I am the mother of two, now adult, children. I was there only source of support, and I didn’t due a good job of it most days. I married, or lived with, men that I thought would be good fathers for them; only to find out that my choices only brought them more hurt and damage to the minds, bodies and spirits. Their father was physically, emotionally and sexually abusive. But I felt that I deserved his abuse, as I had been unfaithful early in our marriage. I stayed in this unhappy union until the day he started abusing our daughter. As soon as I could get a way out, I left him and never looked back. But he was not the last man that I would attempt to have a life with; both for my fulfillment and theirs, too.
My second husband and their first stepfather was a pedophile who sexually assaulted my daughter for four years until one night when she was 10 years old and spoke three little words to me that changed our lives forever. She said, ‘Daddy hurt me.’ Those were the worst words she ever spoke to me and were also my worst nightmare. In those three words I learned that this man that I had met in church had been a liar and a thief.
He had lied his way into our hearts by claiming that he was a Christian. He even went to church with us every Sunday and became a member of its deacon board. But I learned through our recovery process from his sin that he had given his heart over to a generational spirit of sexual sin. Did you know that the sin of another could damage your spirit? They can. For you will be wrapped up in his lies and lost in his arms of loving care. All the while that he is speaking his love into your ears he may be sneaking out of you marriage bed into the bed of an innocent child. I learned my husband would make love to me while thinking of my little girl laying in her bed and what he was planning to do to her once I was fast asleep.
My son slept in the same room with my daughter, but we had put up a plywood partition down the middle to give them each their own space. He became quiet and sullen for days at a time and I couldn’t figure out why, until the night my daughter finally told my husband’s secret. I remember that he even tried to physically attack this man whom they had called daddy. It was very reminiscent of David and Goliath, my son was barely three feet tall and of very small bone structure, but this man was five feet 10 inches tall and quite rotund. My then ‘tiny Tim’ of a son is now a soldier in the US army and has spent time in Iraq fighting the armies of our enemies.
When all came to light this man was put into prison and we began the healing process, together. It took us years to get to a place were we could trust again, but we grew through the healing together, with the help of many councilors, prayers and the help of our pastors and our family. Some of the pain form this time I can still see in the faces of my children. I still pray for them to fully recover and to give their lives over to Jesus once and for all time.
My second attempt of providing a new father for my children didn’t fair much better. This man had many psychological problems, many of which I will never know of. Went we met he was going to the same church that a friend attended and I met him after service one Sunday morning .
The kids and I had come home to Carson City, Nevada and mom and dad’s house for Christmas. While we were gone someone broke into our apartment and vandalized it on Christmas Eve. I got the phone call from my Sister and Brother in law early on Christmas morning. When I told the kids, they didn’t want to go back. So my mother and I went back to Oroville, packed up what was salvageable and moved us into their spare bedroom and our belongings into their pump house.
While we were living with my parents I started dating this man who was my friend’s friend. We started dating in January and got married in November, the day after Thanksgiving 1992.
I knew that he had some mental issues, but didn’t know the extent until some months later. He had a mental breakdown while working one day and his doctors recommended that we move away from his parents as they exacerbated his problems. So we moved into a small town in northern California called Westwood. He was not mentally able to hold down a job, so I became the sole financial support of our family. This caused me to be away from home many hours six days a week. My husband would follow my children all over town when they weren’t in school. And when I was home, he would stalk me, too. Along with this stalking he became verbally abusive. Eventually he totally snapped and tried to end my life by throwing me down two flights of stairs. It was shortly after this that my friends talked him into taking a vacation to see his parents. I bought him a one-way ticket back to Carson City and then proceeded to file an order of protection against him so that he could no longer be within 500 feet of my children or me. Our relationship lasted less than two years, but we weren’t divorced until 1997 when I met who I thought would be my third and last husband. What a joke was on me!
This man picked me up when I was very broken in mind and spirit. I ‘fell in love’ but he fell into control. My mind was so shattered that I lived in my own internal world and blocked out the real world. I took care of my children’s physical needs – fed them, clothed them and provided them with a warm home. We had another single woman and her son sharing our home so that we could afford to live in a larger place on a five-acre plot of land. I needed more money than welfare gave us to pay all of our expenses, so I went to work, under the table, for a local bar and grill that was close enough to home that I could walk if needed. This bar belonged to his mother, so we became good friends and after a few months lovers.
