Solo Parent

Kathie Lee Gifford is a shining example of love and grace, but her growth didn’t come easily. She has known hard times. She shares how she brings everything to God with honesty, telling Him when she’s angry or crushed, when she doesn’t feel close to Him, or even feels betrayed by Him, “Because He can take that kind of honesty. He’s made for it.”, she says. 

One of her favorite stories of hardship is the story of Hagar, a single mom who ends up alone in the desert, heartbroken, and feeling invisible. God meets he her there and she calls Him “El Roi, the God Who Sees Me”. Kathie Lee collaborated with Nicole C. Mullens to write a song called, “The God Who Sees.” Kathie Lee reiterates that the same Gd who saw Hagar sees us five thousand years later too. That’s the amazing beauty of the scriptures and the song celebrates the story of Hagar, Ruth, David, and Mary Magdalene. God met each one where they were with love and provision.  

Kathie Lee shares that after encountering God, Mary Magdalene and the other women were filled with courage, enough to want to risk the consequences of going to anoint the body of Jesus after his death. These female believers were filled with “hutzpah” which means “bold courage”. Women in that time were looked down on in their culture. They were seen as less than but when God saw them, they became emboldened and strong in spite of their low societal status. This position is similar to single parents who often feel less than and overlooked too. Yet, when God enters our lives and demonstrates His love for us, we, too, can become full of courage. 

Kathie Lee shares that people don’t like to talk about it, but the Bible never shies away from sin. For complete show notes click here .

When we talk about growing in grace, Kathie Lee Gifford is a shining example. She is an American icon, a talented actress, musical artist, and television personality. And she’s been through so many things. Yet, she continues to live a life epitomized by grace and love. When asked where her tenacity and drive come from, Kathie says she is a lifetime student of God’s word and reads it every day. And, when she reads it, “nobody in the Bible retired. They kept doing what God put them on this earth to do”. Kathie Lee loves to work and she thinks it’s a valuable gift God gives us for our purpose, our self-worth, and our growth. Being responsible to meet a deadline or keep people employed, and then mix that with the Holy Spirit, gives her purpose every morning and keeps her going. Kathie Lee says she learned from Paul Newman long ago that, “If I’ve got a pulse, I’ve got a purpose.” She has never entertained the idea of retirement. She has walked with the Lord since she was twelve years old, and while she doesn’t know how many days He has for her, she looks forward to finding out.

This curiosity and sense of adventure is part of her continued growth. She has found genuine joy and is the happiest she has been in years. But she shares that, “Happiness is different than joy”. She has always been a joyful person because of her walk with the Lord but happiness comes from the word “happenstance”. Happiness is related to our circumstance whereas joy is not. She could find joy even in many sad and stress-filled moments, and did, but she is thankful to have now found herself in a rich, warm, and fun season, full of happiness too.

And Kathie Lee has known hard circumstances full of controversy, accusation, betrayal, loss, and hurt. Many single parents have experienced those too and end up feeling rejected and a deep sense of loneliness. 

For complete show notes click here .

Trust is hard when you’ve felt betrayed and left alone. We wonder if we will ever be able to trust again. Trust can exist but there is a risk. This topic of rebuilding trust after hurt and destroyed relationships is one we hear often in our Solo Parent groups. So, how do we build trust again? 

Single mom, Elizabeth, joins Robert and Kimberley to discuss rebuilding trust. As single parents, many of us have felt a breach of trust at some point or another. Our spouse’s affair, marital abandonment, and the fact that God would allow something bad to happen is difficult to process. This kind of hurt is one of the primary wounds we carry.

The topic trust can be dark, heavy, hard, and scary. When we’ve experienced abandonment, not necessarily through divorce or loss but even early on in our childhoods, deep wounding and hurts occur. We carry those hurts with us into our relationships and then, when things fall apart, the pain and damage is even greater. We find ourselves asking again, “Who can I trust?” That question resonates and reverberates into every area of our lives. 

As a missionary kid, Robert grew up going to boarding school. He didn’t have his family around him and he felt very abandoned. That wound was an early set up for later issues with fear of abandonment and difficulty with trust. When things come up like divorce or death, it triggers wounds like this from our past in a domino effect. 

The core issue with building trust again is understanding how our past experiences have shaped us. The first step is getting connected to our own heart, understanding our wounds, and breaking down our abandonment issues. When we have people in our lives who were supposed to protect us, accept, and love us unconditionally, and they don’t, that has a profound impact on us. To build trust again, we need to understand what led us to that place of fear and learn what safe relationships are supposed to look like. 

