No Imposters in the Kingdom of God

Taryn Oesch DeLong shares an antidote to imposter syndrome: the knowledge that God made you to mother your child.

The phrase “imposter syndrome” is used a lot in business media. It’s a phenomenon that many high achievers experience, in which they feel like frauds whose success is due to luck or external circumstances. They are often afraid that they will be “found out” as imposters who are not as talented as they seem. 

The place where I experience the most imposter syndrome, however, isn’t in my work as a writer and editor. It’s in my vocation as a wife and a mother. 

It started when I began dating my now-husband. At 28, I’d never really dated anyone before, and I struggled to believe that I was worthy of romance. It took a while for me to get used to calling him my boyfriend, because it took me a while to feel confident in being someone’s girlfriend. Eventually, I settled into this new role, and by the time we were engaged and then married, I was ready to be his fiancé and then wife. 

Becoming a mother, though, gave me imposter syndrome like I’d never experienced before. Leading up to every early doctor’s appointment was the feeling that they’d finally tell me that I was doing something terribly, horribly wrong—that I was a bad mother. Never mind the fact that at every appointment, our provider was delighted with how healthy and happy my daughter was.; at some point, I knew I’d be found out.

Not a Syndrome 

As a recent Financial Times editorial pointed out, the term “imposter syndrome” “[pathologizes] what are very normal human feelings.” Of course, these feelings become problematic when they are a symptom of a mental illness like an anxiety disorder (as they have been for me), but occasionally feeling like you aren’t good enough is normal. 

In fact, feeling like you can’t do it all is a good thing, if it leads you to rely on God rather than on yourself. When feeling like you aren’t a perfect mom brings you to your knees in prayer rather than in terror, it can only make you better. When worrying that you aren’t enough makes you surrender to the One who is enough, replacing anxiety with trust helps make motherhood sanctifying.

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Feeling like you can’t do it all is a good thing, if it leads you to rely on God rather than on yourself. #catholicmom

Not an Imposter 

It’s also true that none of us is an imposter, because none of us is an accident. None of us was made without purpose, without intention. Which also means that God made our children to be our children—and us to be their mother. You didn’t somehow trick God into making you a mother; he allowed it to happen and gave you the child or children you have for a reason. To paraphrase Mordecai, Queen Esther’s cousin (Esther 4:14), it was for a time and a family like yours that you became a mother. 

You formed my inmost being, you knit me in my mother’s womb. I praise you, because I am wonderfully made; wonderful are your works! My very self you know. My bones are not hidden from you, When I was being made in secret, fashioned in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw me unformed; in your book all are written down; my days were shaped, before one came to be. (Psalm 139:13-16)

Before I was born, God knew me. He created me. He knew whose mother I would be, and he had a plan for my family. He knew where I would make mistakes, and he knew how those mistakes would sometimes haunt me. And still, he gave me my daughter to love and to cherish. I will never be a perfect mother, but with God’s help, I can be the mother he made me to be. After all, there are no imposters in the Kingdom of God.

Copyright 2022 Taryn Oesch DeLong
Images: Canva