A daily HELPER for single parents with children

I'm 59 years old.

I was 30ish when my husband left me and married another woman with her own children. The pain I have felt over the years over that 2 year time frame could fill buckets.

I am not here to tell you that the pain will end tomorrow. Your pain could be different than mine.

You might have chosen to leave a bad situation. You might have lost your husband to an accident. The lists of how you might find yourself a Single Mom are endless. But, if you are visiting this place of encouragement, a Single Mom is more than likely your status.

I believe that there was one activity that unfailingly pulled me through the years of raising my children until they were on their own. It is pretty common to talk about. And admittedly I dipped my toe into this activity from the time I was young.

Something changed when I hit this place of confusion. When I hit this place, this place of single with children,  for some reason I really found it to be a lifeline to sanity.

A dear family friend once told me: If you read 5 Psalms and 1 chapter of Proverbs every day, you will go through all of the Psalms and Proverbs in one month. I did that as a teenager and thought - Cool!
(We said Cool! back then :0))

What I did during the years I could barely put one foot in front of the other, I read through them every month, month after month, after month. The entire Psalms. The entire book of Proverbs.

Why?

Psalms is an Emotional Book. It deals with anger, fear, hunger, sadness, frustration, betrayal...

Proverbs is the Book of Wisdom.

I was an emotional roller coaster as a single mother.

I needed as much wisdom to raise my three kids as I could find.

I sat down and counted out 5 Psalms and marked them at these breaks: Psalms 1 (Day 1) Psalms 6 (Day 2) ... Psalm 121 (Day 25).
So on the 1st day of the month I read Psalms 1-5, and follow the month through. Ex: on the 25th day of the month I read Psalms 121-125.

Then after reading the Psalms, I would read the Proverb that correlated to that day of the month.
So on the 1st day of the month I read Proverbs 1, and followed the 2nd day of the month with Proverbs 2.

I know that these two books brought me through years and years of hard life, happy life, sad life, and healed life.

One day in the month doing this is better than none. Every day of the month is a miraculous month. But reading these over the years stabilized me in ways that I could never have known. They grounded me.

Healing is a process. Coming into your own is a process. Finding the right next step is a process. Put into your heart and mind thoughts that build you up and give you honesty within yourself and then follow where your heart and mind lead.

I am 59 years old. My children are grown, with children of their own. I moved to a foreign country as a single woman. I worked there almost 10 years. I met my husband on line and married him two years later.  I am still reading these two books on a daily basis.

I have had a wonderfully adventurous life.

Not all of my life has been happy, not all of it has been sad.

But I can tell you this. All of my life has been richer for reading these two books regularly.

RoRoEbenezer
& HoneyB