We need to consider the impact of our trust issues. How does our lack of trust play out in our relationships? For complete show notes click - https://soloparentsociety.com/blog/2021/05/09/how-to-build-trust. For more about Solo Parent Society - https://bit.ly/SPSZoomWelcome

As single parents, it’s hard to have a sense of stability especially when things seem to be always moving and shifting. We know how important stability is for our kids but when there are so many things out of our control, how do we find stability when nothing seems stable.

Elizabeth joins Robert and Kimberley to talk about this very thing as her life is full of all kinds of change right now. She just recently walked away from a full-time job that she enjoyed. It paid well, she was doing well there, it was stable, and she had been there a long time, but God called her out of that role. She is now starting her own business, which is very new, different, and scary. She’s never done anything like this before and she’s a single mom.

With all the change, there are many anxious moments, but Elizabeth has found a sense of stability that those around her can see. First and foremost, God has brought her through all of this. She has clung closely to God for the last six months in a way she never did before. She sees she can’t do this without God. Her prayer has changed from “What do you have for me. Lord? Show me the big picture as long as it fits in this little box” to “God, just show me the next step. Illuminate the next step and I will be obedient to walk with You in it”.

Elizabeth was driving recently, when she got this overwhelming sense of “Abba, Father”, an awareness that God is her caretaker. His plans for her are good. When she rests in that, she doesn’t have to be worried or afraid. She can rest knowing that God will take care of her. Feeling a sense of stability while handling all the change in her life comes from a great deal of faith, obedience, and being okay being uncomfortable.

Another thing that helps create stability during change is finding anchors that hold us steady and in place. This can be routine, something that is familiar and predictable.

For the complete show notes click https://soloparentsociety.com/blog/2021/04/19/how-to-find-stability-when-nothing-is-stable 

"Relational stability after a failed relationship, or a painful loss of any kind, can seem like a lofty goal. As single parents, we may find ourselves bringing our hurts, fears, or mistrust into new relationships. So how do we create relational stability as we move forward?

Robert Beeson and Kimberley Mitchell were single parents for eight years. Elizabeth Cole and Marissa Lee are both single moms. Robert asked Kim, “How long did it take for you to believe that you were able to have a new relationship and how could you tell?”

“When God doesn’t bring someone, that’s a good way to tell”, says Kimberley. After her divorce, Kim dated someone for a while but quickly realized it wasn’t going to work out and that she needed to focus on her kids and her relationship with God. It’s easy to react out of loneliness and jump into something quickly but Kim says she is glad she ended up having to wait for another relationship, but the waiting wasn’t easy. She had meltdowns with God asking what was wrong with her and if she would ever have a significant other in her life again, but it wasn’t time. IF she had jumped into things much sooner, she would have missed out on a whole lot of blessings she experienced with her kids, and seeing God shine on them in ways they would have missed. Waiting was hard but she’s grateful now.

How do you handle the loneliness of not having a relationship?

For the complete show notes go to https://soloparentsociety.com/blog/2021/04/12/creating-relational-stability 

"The fear of the unknowns as a single parent, being unsure of how we will provide for our kids, with so many things changing, can leave us wondering if we will ever have enough. It’s uncomfortable being in a position where you feel like you don’t have enough, physically, or emotionally and to wonder if you ever will.

The life of a solo parent often feels like it could be summed up in that one phrase – we don’t have enough. We don’t have enough time, we don’t have enough money, we don’t have enough “me”. There never seems to be enough.

So, how can we have enough when we don’t have ‘enough’?

Single mom, Marissa Lee shares how she has struggled with never feeling like she has enough or is enough while raising her boys alone. And it’s something she’s afraid they may struggle with too. And as a single parent, especially if you struggled in your marriage or past relationships, we even feel like we aren’t “good enough” as a person. We just don’t feel like we measure up. It’s common to feel like this, so, how do we deal with that? How do we find stability and a sense of having enough?

Kim shares that the only way she found her way through was with “a whole lotta prayer and relying on Jesus”. She was raised in a home where she watched her parents pray and trust God her whole life but then, as a single mom, it was her turn. She was faced with a crossroad. She didn’t know how or why things would work out, but she had to trust God when things were crazy and uncertain. She prayed for milk, gas for her car and for money for rent. And God came through.

Robert shares that he couldn’t give his daughters everything they wanted after his divorce. At the time, he felt like he was lacking because he couldn’t provide the way he once had. Now, though, years later, one of his daughters told him she’s glad they didn’t get everything they wanted as kids. She now sees she is better off than friends who had things handed to them.

Kim said she and her kids look back at the time they spent in one of their tiniest apartment as one of the best times in their lives. Financially, Kim felt like she was failing. The kids wanted iPads and she couldn’t buy them. Instead, her kids saved for over a year to purchase them. They became prized possessions they carried with pride because they worked hard to get them. That lesson was priceless and has stuck with them into adulthood. What felt like a season of lack became a time with some of the richest memories.

