With 15 million single mothers in the United States today, it is likely that you know a single mom. Maybe you were raised by one and saw how hard she worked to make ends meet and effectively balance the demands on her time. Many of the single mothers in our lives are juggling carpool, daycare, two jobs, or maybe career and secondary education. The lists of demands are endless. We implore the body of Christ to actively look for ways to invest in single mothers and their children. Impact a single mom. Impact her children. Impact a nation. With Mother’s Day quickly approaching, it is important to recognize that the single moms in our lives often do not have someone to create a special day of celebration for them, particularly if they have small children.
That said, how can we, as loving, compassionate, members of the global body of Christ, reach out and show love to single mothers this Mother’s Day? Maybe the single parents in your life seem like they have it all together. There are some amazingly strong single mothers today, and many are achieving success parentally and emotionally while finding great freedom in their walk with the Lord. But even those strong, amazing single moms could use an occasional helping hand and an extra special show of love during this holiday season.
Here are a few practical ways to brighten a single mom’s holiday:
1. Babysit for free and do it often! Single mothers often work many hours per week and do not want to ask for help. They may even work a second or third job or may be attending a local college, too. Babysitting can be expensive. Encourage single mothers in your life to take the night off. Even if a single mom has adequate childcare during the day, while she works, it is very unlikely that she is ever taking a night off to do something special for herself (or simply sleep)! Make an offer to babysit her children for an afternoon or evening so that she can get a few things done around the house. (It is always recommended that a strong relationship exist prior to making an offer to babysit one’s children).
2. Offer to grocery shop for her. Shopping is a simple task, but shopping alone with three children hanging from the buggy can seem overwhelming. The simple task of collecting groceries for the week may not seem like much, but this act of kindness can alleviate stress from a single mom’s regular routine and save her time that can be devoted to other things.
3. Give her some girl time. Sometimes the best way to serve a single mom is to invite her for coffee for some adult conversation. The Lord created us for fellowship. We know how important Godly friends in our lives are to our ability to grow, fellowship, and enjoy life. Unfortunately, when times are busy, and the demands of a schedule take over, friend time is often the first thing to go. Get to know a single mom in your church or community. Give her a listening ear. Give her the opportunity to talk about something meaningful – her hopes and dreams. Let her know that you see her and that she is not alone.
4. Bake a single mom a treat. Surprise a single mom this Mother’s Day with a special cake, cookies, meal, or other treat. It’s especially meaningful, when you can get her kiddos involved in the surprise!
5. Wash & fold clothes. Let’s face it. Who really ENJOYS washing and folding clothes? If you do, you are among the previous few! Taking some time to do a practical, yet necessary chore, can be one way to serve a mom this Mother’s Day!
6. Buy a single mom a free car wash or oil change. Any car maintenance or repair can be expensive, so whether it is an oil change, tire rotation, tire balance, new windshield wipers, oil change, or other, this can be a helpful, pracical way to serve a mom.
7. Create a homemade gift that has an encouraging Scripture on it. Or use several Scriptures and write them on notecards or index cards that she can strategically place throughout her home, employment, and car, as a reminder of her Heavenly Father’s love for her.
8. Rent a movie and provide popcorn for a movie night. Movie nights are a great way to provide entertainment for both single moms and their children, while also providing an opportunity to get to know her better.
9. Offer to do some yard work. Whether she’s a homeowner or renter, many single moms have the pressure of keeping their yard manicured. Perhaps it is even an extra expense for her already-tight budget. Offering to cut the yard for her on occasion is a great way to show the love of Christ.
10. Perform carpentry, home repairs, and odd & end jobs. Married women often have what is referred to as a “honey-do list” for their spouses to perform on the weekend. Maybe a single mom has a leaky sink, stubborn faucet, or some other light home repairs. For the handyman, this could be a practical way to serve. (NOTE: We recommend that all men serve in groups of 3 or more. For more details on how men can serve single mothers and widows, visit New Commandment Men’s Ministries).
11. Clean her house or apartment. A little toilet bowl cleaner and window cleaner can go a long way to show the love of Christ to a worn-out single mother.
