What’s God’s Vision for Your Family?
I want you to have a vision for godliness in your home—to yearn for it and expect it with complete sincerity, because without a husband, only you can bring Christ into your home so that godliness can happen. If you find yourself as a single parent means God selected you to step up your role. What an honor! Treat it as such, and make your vision equal to that honor by believing in its possibility! It’s only when you absolutely know in your heart that the achievement of everything in your vision possible that you open the heart of your home for the Lord to take His rightful place as the head of your household.
I unfold the Sunday school study guide and read aloud one of the questions for my four young boys to answer. “Did you ever feel like questioning your commitment to God?”
This isn’t a Sunday school setting. We were having hamburgers at Fuddruckers on a Saturday night, so I’m not surprised when my two youth-group-aged kids answer without much thought. They rattle off a list of teen distractions—peer pressure, school, busyness, and then get back to their hamburgers.
The real surprise comes when I get the deeper answers from my elementary-age children. Sure, they answer. They’ve questioned God before. “When?” I ask.
“When Dad died,” they say without batting an eye. They answer so quickly I have to wonder if it’s something they think about a lot.
They were only six and seven when it happened. Counselors say kids that young haven’t the ability to fully comprehend death. Certainly in those first few months without a father, my little ones shuffled along with ease making us all think maybe they just didn’t get it. While I figured it was all a blur to them, it turns out some very deep questions were brewing inside of them.
I want to take this post to talk about something that scares a new single mom having to rear small children. I’m not going to avoid your deepest fears about what effect being raised without their father could have on them, because I had those fears too, and I know it did no good to have someone pat me on the back of my hand and say, “Dear, Dear, it will be alright. Kids are resilient.”
I won’t try to still your heart about it because that’s not my job. That’s the Lord’s job, and only you can allow Him in your heart to create that peace.
No, my job is to show you, no matter where you are with your children and your widowhood, there are two truths: you can have peace about it, and that there is no time to waste. You need to cease any ideas in your head that you can manage rearing your children by going through the motions or using your own strength and abilities, and instead, build a new vision for them with God’s guidance.
Let the Lord wash over you and pour out His vision of how your home can be different. Imagine your teens and preteens relaxed, trusting, communicating with you. Imagine your little ones peacefully accepting God as Daddy and He’s already home with them. How will it look in your household when your kids see you as one of their greatest connections to the Lord and His solutions?
Your role in trusting the Lord and modeling that trust by your walk in front of the kids is more critical after losing your spouse than anytime before. It makes a difference in how God uses this tragedy, taking what Satan meant for offense in your life and turning it into something that glorifies God.
My prayer for each and every one of us widows is that we never let the guidance of our Father in Heaven leave our beings.
Lord, please help each and every one of us use our circumstance as a reason to step closer to You rather than stepping away from You. Open our hearts and attitudes so that You can fill us with Your vision for raising our kids and setting the hearts and attitudes in our homes with purpose. Amen
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