The Next Right Thing

So, I'm going to give you two words and I want you to respond to it. Are you ready?

Now I'm ready. Okay. Single mom. First thought is committed, loving, best mom in the world. My mom. Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Ann Wilson.

And I'm Dave Wilson, and you can find us at familylifetoday.com or on our Family Life app. This is Family Life Today. I did not realize I was being raised by a single mom until I was a teenager. It didn't hit me. I mean, I miss my dad.

I miss that part of my life, but it didn't hit me. She is doing all of this, you know? And so when I hear, yeah, single mom, I end up with all kinds of words and we get to talk about that today. And so we get to put some words around it. But and I'm excited because I feel like a lot of times we don't address single moms enough.

I think that they feel a little lost and forgotten. And I know with your mom, I don't know how she did it. Like, it's remarkable. But we're excited today because we are going to talk about this. Yeah. And I would even say, as we start, if you know a single mom, write her a note. Pray for her.

Send her a gift right now. I mean, I know my mom felt alone a lot. Yeah. OK, enough about me and enough about her mom. So we get to talk about a book today which has a great title, The 10 Best Decisions A Single Mom Can Make. And we've got two of the most prolific authors.

Yes. I think I've ever, ever met in my life. Pam Farrell and Peggy Sue Wells. First, welcome to Family Life today.

Thanks. Great to be at Family Life. We raised our kids listening to Family Life, didn't we?

That's exactly what I said. We pulled into the parking lot. I'm like, I listen to this, raising my kids. It was such good. Did you really? Where did you listen to it?

On the radio in California. OK, mine goes even further back. So Bill and I, we were dating and I was deciding whether to marry Bill. And I said in her Dennis Rainey's teaching on marriage at a crew conference. So I always credit, you know, Family Life with giving us a great marriage, you know, 42 years later.

Forty two years. So you were on crew staff. We were not. We were students, actually. Oh, yeah.

That's great. And then you write, you know, a book I think a lot of us have read. I know probably what? Millions have read.

Well, four hundred, five hundred thousand, something like that. Yeah. Yeah.

Just a few people read. Men are men are like waffles. Women are like spaghetti and then red hot monogamy. Yes, that's a fun one. You have written over 50 books. Great. That's incredible. Yeah, that's crazy. We've written two.

We think we're like dying just to get two out. The first is the hardest and the most exciting, though. So you have accomplished that great hurdle. And thank you, Susan.

Here you're like no lightweight. Thirty books. Really? Yeah.

So how did you two get together and decide, let's write a book together? OK, Peggy Sue tells it best. Really? Here's the thing.

I was working as producer for a radio station up in Fort Wayne, WBCL. And Hoosiers, by the way. Exactly. Hoosiers, well, you know, going to college there. Ball State. The great, the great Ball State. Yeah.

The Harvard of the Midwest. OK, go ahead. So as I was there, I was already familiar with Pam Farrell and Bill Farrell with their books. I'd read them, you know, as I was married and as I was raising my kids and whatnot. And as a producer, I would book different authors and she's releasing books pretty regularly. And so they would come across my desk and she was always a great interview.

And there was a couple of times where I would even have, OK, we've got this empty place because somebody had to, you know, couldn't come at the last minute. I would call Pam Pam. Oh, yeah. I mean, she was just ready all the time. Every interview was great. Our listeners loved her. She would do a lot of Q&A afterward. And she wrote this book about parenting. And it had all these great tips about parenting. And I kind of like a pile of these books.

I'm handing it out to the lady who does my hair. And I'm just like, this is such a good book. Everybody needs it. And then you did one about singles, you know. And so then I'm like, well, wait, you know, we've got parenting.

We've got singles. And I happen to be a single mom. And I kind of fought writing about it because you get really vulnerable about it.

And I didn't want to be known as that person. And then somebody said, well, how long? And I said, well, like 20 years I've been a single mom. And they said, we have a lot of experience. So can you share that? And I'm like, yeah, I can do that.

And I didn't want to do it by myself. And so I went to Pam immediately for a couple of reasons. And she was perfect for it. One is she's super wise. She knows about parenting. She knows about that relationship with the Lord that it's all about. Pam was raised by a single mom.

Right. My parents' marriage fractured. And so I was raised the end of my growing up years by my awesome single mom, who I call my hero. But I definitely watched my siblings being raised most of their childhood by my single mom, who I adore often. And Peg Sue and I, it was funny, like when I would be on the radio for 10 Best Decisions a parent can make, we would have these sidebar conversations for like 30 minutes, just about single moms and like the need to care for them and what churches could do. Because my husband was a pastor and I was a director of women's ministry. So our hearts were bonded probably a decade before the opportunity came up to write 10 Best Decisions a single mom can make. And she asked me a really interesting question at one point.

She's like, why don't you write with another single mom? And I said, because you came from that. And what Pam shows is that this is an experience. It's not your identity, because you either are a single mom or because you're raised by a single mom. That is just an experience that feeds into who you are, into the tapestry of your life. But it's not an identity.

