This Is Not A Punishment (Guest Post)

To kind of mix it up around here, I asked one of my good friends, Deanna Abraham, to share a few words with you. I have known Deanna for a long time and she is one of the coolest moms I know, besides the fact that she has raised two great kids and somehow manages to keep sane and serve the Lord at the same time.

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I have been a single mother since Jan. 2000. I ventured out on this new quest without a degree, only a high school diploma and two very small lives to care for. I found myself in unfamiliar territory. Up until this point I was impenetrable. I was hard as a rock. You couldn’t catch a tear fall from my eye because I didn’t allow myself to get hurt enough to cry. Motherhood is a game changer. My tears did not begin to fall until God decided to breakdown the rock. I can remember breaking down and crying in a grocery store line after being asked by my daughter for a 25 cent bag of chips. All I had, was all I had, no more, I didn’t have 25 extra cents. I had already searched under the seats of the car and surveyed the street as I walked into the store for stray coins. What I had was just enough, no more. Another time, my three year old son was playing around in the bathroom, being a three year old. He took the toothpaste and filled the remaining tube with water. He’s having fun but, I lost it. I didn’t have another dollar to buy another tube of toothpaste. I was totally unhinged. For the first time in my life, I didn’t have enough. I couldn’t believe that I was in this position. I am better than this. I thought to myself that this must be God punishing me for something I’ve done in my past.

As the years passed by, I deemed myself as mom and dad. I wanted, no… needed them to lack nothing. I felt guilty depriving my kids of the things that I couldn’t afford to give them and the father influence that I helped remove from their lives. I wanted to give and be everything they lacked, until God stopped me dead in my tracks. I remember being in the bathroom, I think getting ready to coach one of my daughter’s softball games, when God said it. He told me that I could never take the place of their father and that it is their adversities that will make them and turn them into whom they are going to become. It was like a ton of bricks had just hit me. I was crushed. I started to cry once again. I was trying to shield my kids from the hurts and God was allowing the hurts to mold and shape them. Instead of trying to be a father I needed to love them as only a mother can. Instead of teaching them how to be content with what they had, I allowed my pride and guilt to overwhelm me.

My kids are 19 and 17 now. Through the years God has taught me that before they were my kids, they are His. He knows the plans that he has for them. I have learned that God is very concerned about them. He has their best interests at heart, even more than I do. It is not for me to shield them from every hurt but to guide them through them, and show them how to handle the adversities that life throws at them. I can’t allow my mistakes to guide my parenting nor can I allow my pride to break me down when the bends in the road appear. I have made mistakes, my children will make mistakes. So many wonderful and powerful saints have made mistakes. My singleness is not a curse or a punishment, but an awakening. I have been blessed with the opportunity to seek God more and allow Him to be everything to my kids that I am not and can’t give them.

Jeremiah 29:11

 "For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."