12. Buy her lunch. This is a creative way to not only save a single mom a few dollars but bless her with some adult company while doing so.
13. Write a handwritten, personal note to a single mom in your life. Let her know how much she is loved and cared for, how valuable she is to her children and community, and highlight Scriptures of encouragement.
14. Provide gas money or groceries.
15. Save your travel-sized toiletries from hotel rooms and donate them to her. Toiletries can be expensive, and many hotels offer high-quality toiletries, free-of-charge that are often thrown away when a guest checks out.
16. Cook a meal, or even help plan meals for the week. A slow-cooker meal requires almost no time to prepare but can mean a great deal to a mom who is struggling to keep food on the table for her children. Helping to plan meals for the week may be another way to remove the burden from her shoulder.
17. Start a running or walking group where single moms can bring their kids for exercise & girl-time. This can become a great time of community fellowship that can also double as a great way for the kids to get exercise.
18. Give a single mom a rose. In some cases, it could have been months or years since a single mother has received fresh flowers. Discount stores and grocery stores often sell a dozen roses for $10.99 or less. What a beautiful gesture.
19. Bring cookies & baked goods to her home with an encouraging note. Or offer to bake cookies with her children while she takes a nap.
20. Bring a gift basket full of goodies. Some ideas could include cleaning supplies, toiletries, great women’s devotionals, candy, bottled waters, hair products, smelling lotions, or something similar.
21. Offer a day of window shopping, coffee, and a ride through town. It seems like a small act of kindness, but many of the single mothers we’ve worked with say that their lives consist of home, work, home, work, home, work, and they often feel they are “losing themselves” in the day-to-day grind of parenting and working.
22. Visit a single mom! Make regular visits part of your weekly or monthly routine. Maybe the single mom lost her husband unexpectedly to an illness, and she’s grieving. Maybe she has never actively been in a local church and isn’t comfortable trying it out yet. Whatever the reason, make it a point to visit a single mom regularly. It just may save her life!
23. Commit to praying for a single mom regularly. Whether she knows it or not, make her (and her children) part of your regular prayer time. Pray for her children, as you would pray for your own. Pray for financial provision, wisdom, favor with her employer, protection of her lives, healing for a wounded heart, and rest. Commit to lifting her up to the Lord. She needs it.
24. Offer tutoring or homework services for her children. When a mom has worked an 8-10 hour day and then has to come home to prepare dinner, wash the clothes for the evening, clean the house, and do homework, it can be exhausting. Maybe one night a week, offer to do homework with her children. (This is especially helpful if you have children that are similar in age who may be taking similar classes).
25. Surprise her with a special gift. Gifts don’t require lots of money. They require thought. The most beautiful gifts given are those who have a meaningful purpose. You can visit any dollar store or discount store and find beautiful journals for less than $5. Years may have passed since this single mom has received a special just-because gift.
Jennifer Maggio is a mom to three, wife to Jeff, and founder of the national nonprofit, The Life of a Single Mom Ministries. She is author to four books, including The Church and the Single Mom. She was named one of the Top 10 Most Influential People in America by Dr. John Maxwell in 2017 and 2015 and has appeared in hundreds of media venues, including The New York Times, Family Talk Radio with Dr. James Dobson, Joni and Friends, and many others.
The first fourteen years of my kids’ lives were pretty easy – not in the sense that we faced no challenges because there were plenty. Rather, I felt in control of my children’s lives on most days. Sure, there was the occasional temper tantrum, dirty room, or smart mouth, through the years. But I don’t know if anything could have adequately prepared me for the journey I would take through those teen years. What happened to my sweet, obedient little angels? It seemed that almost overnight, my son developed a mind of his own – complete with his own ideas and thoughts about life. (Yes, I know that’s what is supposed to happen, but annoying nonetheless!)
