Single Parent Life

Single parenting has been extremely challenging, especially this year, as my own kids are getting older and they need positive male role models in their lives.  They long for this and this is something I personally cannot give them and I'm doing the best I can.  There are many times I need to be at multiple places at the same time, but cannot.  Beam me up, Scotty!  That would help.  When both kids are sick or one is, it really derails my plans.  I have my kids 100% of the time.  They have no interactions with their dad.  Thankfully now they are a little older, but when they were 3 & 6, when their dad left, I did everything and was always exhausted, but God carried me through all of it.  

When both my kids were babies and toddlers, I did work full-time outside the home.  It was challenging then, as I was the breadwinner and my husband (now ex) was a sponge.  Looking back, we spent all this money on childcare while he wasted our money away.  But, if I knew then what I know now about managing money, I would even classify how I spent and managed money a waste, too, then.  But, we can't live off what if's because you can't change the past.

Through being a single parent, giving up our home, moving in with my dad, getting help from my family, it's been a super humbling experience.  You often just have to keep you mouth shut and suck things up because you are in a vulnerable position and there is nothing you can do or say.

It hasn't helped that I've been to court countless times, had the police called on me numerous times that I've lost cost.  For awhile, it was a set of officers that I knew by name because my ex would call the police on us so frequently.  Stress, eh?  Not something this Valedictorian from a small town would ever think would be a part of her life - on the other side of the law.  So, single parent of young kids, police, nasty ex-husband, no money, no home, wow . . . pretty depressing.

So, if you're NOT in that position, or any of those things, great.  If you're worse off.  I'm so very sorry.  God bless you and give you strength and grace to get through everything, to rise above everything and one day, I pray your situation is tons better.

Am I still extreme about things?  Sometimes, but all in all, I try not to be.  God has cured me from obsessive compulsiveness and addictions, but it took quite awhile to reveal those things that were the root.  Do I ever make mistakes?  Daily, but I do my best with God's help to make the best or better decisions.  Sometimes my eating is 100% on par, other times, not.  Hopefully it will be more often than not.  Same thing with finances and parenting.

Maybe you wouldn't have gotten yourself in this mess that I'm in, but you never know what your own life can bring you and that you hope that when rough times hit, that there is grace & strength for you as you go through your own stuff.

I am nervous to shortly after this summer with my kids to go back to work full-time.  I wonder how my kids will fair without me as much?  They have greatly relied on me all this time and I won't be there like they have known for over 5 yrs now.  But, it's something I must do to better secure all our financial futures.  And, maybe God will do some other things as I step through this door that seems so scary for me.

Though God is always with me, I will be alone to do this.  I don't know how I will get my kids to and from school, help them with stuff, and manage everything.  But, somehow it will get done.  Not sure if both my children will be going to the same school or different schools.

God says to not worry, so I'm not going to.  He will help me as He's always done.