Shout Out To Single Mothers

I was pulling into my driveway and noticed that my house needed to be pressure washed and painted. As I walked to the mailbox, I looked at the yard and realized that the grass needed to be cut.

I made my way into the house and wondered why it was so hot. Then I remembered that I still needed to call the air-conditioning man to see about fixing my unit. That somehow reminded me that I also needed to change my air filters. I went to my room to change clothes and observed that things were getting a little messy. When I approached my dresser to pull out a shirt, I was reminded that I needed to dust.

I sat down to open my mail, and when I opened my statement, I remembered that I hadn't changed my 401k election. I was supposed to do this last week! Then I looked at the calendar. It was the 15th, and there sitting on my table were a few bills that were supposed to be paid that day. I got up and walked to the refrigerator only to find that there was nothing in it. Sigh. Feeling overwhelmed, I found my way to the couch, plopped down and started thinking about how difficult this was becoming--being responsible for everything.

I had a two-minute pity party, and then my thoughts somehow shifted from me to single mothers. I quickly realized that being solely responsible for a home hardly compared to being solely responsible for a child. So, if I felt overwhelmed, I had to ask myself how in the world did single mothers feel? Working. Changing diapers. Cooking. Entertaining (the baby). Cleaning. Breastfeeding. Paying Bills. Pumping. Running errands. All this while trying to maintain sanity. Then I thought about my single-mother friend, who gets minimal help from family members and the baby's father. I always recognized her as being a superwoman, but this made me think that she was REALLY superwoman.

Then my mind wandered. It went everywhere, but it eventually settled upon the notion that God didn't intend for us to try to move through life alone. Raising a kid takes the whole neighborhood. But sometimes life happens differently from how God planned for it to be. My friend, like so many other single mothers, never intended to raise a child on her own. In thinking about her, I've come to realize that single mothers are incredibly resilient human beings whose sacrifices are largely incomprehensible and therefore go largely unnoticed.

Each of us, at some point, will feel overwhelmed about something--maintaining a household, preparing for a wedding or prepping for a presentation. When we do, however, we should think about the single mother and recognize that what we're stressing over is pretty insignificant in comparison.