Parenting is hard work – sleepless nights, battles over brushing teeth, messy bedrooms, and incomplete homework can threaten to break down the sanity of any mom.
As a single mother of five boys, I am sometimes amazed by the fact that I have twice the number of kids as the “typical” American family and half the amount of help – meaning I have no husband to bounce ideas off of never mind to help with the daily grind, and, more importantly, my boys have no father figure in their daily lives.
This means it is infinitely more important for me to stay on top of things, to lead my children down the right path, and to not give in to the naysayers or my own exhaustion, frustration, and selfish desire to sometimes just run away from it all.
And maybe that’s why God gave us days like this today.
Snow Day – Again!
The boys are home from school today.
The last time they were home from school, I was sick and unable to get out of bed. I lost a precious and rare, unplanned day during which we could have played games, read books, built snow forts, or gone sleigh riding. It’s bad enough being sick as a single mom, but when it’s a day to bond with my children…that’s hard, and that’s why I was so glad to have them home today and why I was so happy to try to get most of my work done early.
But when I finished working and looked up, they were already gone – no where to be found!
And this is where I know all that hard work parenting pays off.
The older two had gone to help shovel for an elderly couple in our neighborhood. The younger guys, not quite as requested for their services as their older brothers, were shoveling the foot and a half of snow off our back deck.
And they all did this without being told!
I can’t tell you how proud I am of my boys and how thankful I am to God for giving us His parenting instruction book and helping me follow it (most of the time).
“Teach a child the way he should go and he will not swerve from it” (Proverbs 22:6).
It’s all right there in the Good Book and, on the days I am tempted to give in to the bad life can throw at us, it helps to remember that God gives us days like this when the kids do more than what is expected of them and reach out to help others, when they all get along, and when I can look back at the times I’ve wanted to give up and smile knowing nothing would make me want to miss this.
That are reasons to stick with good parenting even in the tough times. For single parents, those tour times can be tougher than many people imagine, but those reasons also come with huge payoffs better than many people can imagine.
And for now, I will go eat some soup with my boys and then see if I can kick some backside in a vicious game of Scrabble or Sorry or one of the many board games we’ve made up to reflect our own silly lives. Later, we will make chocolate chip cookies and play in the snow and then I’ll read to them or they will read to me or we will all just read together silently.
Whatever we do today, I am going to be grateful God gives us days like this to help make the tough days bearable – and I will enjoy every minute of it.
Go enjoy your day and hug your children!
PS I will update this post with pictures of the day later. Hope you check back then!
God Bless…
LOVE THIS PIC
Thank you, Melanie! Me too! I have a very patient friend who is also a wonderful photographer. She took this after we had done a bunch of more formal ones and were just fooling around. Isn’t it amazing how sometimes the best things in life are the things we don’t plan!