Overwhelmed Mom: The 6 Names of God You Can Call Upon TODAY

There’s a tension in the way motherhood is viewed. In some spaces, it’s elevated almost beyond the reach of even the most robust Pinterest board. In this corner, it’s seen as something to optimize and get exactly right. In the other corner, it’s questioned, dismissed, mocked, and framed as a loss of identity or a narrowing of life’s opportunities. Most of us land somewhere in between: we feel the eternal impact of this calling and the difficulties of the day-to-day. We love our children fiercely and struggle against being stretched at the same time.

For me, motherhood was long-anticipated, so it hasn’t felt like a loss of identity so much as a confrontation with it. Motherhood’s demands have a way of revealing good things—like my creativity, gentleness, and seemingly bottomless affection—as well as how quickly I run out of patience, rely on my own strength, and come to the end of myself in the overwhelm of very ordinary moments. The constant interruptions, repetition, and constant need far too often expose my lack.

That’s the part we don’t always know what to do with. We tend to treat our lack like a flaw, something to fix or manage. But I’m not so sure lack was ever meant to be eliminated. I’ve started to see it as a purposeful part of how God designed us. If we never came to the end of our own resources, we wouldn’t reach beyond ourselves for Him.

And reaching is where something dramatic shifts.

God always calls us into places that feel beyond what we can handle on our own. My rule of thumb is that if it’s not impossible, it’s probably not from God. And motherhood on our own, without the Holy Spirit, is impossible. There are days when what’s required is more than I have. And, if I’m honest, some of those days also come with perimenopause, unexpected hot flashes, and a memory that feels like it left the building. In the overwhelm, I can feel the pull to try harder, manage better, and hold everything together. But striving never seems to produce what I need.

The one discipline that I can reliably reach for is learning to pause in the middle of those moments and acknowledge what’s true: I don’t have what this requires. And then to ask God if He will extend himself to me because I know he does.

There have been many moments where I’ve had to stop right in the middle to ask—often out loud, in front of my kids—for God to intervene. A child needing extra attention, while I’ve got to remember how to do fractions with another child. Standing in the kitchen, trying to recall what I was doing while someone repeats a question I didn’t fully hear. Or hiding in the bathroom for a moment of peace, only to see little hands appear under the door. I can either raise my voice and let off the building steam or reach for internal steadiness that’s always there when I ask for help.

When I feel alone in the weight of everything, he is Jehovah Shammah, the God who is there. I am not mothering by myself, even when it feels like it.

When I am short, impatient, or aware of my own failure, He is Jehovah Tzidkenu, my righteousness. I am not defined by how well I held it together that day. I am covered.

When I see the gaps in me that I wish weren’t there, he is Jehovah M’Kaddesh, the God sanctifies me, forming me slowly, faithfully into someone who reflects him.

When I am lying in bed and recall the failures, he is Jehovah Khabodi, the lifter of my head. He restores what shame tries to press down.

When I don’t have the strength to respond one more time with patience and gentleness, He shows up as Jehovah ‘Uzzi, his own strength flowing through me.

When I feel stretched thin, like there isn’t enough of me to go around, He is El Shaddai, the All-Sufficient One. Out of his abundance, He is my sufficiency.

When I worry about provision, about what my children need now and in the future, He is Jehovah Jireh, the God who sees and provides. Nothing is outside his watchful care.

And when I feel weighed down by responsibility and the imperative not to get this wrong, He reminds me that He is the Good Shepherd. He is guiding and protecting my children even more faithfully than I ever could because they were his first, before they were mine.

These are not abstract ideas; they are what I come back to, again and again, in the middle of ordinary life. And as I reach for him when I need him, trust is built. When we reach for him repeatedly and find that He is always there, we begin to build a new reality. Faith solidifies from hoping something is true to standing on something you’ve already tested. It becomes substantial:

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.—Hebrews 11:1

Motherhood with all its hidden and ordinary moments—the kind no one applauds and few even notice—becomes a place where that kind of faith is formed. It’s shaped in the middle of ordinary days, full of small interruptions that seem insignificant but somehow aren’t, while we rewarm our tea or coffee yet again and turn toward him yet again. It’s the choice to reach instead of strive.

Somewhere in that process, our identity is reshaped. We begin to understand ourselves not by how well we’re handling everything, but by how consistently we return to the God who meets us in the middle of it.

The conversation around motherhood will probably continue to shift and pull in different directions, but I’ve found that motherhood hasn’t taken or limited my identity. It’s been one of the clearest places where God has revealed both who I am and who He is.

I’m still learning. Still reaching beyond my lack more often than I would prefer (and sometimes multiple times before noon), but meets me there, and over time, that has become something I can stand on. Maybe this is what “godly motherhood” looks like: not getting everything right, but knowing where to turn when we don’t…and finding him there.