Single Mom Life Archives - Page 4 of 4

When Your Christmas Needs Grace

12.11.2015 By Lisa Appelo 22 Comments

“You haven’t finished all the shopping yet?” my son asked. It was December 23rd and my stomach tightened at his question. He’d just gotten home from college and had no idea all that our December had held.

I was two and a half years into this single parenting thing. It was our third Christmas without Dan and while I thought I should be able to manage everything, I still had not transitioned into any kind of “new normal.” As much as I tried to make life for my kids look like it always had and as much as I did not want them to feel the hovering loss in our everyday routine, there was no masking the huge gap in our life without him.

One of my sons had asked for a shotgun that Christmas. Which sounds easy enough if you know all about shotguns, but that had been Dan’s area. I knew nothing about guns.

I resolved to make it happen and give this boy I loved a Christmas to remember. I swallowed my pride and called a couple of men for the basics of shotgun buying.

Then on Black Friday, armed with what I had learned, I opened the Dick’s Sporting Goods flyer and spotted a gun on sale in my price range. Perfect. We were traveling back from Thanksgiving but we stopped at Dick’s late Friday afternoon as soon as we got into town.

I showed the picture of the shotgun to the salesman, only to learn it had sold out. He showed me other guns that may have been just as good, but I was lost. I’d have to go back and consult and figure out which one to get now.

As I kept researching, my son – knowing nothing about his mom’s predicament — changed his mind. Figuring he wouldn’t have much chance to use a new shotgun, he asked for a fishing pole instead. Which sounds easy enough if you know all about fishing poles, but that was Dan’s area. I knew nothing about fishing poles.

So there I was on December 23^rd — shopping unfinished, struggling to pull off The Best Christmas Ever for my kids and falling so far short.

I should have stopped right then and let myself – and everyone else in my family – off the hook. The hook of my expectations and what I thought they were expecting in an awesome Christmas.

But I kept trying to push through and make it happen. I worked harder and stayed up later. It might even have worked, but one of my children didn’t realize my expectations and didn’t meet the part in pulling off The Perfect Christmas.

So by December 24th, two of us were in tears, both feeling miserably misunderstood. I scrubbed at the Christmas Eve dishes, my tears falling hot. Didn’t my kids see how hard I’d worked to make Christmas special? Didn’t they know how I’d spun every plate I could with musicals, performances, parties, school work, decorating, baking and a season of basketball in full swing?

Now on the other side of that Sadly Imperfect Christmas Eve, I’ve hashed over where I went wrong. Mostly because I never want a repeat. I probably should have started prepping earlier. Perhaps I could have said no to more things or simplified a bit more.

All three would have helped, but when I really untangle it, I realize something was missing that Christmas – grace for our Christmas.

I needed grace for myself and I absolutely needed grace for the faces around my dinner table.

I had tried to soldier through. With good motives but flawed thinking.

Life will not look the same as it did. I cannot re-create the childhood that my kids had when Dan was alive. Life will look different — but it can still be good.

I may wring my hands over the challenges of raising kids, the emotional issues I’d love to talk out (or hand over altogether), the things left undone that I cannot get to. I often feel so inadequate for all of it.

But God knew that I’d be parenting these kids alone. This season doesn’t surprise Him. He’s not having to pull out Plan B for me or our family.

Maybe your Christmas looks different this year. Maybe you’re dealing with huge challenges or changes and you’re trying your best to soldier through.

Give yourself and those around your table a gift — grace for your Christmas.

Life may look different for you now but it hasn’t taken God by surprise. This isn’t Plan B for Him. God knew all about these days just as He knew all of the days that came before them. And He has allowed them.

Let’s let ourselves and those we love off the hook this Christmas. Let’s hang up our expectations altogether. And let’s trust that God who knew about this season in our life, will equip us for it.

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When My Heart Wants to Rewind

06.09.2015 By Lisa Appelo 23 Comments

This month has been a whirlwind of graduation activities. There have been senior dinners and rehearsals, final exams, banquets, awards and presentations, photos, slide shows, meetings, parties, a late night sleepover after graduation and the cap and gown Sunday service.

We started the month with Rachel’s college graduation (She’s got a job! Woop!) and ended with Seth’s high school graduation.

Listening to my taped voice over and trying hard not to outright cry.

Seth is our fourth child we have graduated, the true middle child of seven. You would think it gets easier, this releasing kids from home.

But this entire month has tugged at my heart: picking photos for the senior slideshow and going back through all the moments that have been his life and mine for the last 18 years; searching for treasures in his baby box and on his bookshelves to display on the senior table; pulling the black robe and mortar board his brothers wore from the back of the closet.

I’m not just nostalgic over my own boy. The past few months have been a series of lasts for his whole group of senior friends.

As I watch them standing for pictures together, lanky arms across each other’s shoulders, with grins as wide as their dreams, I breathe wistful, silent sighs.

“This is ending. It took us 18 full summers to get here. And it will never be again. Even when you come home from your colleges, and you get together, it won’t be this — this shared, mischievous, carefree, continued adventure that has been childhood.”

These kids are stepping from our lives to their own.

Of course, Seth will always be very much in my life. But his life is about to grow way beyond mine.

I’ve been the hub of the wheel. The calendaring, the meals, the money handed out for gas and school books and lunch on the choir trip has all required me.

In a few weeks, we’ll pack up boxes with his things and move him to a new school and a new town. I’ll get phone calls and texts, but no more “I need my uniform by tomorrow, Mom” or “I’ll be home late, Mom.”

Being a mom has been the pinnacle of what I’ve wanted in this life. Life hasn’t been fancy and that is fine by me. Who needs fancy when life is rich with babies, afternoons at the park, conversations and cutting up in a few different minivans, basketball games and ballet recitals, and listening to the back door open and close a hundred times on a summer day?

This entire month, I have wished I could push pause and just stay right here. Release is so hard, no matter how right.

As I release this fourth child, it feels like a strong wind has taken hold of my kite and I’m watching its string unwind quickly through my grasp.

I’m watching it go further and further out and I already miss it.

We do not know the true value of our moments until they have undergone the test of memory. Like the images the photographer plunges into a golden bath, our sentiments take on color; and only then, after that recoil and that trans-figuration, do we understand their real meaning and enjoy them in all their tranquil splendor. ~ Georges Duhamel

But I did know their value.

I have always known — even on the hardest days and in my most impatient moments. I have treasured the little hand slipped into mine, a grocery cart full of tow-headed preschoolers, grass worn bare from summers of touch football.

Through the tired and late nights and loads of laundry, I loved those moments and I knew they were fleeting.

photo credit

In the last few weeks, I’ve noticed small green oranges forming on our orange trees.

Before there was any fruit, the trees were covered in buds that opened in early spring to a profusion of small white flowers.

Orange blossoms have an undeniable sweet scent. I remember driving through Florida’s rolling hills of orange groves as a child when the orange blossom fragrance was so strong it came right through our car windows.

And yet, as heady as that scent is, no farmer would be content with a grove of orange blossoms. His labor is meant to produce fruit.

These last 18 years? They have been good.

But they have been bud and blossom. How I have loved the sweet beauty of this season and boy is it hard to release.

But there is great fruit. And though different from the beauty of bud and blossom, it is good. Deeply satisfying.

For now, the black robe is hung back up in my closet and the mortar board tucked onto a shelf. They’ll be needed again for another brother in two years.

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