Family
Insight into single parent life. Tricks of the trade, if you will.
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For the Love of Life and All Things Amiss
“So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I’m still trying to figure out how that could be.” John Green, The Fault in Our Stars Confession, I want to see the Barbie movie. Slightly embarrassing to write. Worse, there is a part of me at almost 50 years old, that expects a happily ever after. Not just a standard, let’s look back and be grateful happily ever after, but a shiny, sparkly, everyone matches and smiles with their very straight teeth kind of happily ever after. Maybe I spent too much time as a kid styling my Barbies. Or…
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Fitting In; Perhaps You Were Designed for Something More
If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity I have the pleasure on this gray morning to do my keyboard clicking while the sound of my son’s music streams from behind the bathroom door. Uncommon, as his earbuds tend to keep his music tucked away. He doesn’t often share his music, except for preselected playlists intentionally chosen for his audience. Meaningful to me, because it is a contemporaneous glimpse into who he is, a snapshot. Complex mostly, genuinely thoughtful, rarely participating in anything outside of his character.…
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Leave Fine Behind; Letting Go of the Fine Facade
“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gently and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” Matthew 11:28-29 ESV I’m fine. We’re fine. Everything’s fine. Only we’re not. Not only our default answer to the dreaded inquiry but secretly the response we are hoping to receive when asking a fellow human how they are, how their family is, and how their life is progressing. A global lot of fines walking and breathing through a world that’s gone amuck. We maintain our fineness even when the…
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Heartache and Hope; Opening the Box of Remembrance, A Single Momma’s Perspective
We sit on the carpeted floor, surrounded by boxes holding treasures manifested as paintings, drawings made with markers, papers penciled with misspelled letters, stories, and construction paper cards cut out and pasted for holidays. Each creation is marked by a child’s name and a date. We count backwards to bridge the year, with the teacher, an age, and a pre-divorce, post-divorce designation. The dog interrupts, wanting to plant herself in the middle, asserting her belief that floor time signals play time. I remember my own childhood, sorting through similar treasures, printed photographs, wanting to remember and touch the tangible evidence of my own existence. It’s like this with my girl.…
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Maintaining A Perspective of Hope; Multi-Generational Sowing
“For here the saying holds true, One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered their labor.” John 4:37-38 Inhabitants of the free world stopped and gasped this week, breathing through their social media outlets with a call for prayer. A shattered republic standing in a pool of blood, blood from centuries of humans battling for the right to rule and the blood of foreign men and women dressed in battle fatigues, fighting for something. Something sometimes defined, sometimes not. My heart broke for strong, intelligent, steadfast women, children, a generation of young people who…
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Praying for Your Almost Grown Children; Power in the Scriptures
For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Hebrews 4:14 Mostly, as a momma, I have no idea what I am doing. As far as I know, there is not a standard protocol, not even a standard child. Each one is as unique as the set of circumstances they are bound to find themselves in. Not only are they unique, but you also, are unique. Now let’s mix in cultural pressure, expectations, gifts, notions, advantages, disadvantages and close living quarters. What you have is…
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A Girl, Her Mom, and a Map; What to do When You’re Headed Someplace You’ve Never Been
Then you will know which way to go, since you have never been this way before. Joshua 3:4 May I have a map, please? A paper one. The kind that unfolds wide, and then never quite folds back to its original tidy state. It is not uncommon for me to purchase a map, or two, before traveling to a new place. I want to know where I am going in the context of where I am. I want to trace the driving route before my plane touches the ground. I want my biggest navigation hurdle to be finding my way out of the rental car parking lot (which is, by…
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Mary’s Lamb; Behold the One Who Takes Away the Sin of the World
“Look the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” John 1:29 Our last glimpse of Mary interacting with her son is recorded in John 19:26-27. She is near the cross, where he hangs cruciform, held in place by metal stakes, his breathing raspy, heavy with effort. She is being held up herself, by the other Marys, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. Three women clinging to one another as they witness the unfathomable, their Jesus, fulfilling a purpose Mary would not have chosen for her beloved son. Jesus calls to his mother and to John, “Dear woman, here is your son, ” and to…
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Digging Out; Where Does Your Help Come From?
I lift up my eyes to the hills – where does my help come from? My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth. Psalm 121:1-2 The boy’s day starts long before his sister or I consider waking. Winter brings challenges to our West Michigan home, primarily in the form of a relatively long driveway built on an incline. There is a slight curve in the middle, identifying those who belong to this driveway and those who do not. Experience is required to navigate both an entrance to and an exit from the home that sits atop the hill, experience or a four-wheel drive vehicle. The boy’s…