One afternoon, I received a call from my son’s school that he had gotten in trouble for cheating on a test. It was devastating. I was mad, hurt, embarrassed, and so much more. They were contemplating what punishment he would receive. As I hung up the phone, I began to cry. I prayed fervently that God would fix this situation. Secretly, I wanted God to rescue my son rather than have him face the consequences. It was in those moments that I felt strongly that God was whispering this thought into my heart, “If I constantly fix things for him, how does he learn to depend on me?” Ouch. The truth was, I wanted to control it all and for my son to make the right choices, because I said so, not because he chose to.
You see, I had this idea in my mind of what the perfect life was like. I’m sure you can relate. I would have children who always obeyed, earned straight A’s, and had great influences for friends. My children would graduate college, become doctors, own successful practices, marry great spouses, serve the Lord, and live happily ever after. And as I’m sure you guessed; life doesn’t always turn out that way. There are twists and turns and ups and downs. There are right choices and wrong ones. Ultimately, my son turned out just fine. But as I struggled to put words around how I was feeling through those tough high school years, this is what I came up with. I simply wanted to “fix” my kids. I had experienced the devastation that poor choices can bring in my own life, and I never wanted my kids to go through that.
The same has been true in other areas of my life, too. As God began to radically transform my heart and pull me up from some of the darkest circumstances, I became more and more passionate about wanting others to serve my God. This is a beautiful thing. It’s what we are on the Earth to do. However, the problem comes when we think that bringing others to Christ has more to do with “fixing” them than loving them. You see, I had been an impoverished, severely abused, single mom who lived in sexual immorality. I knew how hard that life was. So, when I had the opportunity to minister to single moms, I thought I had to show them Christ and… Pow! Boom! They would magically transform into perfect little angels. (That’s exactly how it worked in my life. Yeah, right!)
As moms, wives, co-workers, friends, ministry leaders, and pretty much any other category on the planet, our job as Christians isn’t to fix people, however well-meaning it may be. In fact, we can’t fix people. I know this will shock some of you, but here goes. For every person you are desperate to “fix,” there is another person desperate to fix you! We aren’t perfect. None of us have it all together. It’s true that some are further along on their Christian path than others, and we absolutely can use that to invest wisdom in our sisters in Christ. But our primary job is to love one another. Our job is to administer tons of compassion and grace to show mercy and friendship to others.
I can’t say that I’ve entirely accepted the fact that I can’t fix my kiddos or others around me. But I can say that I am committed to trying! Will you join me in stepping back and letting the Holy Spirit do the job of fixing others?
Jennifer Maggio is a mom to three, wife to Jeff, and founder of the national nonprofit, The Life of a Single Mom Ministries. She is author to four books, including The Church and the Single Mom. She was named one of the Top 10 Most Influential People in America by Dr. John Maxwell in 2017 and 2015 and has appeared in hundreds of media venues, including The New York Times, Family Talk Radio with Dr. James Dobson, Joni and Friends, and many others.
Raising Difficult Children
- 2024Apr 10
Okay, full disclosure here. I struggled with the title of this article. Our children, young or older, are gifts from God. They are precious and called with a purpose. God has a plan for them, filled with purpose and hope. And we love them with every fiber of our being, so let’s just get all that out of the way first. Admitting that our children can be difficult does not mean they aren’t gifted by God or that we don’t love them immensely, it simply means that parenting them is …… well…. Difficult! That said, I wanted struggling mommas to be able to find the words on this page, as they sojourn through what may be some of the hardest days of their lives. I wanted them to know they came to the right place – that this sisterhood of mothers is locking arms with them in spirit and that we are all in this thing together. The parenting journey isn’t for the faint of heart, so let’s dive in, shall we?
I think some famous author has called parenting difficult children “raising strong-willed children”. Perhaps that is a better term, but today, we are going to call them difficult. Let’s face it. Kids don’t come with instruction manuals. Yes, we have the word of God (and boy, has it been a lifesaver in my life as I’ve parented). Yes, we can read parenting books and thank God for the wisdom offered by those who have gone before us. Yes, we can watch YouTube videos and download podcasts. But our children – the very ones that God gifted us with – don’t have an instruction manual of do’s and don’ts that are specific to them, and some of us have had quite a time of it, haven’t we?!
