When I was a teenager, I created a list of all the habits I wanted to change and track. Every day, I would tick off little stars on a calendar that hung on the wall over my bed to account for my goals. A star if I’d had eight cups of water. Another if I had done my skin care routine. All the things that I had read in Seventeen and Teen Vogue that I was sure would bring me happiness. If I put an “X” across the day that meant I had done all my habits perfectly.

I rarely marked an “X” on that calendar.

Every night as I got into bed, I would draw whatever stars I could. But that “X” I couldn’t write shamed me and then it haunted my dreams. I’d wake up in the morning and the first thing I’d see was the evidence of all the ways I didn’t measure up.

It was easy to go out into the world and believe I deserved to lose, to get the last helping, to go unnoticed and unrewarded. I saw the daily proof that I hadn’t earned better treatment written with my own hand. I deserved the stones they threw at me.

Three weeks after our first child was born, Chris left for an extended military duty across the country. Shortly after he left, a friend came to visit me who’d also recently had a baby. She called me on the way over to see if I needed anything at Walmart because she was going to pop by before she came to my house. She arrived in a put-together outfit, with makeup on and her hair done. She looked incredible. She brought a meal for me and a pie for later. She was doing it all with her baby in tow.

Me, on the other hand, in my post-surgery recovery I still couldn’t climb up the stairs to the second story of my house. I was unshowered, still wearing yesterday’s sweats, and I hadn’t cooked a well-balanced meal in a month. I hadn’t yet been out of the house alone with my baby, let alone braved our town’s Walmart. I looked at my friend and then I looked at me, and the thought crossed my mind, “You’re not doing this mothering thing right either.”

I can’t say I enjoyed that visit with my friend. I didn’t adore her baby like every kissable new baby deserves. I didn’t congratulate her on how well motherhood suited her. I felt absolutely sure my friend was thinking all the same terrible things about me that I was thinking. After a lackluster conversation, with her a note too cheery and me staring everywhere but at her, my friend left, and I sat, stuck and stewing in my self-recriminations.

I called Chris later that evening in tears, pouring out my accusations. One-by-one, I hurled those stones at myself, while Chris tried valiantly from two time zones away to get me to see the unfairness of my claims.

The stones were being thrown fast and fierce, and the one throwing them was me.

I’ve thrown a lot of stones during my years as a mother, almost all of them at myself.

I don’t feed my kids the right foods.

I don’t education my kids the right way.

I don’t play the right things with my kids.

I don’t catechize my kids with the right method.

I don’t clean my house with the right products.

I’m too lenient.

I’m too strict.

I’m doing a terrible job.

Often, the stone that’s hardest to put down is the one we’re ready to throw at ourselves. On my worst days, my instinct to self-condemn can override Chris’s best verbal affirmations. I can’t survive myself.

That night, eighteen years ago, when I called Chris crying over failing at my first month of motherhood, he said, “Put the baby in the swing and go to sleep.”

So, I did. And I did feel better when I woke up. It’s such an appropriate Lenten reminder: Weak humans that we are, sometimes the penance is just too much for us to handle.

However, the habit to stone myself remains. Again and again, I find myself mentally tearing down my motherly work. I can’t stop. Call it ingrained. Call it original sin. I look at the stone, heavy in my hand. I can’t release it; I’m stuck in my self-condemnation.

Jesus steps in. He does nothing. At first, this irritates me. Why isn’t He doing anything? Why isn’t He fixing this for me? Doesn’t He realize how alone I feel, how scared, how disgusted, how trapped?

Jesus bends down, He draws, for a long time He doesn’t even speak.

And that’s when I realize.

He doesn’t throw a stone.

I thought I was throwing the stone which Jesus wants to throw at me. But that’s a lie. He would never throw a stone at a heart imprisoned in sorrow (because that’s what self-reproach is, inescapable sorrow). He’s here to do something new.

Knowing that Jesus won’t hurt me, that’s the way out of this trap. Knowing that if I turn my sorrow over to Jesus, He will make me into a new creation in Him.

I look down at the stone and it’s become a heart. Jesus takes on the sorrows we give Him; His total love finds us in the world’s condemnations and transforms the weapon, like a cross that becomes salvation. He restores peace.

Sometimes now, I hold a stone in my hand. The stone like “A better mom would get this right” or “I’ll never teach them all they’re supposed to know.” But I wait. I don’t throw it. I wonder if Jesus would throw that stone.

So, I turn to Jesus in prayer, finding myself small and childlike compared to the Incarnate Word, and hold the stone out to Him.

He smiles and shakes His head, “You don’t need that.”

And I put the stone down, into the collection of hearts, all the places He’s loved me where I thought I was broken.

Readings for the Fifth Sunday in Lent (Year C) on the USCCB Website