In October of 1996 my children and I moved in with him. He was a good man, but he was not a Christian and he felt he had no time for God in his life. I later learned that he actually felt that he was undeserving of anything that God might like to give him, including forgiveness. For he had committed great sin, the sin of which Cain was also guilty. After I left him I returned to ask for his forgiveness and to give him forgiveness, too. What I found was a man who was more dead inside than alive – dead in his spirit and just about as dead in his body. But he was still adamant that he was not in need of a savior as he was a good man.
This man didn’t abuse my children or me, at least not in ways that most would consider abuse. His abuse was in the way that he felt that he could have total control us. I accepted his control for seven years, but my children would not. My daughter met a boy at 16 that she ‘fell in love’ with, but later learned it was only lust. She became pregnant, they got married when she was 17 and spent a very bad 11 years together. My son rebelled in this house of control and left my home just after his 15th birthday. He moved from my home to my parents house, then to my sister and brother in law’s house and finally to the house of my youngest brother, as he was very hard to handle and had a hot temper. He has since learned to control his temper and to put the energy to work for him in better, though not godly, ways.
So why have I told you my horror stories? I tell them to you to tell you that you don’t have to live through these things if you choose to live your life walking hand in hand with Jesus. Since I have dedicated my life totally into His keeping I know that I can make better decisions for my children. But I no longer have that opportunity as they are grown, married, and have children of their own. So I want to share with you how you who still have children in your homes and are single can make the best decisions for them and for yourself.
In James 6:2-6 God says; ‘Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.’
We single women face temptations every day, but James tells us that we should see them through hearts of joy. Joy, not happiness, for happiness is dependant on the happenings around us going well. But joy is from the Holy Spirit of God that lives within us and keeps us always seeking the face of Jesus, especially when times get rough. One of our temptations as single mothers is to look for the easy way out for us and for our children. Now most of us know that taking what looks like the easy way out never ends up being as easy as it seemed in the beginning. This is why James tells us to ask God for wisdom. Now James also says that when we ask we must ask in faith believing that God will give it to us. Because if we doubt God, we will be tossed about and battered by the storms of life; much as I was when I sought out my answers on my own when I was raising my children. But if we believe God not only will He give us the wisdom we seek, He will give it to us generously!
James also says that we need to walk in perseverance, as perseverance is used to bring us to a place of completeness in our spirits and maturity in our hearts and minds – building our faith in God all along the way. Now you would think with all the things I have experienced in my life that my faith would be full grown by now; but you would be wrong. I still have times of doubt and periods when my faith is very lacking. But God uses these times in me to test me just as He will in you; for we will not be fully complete or mature in our faith until Jesus comes to claim His Bride and take her home with Him for eternity. So I, like you, have to be totally dependant on Jesus for meeting the needs, the needs of my home and my heart. But I know where to look for the things they each need; it is the same place you must look for meeting the needs of your family and yourself, too. In the word of God.
Philippians 4:11-13 says; ‘I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.’ Paul found that He could depend on Jesus to meet all of his needs, no matter what they were. He never asked those he serve in this spreading of the gospel to support him, he knew that God was in control and would see to it that he was well taken care of. Even while Paul was in prison members of the Christian faith that came to see him and bring him the things that he had need of. The only prompting they had in doing this was the leading of the Holy Spirit in their lives.
But Jesus didn’t mean for all of us to hide our needs so that He could meet them. He also told us in James 5:13-16 to bring our needs to the body of believers. Lets read the passage together; ‘is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray. Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise. Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.’
Ok, so this all sounds surreal, but it is true. God has met my needs through the prayers of the saint, their faith combined with mine. Let me share a couple of these instances.
When I was very new in the Lord and very much inexperienced in the ways He has to provide for us I found myself in need of gas to get back and forth to work. I only had $1 between me and next payday, which was a week away. That night I went to a Bible study with my sister and her group of young adults and college students. The leaders of the group, Gene and Hazel, asked for all those with needs to come into the middle of the circle and the rest of the group would pray for us, that God would meet our needs whatever they were. No one asked me what my need was. Only my sister and I knew that my gas tank was empty and that I still had another week before I would get paid. Yet we all prayed in faith, and believed that Jesus would meet all the needs present. The next morning on my way to work I paid for a dollar’s worth of gas and pumped the same; yet when I got into the car and looked at the gas gauge the tank was full. Jesus had filled my tank with 20 gallons of gas, but I had only paid for and pumped for 1 1/3 gallons [gas was 75 cents a gallon then, so you know it was a while ago]. This was my very first experience of God meeting my needs in a miraculous way.
