Today I’m so excited to be sharing a guest post with you from my friend Holly Barrett. As a single mom “on the other side” of parenting young ones, she shares deep insight and wisdom. If you know a single mom or dad who would be encouraged by her words, please take a moment to share it with them today. 

Also, be sure to enter the giveaway for the entire set of 9 Seeds Family Worship CDs. Giveaway ends Monday, October 22nd and you can enter everyday!

Looking for more ideas and resources for Parenting With Purpose as you create a God-centered home? You can find the whole series here.

 

It was never my dream to be a single parent. In fact, the opposite was true. All through my teen years, I longed for a sweet, romantic relationship that would turn into a proposal at just the right time, with a beautiful wedding, and the children to come along a few years later. Then life happens and your choices don’t turn out like you dreamed they would. Two kids. A truck full of stuff. Court order in hand. Heart pounding as you drive out of town to a future that you can’t even imagine as you begin to let go of the past.

Your single parenting story might not be so dramatic but I’m guessing however it happened, your world shifted a little bit. Maybe a lot. And you would wonder how in the world you are going to get those kiddos raised, if you had time to sit and wonder. But you don’t because there is laundry, work, homework, sports, church, dance, birthday parties, field trips, grocery shopping, and never enough time to go around.

Let me just say, I feel your pain! And I remember those days. I became a single mom when my kids were seven and five. The transition was hard. The days were long. The money was short. Fast forward 22 years and I do mean FAST forward! Where did all those years go? That may be my first word of encouragement to you that are in the trenches of single parenting today! It doesn’t seem like it, but the time will go fast. I promise. 🙂 Cherish it as much as you can.

I’m not an expert by any stretch and I made a lot of mistakes throughout my journey of single parenting. God graciously taught me some lessons that I hope will help you along the way too.

 

Parent in Community

Single parent families can be just as healthy as any other families. But you can’t do it alone, so let me encourage you to parent in community. Find a group of friends who have similar values and who you trust. Bounce ideas off of them. Ask them to be involved with your children. Spend time with other families. Even your single friends can be good resources if they are willing to go to a ballfield and give a kid a ride home from practice. My friends and family were an invaluable source of support, encouragement, and sometimes just practical help when I couldn’t be in two places at once. You can’t do it all by yourself and when you find your community, you won’t have to.

Parent with Priorities

Which reminds me, you can’t do it all yourself, so you can choose to parent with priorities. What’s most important today? Getting some rest for yourself after the kids are in bed or folding yet another load of laundry? Enjoying time with your children or stressing over whether everyone is eating their vegetables? While I’m not negating the positives of a clean house or family dinners, I’m encouraging you to give yourself a break. My kids never talk about how clean our house was or how good my cooking was. What they do talk about are the things we did together…whether we were digging through the clean clothes to find socks, eating dinner in the car on the way to practice, or enjoying a quiet evening of watching TV before bedtime.

Parent through Grace

Finally, since we are prone to making some mistakes along the way, let’s all try to parent through grace. We can offer grace to ourselves by realizing that sometimes kids mess up just because they are kids, not because we have traumatized them. We can offer grace to ourselves by making ourselves the priority on occasion. The kids will be fine with a babysitter or some friends while you get together with the girls or just take a nap! We can offer grace to our children by just being present with them and not worrying about the stuff we think we should be doing but aren’t. Frankly we all need to offer one another more grace and less judgment in parenting! Amen?!

Single parenting is hard. That’s just the truth. It doesn’t matter if you are doing it truly solo or you are co-parenting well or fall somewhere in between. It’s just hard. But then again so is parenting under even the best of circumstances. The only thing I’ve found to make it easier is to make sure that God is part of the equation. The writer of Ecclesiastes tells us,

A cord of three strands is not quickly broken. Ecclesiastes 4:12

You are one strand. Your children are another. Make sure God is the third. He can help you find community, sort through the priorities and give yourself the grace you need for the road ahead. Because before you know it, you’ll be looking at it through the rear-view mirror!

 

Holly Barrett is a Christ-follower, minister, speaker, writer, mother and YaYa from NC. She is also an extreme extrovert who loves to laugh, and enjoys being called Princess Holly. She is after all a daughter of the King! Varied life experiences as a preacher’s kid, survivor of domestic violence, and single mother have given Holly an insight and compassion into the many of life’s challenges. Her passion is connecting people with Jesus and sharing her life’s message of God’s redemption. Holly loves ministering to people and works with young adults as an Assistant Director of Residential Life for The Crossnore School in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains of NC. Next to Jesus, Holly’s greatest love is her precious grandbabies and their parents who proudly serve our country in the US Air Force and US Army.

Holly would love to connect with you here: Blog /Facebook / Pinterest 

 

Looking for more ideas and resources for Parenting With Purpose as you create a God-centered home? You can find the whole series here.