There will be many times like this, as single parents, when we feel like we just don’t have “enough” but these seasons can become some of the richest experiences we have with our kids.

For complete show notes and links go to - https://soloparentsociety.com/blog/2021/04/05/how-to-have-enough-when-we-don-t-have-enough" 

When our kids struggle with anxiety, we can feel so helpless, unsure of what to do. And anxiety among kids is increasing. Whether due to the pandemic, or for other reasons, anxiety is on the rise in every age group. Stress is at an all-time high.

Today we are going to explore ways to help our kids with anxiety with Dr. Chip Dodd, counselor, speaker, mentor, and author of “The Voice of the Heart” and numerous other books centered on emotions and healing.

What is anxiety?

Dr. Dodd shares that, “Anxiety is a physiological, central nervous system reaction, to thoughts we are having about anticipated disaster. It is always related to future trepidation about something happening that we’re not sure about.” Anxiety leads us to seek something outside of ourselves to control and quell those feelings of uncertainty.

Fear, however, is an emotion. Fear tells us we are in danger of something happening that we don’t want to happen. It’s a feeling we’ve been given that allows us to ask for help. When we express a fear vulnerably, it sets us up to be able to prevent the thing we fear and it also provides a place for us to go back to to process what did or didn’t happen.

Fear can push us to connection as we seek help whereas anxiety can push us into isolation. Anxiety and fears are both thermostats that can lead us to seek help.

Children get anxious about what is happening and about what could happen next. They aren’t sure where the truth is. They are guessing at how to find level ground. Adults are often anxious about what has already happened or what could happen again. Kids are most often anxious about their two biggest fear – not belonging and not mattering.

Social media platforms are a huge contributor to these anxieties because they don’t affirm how we’re created. They actually go against it. This is why home base has to be a safeplace where your family can process what is happening below the surface. We need to be able to talk about our spiritual root system – our feelings, needs, longings, desires, and hopes.

So often we don’t want our kids to suffer, to have negative thoughts, or to feel bad. We don’t want them to feel anxious so we try to “fix” it but actually feeling their fears isn’t the problem. The problem is denying how they are feeling.

It’s a natural response to feel fear in situations we don’t have a sense of empowerment over or where we aren’t in control. Kids are often afraid of the dark because it’s full of unknowns. Yet, kids are willing to go into the dark if they have someone to go with them and to hold their hand. So, children aren’t actually afraid of the dark. They are afraid of being alone in the dark, of being uncared for in the dark, of not being seen or heard in the dark. If a child is allowed to have their feelings and process them, when the parent says, “It’s okay for you to feel afraid”, we are teaching our kids they can be real and not have to fake it or pretend. This allows them to embrace their humanity and not disassociate from it which actually increases anxiety.

So, how can we walk with our kids through their anxiety?

The number one thing is to acknowledge the difference between anxiety and fear.

For complete show notes and links go to - https://soloparentsociety.com/blog/2021/03/29/chip-dodd-helping-our-kids-with-anxiety 

This has been such a weird season because of the pandemic. So many of our weekly activities have stopped including being able to go to church regularly. For many of us, church has been an important lifeline and a vital part of our spiritual lives. But, due to Covid, for all practical purposes, churches have been shut down leaving a void for us and for our kids. So how do we spiritually guide our kids?

Regular contributor, Marissa joins us to talk about this very thing. Many parents don’t feel equipped to spiritually guide their kids and Marissa feels the same way. None of us feel like experts in God. As single parents, we may even feel like it’s not our job to teach our kids about God, but God sees it differently. Not only is it important but it’s crucial we pour into our kids spiritually. Researcher George Barna says that what kids believe by the age of thirteen is very much what they will continue to believe and take with them into adulthood. That information is scary, but while our kids are still in our homes, the cement is still wet. It’s so important that we live in a culture where parents don’t feel able to teach our kids spiritually. Parents don’t see themselves as experts. Instead, they leave discipleship of their kids to the local church. And the church is an important avenue for spiritual formation. But it’s not the only one and it may not even be the most significant one. The church is often viewed as the primary avenue but what kids learn at home is incredibly influential.

This can be hard to talk about because single parents don’t need one more thing to shame themselves about or one more thing to feel like you are not doing adequately. So, we wanted to dig into this more and talk about ways we can spiritually God our kids when we don’t feel like the experts.

For the complete show notes with links go to https://soloparentsociety.com/blog/2021/03/22/how-to-spiritually-guide-our-kids