The other experience I want to tell you about has happened about five and a half years ago. I had been working for a call center in Reno for a little over a year. When I first started there it was a very good place to work, but after about three months a larger corporation bought out the provider we were working for and the working conditions became unbearable for me. We were being treated more like money machines than people and it was taking a physical and spiritual toll on me. I would cry as I drove into work each day and again as I drove home each afternoon. I was miserable and I let God and my church family know how I felt. We all began praying and asking God to show me what new job He would move me into.
When it came time for me to take my vacation I started looking for a new job and found nothing. But God told me to walk out in faith, trusting that He would supply all of my needs, so I trusted Him completely. I went in to pick up my paycheck after the first week of my vacation and gave my notice. I told them that when my vacation was over I would not be returning. I walked out of that building with only one more week’s income coming in, but I walked out know that I would never have to cry my way into or out of my workplace ever again.
I won’t tell you that God immediately opened the doors to my new and better job, no I worked a couple of different temp jobs while I waited for Him to put me in that position. But I prayed and tried to listen to His leading. One day I knew that God told me to take a job at McDonalds. Now I was 40 something years old and had never worked for a fast food place before, and I didn’t want to ever do so. And I let God know so, but He really did know best. I took a job working as a receptionist/repairman dispatcher for a small businessman. I quickly learned that this man had no godly practices when it came to his business. He wanted me to lie to his customers and his suppliers in order to make him look good. But God told me that I couldn’t work for this man, no matter what he was paying, and it was quite a good wage. I worked for him for less than a week and quit, standing on my belief that God wouldn’t want any of his children to work for a man who didn’t follow his plans for his life or his business.
Now here I was once again with no job and God yelling in my ear that I was supposed to have applied at McDonalds, so I went down to the McDonalds that I had first seen the ‘help wanted’ ad painted on their front windows, walked in the door and requested to speak with the manager about a job. I handed her my resume, filled out an application and 15 minutes later I walked out with a job. It was a part-time position that was supposed to work into full time after a 90-day probation.
I worked there for about a week and a half but never got enough hours to pay my rent, so I started looking other places for a full time position during my time off. I asked God again to meet my needs and He did. I quit McDonalds on a Friday morning turning in my uniforms as I walked out the door. My son told me that he was making a go of working for a temp agency, so I went straight there from McDonalds and filled out an application. While I was in the office the manager got a call from HDFSI looking for a couple of temps right away. That was September 3, 2005, and I started there that day. During my third week on the job I heard that there was a full time position open in the customer service department. So I brought in my resume and met with the head of HR for an interview. I have been ministering for Jesus in that office for about five and a half years at this writing.
God has been so good to me there. Not only has he met my needs through placing me there in that place; but He has also used me to meet the needs of others while I have been in their employ.
If God can meet my needs, He can do the same for you, to. It does take unwavering faith in God and listening to His voice for the call on your life. And complete trust in Him as you follow His lead to meet you every need.
Proverbs 3:5-10 says; ‘Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight. Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD and shun evil. This will bring health to your body and nourishment to your bones. Honor the LORD with your wealth, with the firstfruits of all your crops; then your barns will be filled to overflowing, and your vats will brim over with new wine.’
Let God be your guide in all situations. Like the verse says, ‘trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.’ When I was looking for work, I tried to trust in my own understanding and not in God’s, so it took me a while to find the path that He wanted me to walk. But it has been a lot easier walking His path than the ones that I had chosen. So if you follow God’s plan, and not my example, you will find His ways are much better than our own.
Those of you with children to raise yet are in the very best hands, God’s Hands! He has promised in Hebrews 13:5-6; ‘Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee. So that we may boldly say, The Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me.’
Men may have left us, hurt us or caused us unmentionable heartache, but they can’t destroy us unless we allow them to. But God will never leave us. Oh yes, we can walk away from Him and many of us have, including me in times past, but he will always by right there where we left Him. So turn around, repent of your selfish, evil ways, and seek Him once more so that He can lead you in the right paths once again. Jesus said in John 14:6a; ‘Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life...’ He didn’t say He was a way, for there is no other way to life eternal but through accepting Him as Saviour and Lord. He did not say He was a truth, for He is ALL Truth incarnate. He also did not say He was a life, for through Him is the ONLY way we can live a Life worthy of Him and His Kingdom. He is the creator of all life and He alone is what true life is all about. In Him is the only way we can really live True Life.
Trust Jesus and give your kids into His care and He will lead you all through any situation you may encounter along your journey to the Heights!
Until next time!
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