Two of my three children are now grown and have left the nest some years ago with the third not far behind. There have been easy seasons of my parenting years, when things seemed to come together and fall in place seamlessly, and then….there have been the hard seasons, when nothing seemed to come together and I felt like I was running on quicksand, barely able to come up for air. Here is what I learned along the journey:
Lose the guilt. Just because your children have missed the mark, it doesn’t mean you are a terrible parent. For so long, I carried this immense guilt if my children failed a test or cheated or used profanity or stayed out too late or in some way broken the rules laid out before them. I somehow internalized that every behavior was a reflection of my parenting. It immobilized my children. It alienated them. It made me an angry parent. Our Heavenly Father is perfect and yet we, his children, make mistakes. It doesn’t mean he is any less a good father. It means we have a sin nature that we grapple with. Lose the guilt and offer the kiddos some grace. Nothing effective is accomplished through guilty parenting.
Laugh again. When is the last time you had fun with your children? Do you know what I have sadly found to be true? We get involved in tasks and duties and checklists and rules. We are so inundated with the demands of laundry and homework and carpool and soccer practice that we forget to have fun. We spend most of our time putting out the fires of those screaming the loudest, reprimanding and punishing and correcting and disciplining. We don’t take the time to dance in the rain, karaoke in the living room, and play board games. We have stopped laughing with our children. We become the big, bad, angry, monster always looking to correct them with furrowed brows. Learn to enjoy your children again.
Don’t overindulge. Moms are tired. We balance a dozen balls in the air at any given time. Sometimes, due to guilt, exhaustion, lack of understanding, or any number of reasons, we enable and indulge. We get tired of the whining, the temper tantrums, the busted hole in the wall, or the defiance, and we simply give in. We become weak on the parenting journey and we relinquish boundaries that we should have held their foot to the fire on. Do not overindulge! It will reap dividends later. Ask God for the strength necessary to hold strong boundaries. Don’t buy the shoes if you can’t afford them. Don’t buy the toy. Don’t bend the rule that you deemed important in your home. If you have a gut check about that party, don’t let them go. Don’t allow the guilt of long hours at work or a past mistake or an ugly divorce or even your own insecurities cause you to overindulge your children. It only cripples them.
Set the thermostat. Lose the emotion. Don’t be quick to anger. Don’t scream. I was recently holding a conversation with my adult son and he said, “Mom, you always set a great temperature in the room.” He began to explain how I laughed and brought joy (at least sometimes, I do!) As the parent, we get to set the thermostat of our homes. Do we read the Word together? Do we pray? Do we have family meetings about hard things, not just surface-level conversation?
Stay the course. Moms, I know it is hard. I know the days are long and sometimes thanks are few. I know that there seems to be little rest for weary souls, but don’t stop praying. Don’t stop believing. Don’t stop implanting wisdom and truth and wise counsel. The Lord will mount you on wings like eagles. He will restore, in due time, so stay the course. When they are adults, they will – I repeat, will – stand and called you blessed. Don’t give up, even when you can’t see the fruit of your labor in this season. You are planting seeds.
Lean in to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit sets captives free. He guides us. He leads and comforts. He is the X-Factor that changes everything. My kids used to “hate” my relationship with the Holy Spirit. He would reveal things to me through the power of discernment that would catch them every time. I would have a dream that I could not shake. I would have a “gut feeling” and just knew that something was up. I would drive over to a home where my children were staying the night to get them, when I couldn’t explain why. Learn more about the Holy Spirit and the gifts he offers. It can be a life-changer in parenting and every other facet of life.
Jennifer Maggio is a mom to three, wife to Jeff, and founder of the national nonprofit, The Life of a Single Mom Ministries. She is author to four books, including The Church and the Single Mom. She was named one of the Top 10 Most Influential People in America by Dr. John Maxwell in 2017 and 2015 and has appeared in hundreds of media venues, including The New York Times, Family Talk Radio with Dr. James Dobson, Joni and Friends, and many others.
