During the Saturday afternoon session of General Conference, I found myself driving my children home through rural landscapes mellowed by fall, flecked with amber and crimson. We listened as we drove, and it was pretty near perfect: my heart slowly filling as the miles unspooled before me. (To be honest, I probably got more out of the talks this way, with my three year old buckled into a car seat, instead of climbing all over me).

Then Elder Holland started to speak. My reaction at first was purely intellectual–I’ve always been fascinated by semantics, and I caught the significance of “carry” and “bear” almost at once. But then he said, “no love in mortality comes closer to approximating the pure love of Jesus Christ than the selfless love a devoted mother has for her child.” My throat constricted, and not in a good way. By the end of his talk, I was blinking away tears.

Let me say that I love Elder Holland. Some of his talks have been anchor points for me in my life, and I know many women needed to hear what he said. But all I could think was, if my mother-love approximates God’s, we are all in big trouble

Not because I don’t love my kids. I do. Most of the time.

But lately I have been forcibly confronted by the limits of my mother-heart.

Before I became a parent, I felt pretty good about myself and the progress I was making on conquering my weaknesses. Then my oldest was born, and his life’s mission—so far—seems to be designed to showcase all my weaknesses. He’s hyper-smart, precocious, and manages to push buttons I didn’t even know I had. That he struggles with the same things I do (over-intensity, quickness to anger) probably doesn’t help.

Take this past Sunday. We were visiting my parents for Fall Break, and I had forgotten to pack my son’s belt to wear with his church clothes. It’s a small thing, but added to his mistrust of change and unfamiliar routines, it meant that he lashed out in frustration. I was stupid, church was stupid, and he wasn’t going.

Trying to talk to him didn’t help: it only made me angry as he escalated. I’m not proud of this—I know that he calms much more quickly if I can stay calm, but some days (too many days) that seems beyond what I can muster. By the time we arrived at church, we weren’t speaking to each other.

He’s nine. I’m considerably more than that. I knew I needed to set an example and relent, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to nurse that hard, hot little nugget of anger. This child—my child, God’s child—needs love the very most when he’s at his most unlovable. I knew that, and yet I sat there, unmoving.

This was not, at all, the kind of love that could approximate God’s.

When Elder Holland said, “You are doing better than you think you are,” I did not believe him. I believed, absolutely, what he said about other mothers–that they are life-giving, life-changing. But me? Sunday was only one of a string of similar episodes, and I was doing just as well as that moment suggests: I was (I am) struggling.

But Sunday, something changed. I don’t know what prompted it, but I recognize it as a moment of grace. Suddenly, I was flooded with the reminder that this sometimes unlovable child was also God’s–and that I am often that unlovable child. God loves us both anyway.

I pulled out a piece of paper and started writing. I apologized to my son for not being the mother he sometimes needs. I told him I loved him—and I do.

Here’s the thing: As a mother, I fail a lot. Daily. But I have to trust that when God says that Christ’s “grace is sufficient,” he means that for parenting as well (for any kind of relationship, really). We bear our children–and we bear with them. Sometimes they  have to bear with us. But we keep showing up, we keep trying.

And maybe that’s enough.

Maybe it’s not that my imperfect love reflects perfectly a vision of God’s infinitely greater love. Maybe it’s that in the depths of my incapacity–in those moments when I have it all wretchedly, wrenchingly wrong–I catch a glimpse of grace.