t perfect, of course. I was growing just as she was. We were learning together, because when my baby was born, so was her mother. But she had never been anything but loved. Even when I was at my worst, I ensured her safety, her growth, her happiness, and her security.

I started making decisions based solely upon what I, as her God-ordained mother, knew would be best for her, and the opinions of others simply didn’t fit into the equation anymore. It isn’t that I never sought advice or wisdom, but I was careful about where I sought it and even moreso in how, or if, I implemented it.

Co-sleeping or sleep training. Cloth or disposable diapering. Purées or baby led weaning. Working mom or stay at home mama. Motrin or letting the fever work itself out. Vaccines or no vaccines. Circumcision or remaining intact. Baby wearing or using a swing. Contact naps or crib naps. Swaddled or arms-free.

Bottle-fed or breastfed.

All of the things that seem to make or break your child and your motherhood. All of the things that spark controversy and raging debates on the internet. All of the things that feel so big in the throes of new motherhood. All of the things that tear us apart, as individuals and as a community.

There’s more than one way. There’s more than one way to be a good mother. There’s more than one way to love your child well. When you tune out everything and everyone but God and the fact that He created and chose you to be your child’s mother with precise intention and exact design, you will be a good mother. You will not fail your child. You will rise to the occasion, because He is the wind beneath your wings.

May we have the courage and the grace to live freely within this truth. There’s more than one way to be a good, faithful, godly, loving, tender, devoted mother.