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How to Prepare for the Storms of Life

For those of you who don’t know my story, the abbreviated version is this. My mother was killed when I was 17 months old. My father was devastated and turned to alcohol and women to cope. He married a total of 6 times, not counting all the girlfriends. My home became very unsafe. I endured 10 years of sexual assault, physical abuse, and malnourishment during those years. At 19, I found myself pregnant with my second child, living on food stamps & welfare in the projects in an extremely abusive relationship. I have no money, no friends, and no hope. The end of that chapter is that God redeemed me. He restored all the locusts had eaten. I got married; my husband adopted my children. I became successful in Corporate America, but I never forgot the moments of huddling on a bathroom floor i...

6 Ways to Thrive Through an Empty Nest

The day my first-born got his driver’s license and pulled out of the driveway alone with my two younger daughters in tow, tears streamed down my face. One or two lone tears gently flowed down my face, but one or two quickly turned into a river, as I peered out the window.  “This is it. This is the beginning of the end.” Even then, with my son only sixteen, I was keenly aware that he would soon be leaving the nest and my daughter, only seventeen months his junior, would be following quickly behind. It was in that moment that I realized that I would somehow have to learn to live without my children in my home. I got pregnant with that son at only seventeen years old, and the thought did not escape me that I had never actually been an adult without him. I had never lived without the day-...

How to Live a Balanced Life as a Single Mom

There are many roles that we, as single moms, answer to: mom, counselor, friend, sister, aunt, employee, homework consultant, soccer mom, dishwasher, clothes washer, chef, and fixer-of-all problems… and so many more. In order to really embrace who we are supposed to be, we must first understand how to live a balanced life! Here are a few tips we think can help you:  Know your role // When we understand that our role in life is not to be everything to everyone, we then understand that we do not have to fix the world or our kids or our co-workers. We are not in the business of fixing others. We enhance the lives of others. We aren’t called to fix everyone. When we fully embrace that, it relieves the guilt of having to be everything for everyone all the time. We are merely human. Ou...

Navigating Shame

I was recently asked to teach a two-hour workshop on navigating shame. As with any such invitation, I pray, read the Word, and reference other notes and materials I may have written or taught through the years. As I began to prepare for the workshop, I researched many binders of notes. I was surprised to find that even after fifteen years of teaching ministry, I had almost nothing in the way of content on shame. I was shocked. I began researching our ministry’s website and found that it, too, lacked in-depth teaching on shame. I have been teaching single mothers for over fifteen years and had written almost nothing on shame. Shame’s persistence in the lives of so many women and single mothers should’ve surely lent itself to hundreds of writings on the matter! So, today, alas, we begin the ...

6 Ways of Becoming Unapologetically Un-offended

Life is hard and the wounds left by its treacherous journey of valleys and mountaintops can be deep. Most of us have faced more battles than we know what to do with, as we swing against rejection, loneliness, financial ruin, loss, and pain. Family wounds, heartbreak, and financial challenges can leave us limping. Repeated broken hearts leave us mutilated, emaciated, and weak. The wounds left by those battles can sometimes leave a bitter root that, if left unattended, can develop a full-fledged tree of offense.   Some of us aren’t even aware of how deep or offensive our offense actually is. We aren’t aware that some cringe when they see us coming because we’ve carried the weight of offense for far too long and the stench of its odor leaves a lasting impression long after we’v...

Finding Hope in the Wilderness Season

Finding Hope in Wilderness Seasons When I was a little girl, I lived in rural Mississippi, down a long dirt road that was named after my family, that offered no cable television, few visitors, and long hours playing in the yard. My sister and I also learned to love to play in the wooded area directly behind my house. We loved being in the wilderness and playing house and school and grocery store, and the like. We put an old chair out there and dug around in the trash dump for old pots and pans. Hanging out in the wilderness proved to be great, all-day fun, and it left me with such wonderful, childhood memories of imaginative play.  But being in the wilderness isn’t always fun, is it? It can get dark. It can be lonely. One can get lost. The same can be true of wilderness seasons i...

11 Ways to Be a Good Friend

In a world where access to information and world-wide connection has never been more readily available, sadly, we are often more disconnected, isolated, and lonely than ever before.  While we have access to more potential friends through social media, many lack true, meaningful friendships that last and stand the test of time. The advances in technology and media often make our day-to-day easier to navigate, saving us time and energy, in many cases. However, these conveniences have often led to more busy-ness, more rush, more things on the to-do list, and less patience. We know how to click a button to “like” a comment, but lack the motivation or skills or willingness necessary to develop, nurture, and grow life-giving friendships.  In a ministry where our company motto is No Sin...

Whole Armor of God: Being Fully Prepared for the War at Hand

When I was four years old, my parents made me take a daily nap in the early part of the afternoon. I remember this quite vividly and I absolutely hated that nap, but not for the reason you may think. During that time, on a regular basis, I had a recurring dream. A faceless, tall man in a long trench coat and a dark fedora hat would walk slowly down my street and up my driveway. He would then, very intentionally, walk to the front door, into my home, down the hallway, and into my bedroom where he stood, towering over my bed. Each day, I awakened panting with the awareness that someone had just been in my room. Years later, when my husband and I married, I began having a recurring nightmare, where a similar dark figure would walk into my bedroom, lean down over my bed, and begin to choke me....

6 Tips for Raising Difficult Children

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 want struggling parents to be able to find the words on this page, as you sojourn through what may be some of the hardest days of their lives. I you to know that you came to the right place. The parenting journey isn’t for the faint of heart, so let’s dive in, shall we? ...

To Love Your Age

I am 50 years old for one more month, and I am confused about how I feel about it. On the day of my birthday last June, I was excited; I had assumed I would be disappointed by being 50, but I wasn’t. The day was a celebration of a life I was deeply grateful for. How amazing it is, I reasoned, that I had been able to be alive for this long. This life of so much beauty and goodness. This life of so much rebellion and learning the hard way. My life so far has been one long wrestling match with God. Am I okay? Yes. Am I enough? Yes. Do You see me? Yes. Am I loved? My mom told me years ago, on her birthday, that aging was strange in that she feels, inside, like she is the same person that she has always been—and yet, with each birthday, she feels further away from that person, too. It is not on...

To the Single Mom Who Feels Left Out

My dad was a hard-working farmer from Mississippi who missed the first few weeks of school each year, because he had to pick cotton. He did, indeed, walk miles to school each day, barefooted and in overalls. Like his family before him, he made a living as a farmer and fisherman for most of my life. He had several side hustles, before anyone even knew what that was! While we always had plenty of food on the table and clothes on our back, there wasn’t much extra. When I was about nine, we moved to a new town and joined a new church. It was the largest church in town and many of the “cool” kids from the local private school went there. (I was a public-school kid.) As we moved through elementary and into junior high and high school, I felt more and more like I just didn’t fit in. While the you...

Find You Again

The transition into any new season can be a challenging. There are so many unanswered questions and for people like me, who hate change, it can be especially hard. I am the type of person who loves the expected. I love safe places, boundaries and normalcy, I am not big on surprise parties or surprises in general. Well, I guess you can say I am one of those boring types of people – you know, the predictable type. I think that the same can be true for many of us. There is a part of us that just likes to know what to expect. When we are transitioning into a new season, there is just NOTHING expected about that journey!   One of the most important things you can do for yourself as you move forward is to diligently seek and search until find yourself again. You MUST to find YOU ...