Surviving Single Motherhood

Photo Courtesy of Angelisse Perez

OK readers aren’t my babies the most adorable kids ever? Well as you all know I am going through a divorce right now. Actually I am separated because so far no divorce has been filed and well I am perfectly fine with that. I am in absolutely no rush to be honest. But this impending divorce does have me now raising these three treasures as a single mom.  Well I adore my kids and so being a single mom is hard but it is worth it to have my kids. I think of my ex husband and feel bad for him really because I get to be with these guys every day. I wake up to them, I go to bed after saying good night to them, I talk with them everyday, I play with them everyday, and I get to just be with them everyday!

But its hard I wont lie. I mean everyday its me. I have a great support system in my parents, in my sisters, my brother in laws, my nieces and nephews but I am mom. I am the one that is ultimately responsible for the well being of these kids, I am the one who is responsible for making them into model citizens and good Christians. I am the one to wipe away the tears, lift them back up when they are down, I am their biggest cheerleader, and I am the one who has to well break the news to them when things might not go their way or the way they wanted things to go.

I am mom. I want to be their friend but that is not what God has called me to do. He entrusted me these three beautiful, smart, strong and even silly kids in my care to raise them to know Him and know about Him and speak to others about Him. I am the one who one day will stand before God and be accountable for what I did in their lives. Did I instruct them properly? Did I guide and love them? Did I do right by them?

Being a single mom is not easy. I never fully understood all that it entailed. There are days when I want to be selfish and think about me and me alone but I cant. I have to ALWAYS put them first. I have to be the one who is the bad guy and tell them they can not have something they want or do something they really want to do. I am the one who has to discipline them when they act the fool in public or even in private. I am the one who has to be the parent, not just the mom but the mom and the dad too. When I was with my ex I could say: Wait for your father to come home, or say go ask your father, or even tell him go deal with your kids before I have a full on nervous breakdown. I had a cushion to lean on. Now I am the one to do it all. Just this past week the kids were blessed with tickets to go to Disney World and to Universal Studios. It was a great thing for them but they left without doing chores, without taking care of their school work, without taking care of their responsibility of their dogs and mom here had to go nuts trying to get my school work done, get my things situated and try to even take care of all three dogs in the process. I had to lay down boundaries and ground rules. I hated that I had to do it but I feel good about my mothering skills that I did it. I can not always be the good guy and there will probably be days my kids would prefer their dad over me because I am the one here and placing all the rules on them and he will seem like the better parent because as Queen Latifah said in my favorite movie: "Its easy not to make mistakes when you are not around".

My kids are homeschooling this year. Next year we place them in an actual brick and mortar school because it is what they truly desire but with them homeschooling things might be easier in some respects for me. One I am not having to be the mom taxi to all three of them and their activities. I am not the one trying to juggle on Open House day which child’s teacher I meet and which one I do not even get to because there is not enough time for it. I am not the one having to pay $300 for an activity that they want to do. But with homeschooling we are together 24/7 and there is a lot that goes into that. I mean moms we need our time away. We need to unwind in order to not be overly stressed and dealing with so much problems. We need me time! Me time does not seem to exist very well when you home school, when you are a single parent, and especially when you have three larger than life personalities who all want your attention especially when you go into that glorious shower and even at the age of 14, 12 and almost 11 they are knocking on the door asking you questions.

But all in all I am happy I get to be the one they are with. I love my children. I love how funny they are. I mean look at this picture, they are hilarious! I love how smart they are. Just today my son asked for help in his Bible class. He had to read Genesis 13 and answer some questions on it. He struggles still with reading and comprehension and so to help I read to him aloud the chapter after he tried it and asked him the questions on it. Can you believe his memory? He was able to quote back the Bible to me and I was the one holding it not him! I love that their individual personalities are forming and my oldest she is a smart, sarcastic, brilliant and even caring soul. She loves and loves passionately cosplaying and can become a character that is nothing like her real self and be outstanding. My middle one is hilarious! She can come up with jokes faster than anyone I know. She is descriptive in getting her point across and she is fabulous in her fashion sense. She has lost a bit of her confidence throughout this divorce but I pray through the counseling she gains it back. My son is amazing. For a kid who has battled with being different all his life he is intelligent. He was diagnosed at the age of  7 with ADHD and now just this past year we found out that he also has a high functioning autism. Some look at him and say he is not autistic and that gets me mad. What does autism look like to begin with? Why is it such a bad thing that I tell you my son has autism? I am not going to let that diagnosis define him but I need to learn how to help him through it. He can memorize anything especially if it is about the Bible. He is funny too. He is energetic but that of course is his superpower from God. He is caring and sweet.

“Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” Proverbs 22:6ESV. My job as a mother, even if it is a single mother, is to train and raise my kids up right in the Lord. Teach them to be good, to be courageous for God, to be strong in His power and His might. If I do my job right than I will be right in the eyes of God. I teach my kids to love. To not judge and sometimes I get criticism on that from believe it or not believers themselves. God said that we are not to judge others but to love them as He loves them. I have taught my kids to love others no matter their race, their age, their sex, or even their sexual orientation. For this last one is where I get the criticism but God loves everyone. God sent his only Son to die for our sins and yet we like to judge others for their sin when we sometimes need to look in a mirror and see the sin that is in us. There is no one sin that is greater to God than another and so if I were to tell a lie it is not any worse than someones sin of sexual promiscuity and this where I teach my kids not to judge others but to treat others with the same love and respect we are shown from our God. But I went off on a tangent there and maybe, just maybe I can do a blog post about that topic another day.

Readers thanks for coming along in my journey with me today and as always readers…

Be Blessed in HIM!