Single & Parenting Blog

Jeff’s wife thought she had the flu. The emergency room doctor told her she had a kidney infection.

A nurse at the hospital gave her a painkiller; she forgot to give her an antibiotic.

Jeff’s wife died within twelve hours of leaving the emergency room.

While working through the grief and shock of his wife’s death, Jeff found that he’d underestimated how much it took to manage his home.

Helping exhausted single parents like Jeff

Almost every single parent I interviewed for Single & Parenting said that he or she was exhausted and overwhelmed. Makes sense when you think about it. They’re trying to do the work of two people. Here are some suggestions for helping them:

• Make it possible for single parents to rest. Encourage members of your church to offer to babysit. Or, plan events for single parents at which they are cared for and catered to.
• Encourage members of your church to serve single parents
• Help single parents see that pride may be the core reason they don’t ask for help
• Point out opportunities that single parents have to get rest (When the children are visiting the other parent, asking family to help, when children visit friends, etc.)
• Help them understand that it’s impossible to do the work of two people, and connect them with people who can help.
• Challenge them to live within the margins. Carol Floch, a divorced single mom, and the author of The Single Mom’s Devotional explained: “As single moms, we often feel like we have to be all things to all people, and we get spread so thin.  If you think about a piece of paper, if you wrote on that paper just corner to corner, edge to edge, it would be a mess.  But there’s margins on our paper and we need to examine:  Where are the margins in my life?  Where are the margins in my time?  We’re so good at scheduling in things on our calendars, but we need to schedule in breaks for ourselves, to tend our own soul.  We need to schedule in the kinds of things that will nourish our own soul, that are life giving to us.”