It's not a stamp like, oh, you're never going to grow this. I'm like, now her and Bill are traveling the world helping people have really strong marriages. And so I'm like, you're the one I want.

So I kind of like wouldn't let her go. And she got on board and the information that she put into this book is so powerful for the two of us writing together because she has such great experience. But I've had people pick up this book and they say there's such good parenting stuff in here. So it's not just a single parent book?

No, I've had a lot of people come back and go, we love it just for the parenting advice, because what we did was we took from both of us, because our kids are grown now, we took everything that worked. Yes, right. Oh, that's good. Only the list that worked. And then we brought in some sidebar sisters, other people that have walked that. We took everything that was the best information that we can give you for that single mom and her family to be successful. And that's what we poured into the book. Well, Peggy Sue, walk us through your past, because you have seven kids.

Just seven. Tell us about that. Like in becoming a single mom had to be an experience that was not easy.

It wasn't what I wanted. You know, you have that script in your head. This is how my life's going to go. And my parents split up when I was young. And so I had really thought, I'm going to do this different.

I'm going to do it, you know, I'm going to fix whatever problems I'm going to do this right. And then 20 years into it, the youngest was not two. She was just a year old and their dad chose out. And, you know, we make choices. We choose whether we stay or go. And so then it was like, OK, in one evening I was, you know, started that journey as a single mom.

And if I could go back and do it over again, because I made so many like slow changes that should have been done much faster. But the shame and the humiliation was kind of the hardest part to deal with. And I kind of wanted to introduce you to the single mom today, if that's all right. But I'd like to tell you who she is. And here's who the single mom is today.

And this is who we wrote for. One in four homes is single mom led. Fifty percent of kids are expected to live in a single parent home before age 18. Three quarters of single moms have full time careers. Less than half receive government assistance. And most of those only do until they can support their family on their own. Under half of them get any sort of child support.

Those that do get about six thousand a year. Forty percent of single moms are over 40. Eighty five percent of them don't go to church. They're unchurched because they feel judged and they feel not welcome at the church. Most feel alone, isolated and judged. But they're not alone because single moms, there are 15 million solo moms raising 22 million kids.

And she wishes that the cleaning fairy would stop in once a week, leave everything sparkling, something delicious simmering in the oven. And that's why we wanted to write this book, too, to say we've got some ideas and some tips so that we can help. So that in all of the devastation that's going on, that we still can raise some really solid kids and some kids that are going to be able to go out there and make some really good decisions. And some moms are going to come alongside them and help them make those decisions. The majority of the moms that are single moms, it's because of a separation or divorce.

And so they didn't start out to raise a child by themselves. And so there's going to be like this kind of this crisis, this trauma that hits. There's a betrayal. There's like it's not good news when you wind up, you know, with this relationship splitting. And so when there's that break there, we enter into a trauma situation.

And so the front part of our brain, which is the thinking part of our brain, God designed it that we go offline and it goes back to the part that's the fight, flight or freeze. And most of these moms, we stay there. And so we look at single moms around us and we're like, what is she thinking? I'm sure people looked at me.

I would look at myself in the mirror. I'm like, what am I thinking? And sometimes you watch kids in that setting and you're like, what are they thinking? They're not. They're not thinking because we're in this trauma situation.

So we're not able to think and make good decisions when we most need to. So are they just surviving? I mean, they're just getting through. We are reacting, not responding.

Oh, that's good. And then because of the setting, you know, for some people that that split or that shift into being a single mom will be to, you know, we have a couple of odd years and then we kind of get into the groove and we move along with other people. It seems like the trauma and the upset and, you know, just the the crisis goes on and on and on with every phone call, with every visit, with, you know, have to get a new job. Do we have to relocate? Do we have to do visitations?

Do we have to go to court? Do we have there's all these things that come. And so with each one of them that comes, that thinking part of your brain is not able to come online. You're still back here in the fight, flight or freeze. And that's where the moms and these kids are living. And so that's why when Pam and I put the book together, we're like, we get this.

We know this is where you are. And so we're going to help you make the next right decision, do the next right thing until finally that thinking part comes back online. And then you'll see those moms fly. Now, Pam, do you remember, you know, watching your mom sort of experience what Peggy Sue's saying? Because when I hear that, I'm like, oh, yeah, that's what my mom went through. I mean, I didn't have words for them.

But now, as you say it, I'm like, oh, I was the kid watching this. You'll see I'm tearing up even right now as I think about the trauma my mom went through. If you have heard any of my story through any of those other books.

Those other 50 books? I know. I'm the firstborn daughter, alcoholic dad, severe rage issues. I always thought that our family would make the headlines, but not for a good reason. More like man shoots family than shoots himself. Ton of domestic violence in the home that I grew up in.

But my mom, she would put her like superwoman cape on and try to stand between us and the violence. That's where she lived is in that state of trauma. Now, the upside is my dad's job kept him traveling five days a week. So it was only two days a week on the weekends.

That was like crazy chaos survival mode for the most part. And that's how we survived for 17 years of the marriage. I was a freshman in college when my parents marriage like finally frayed apart. And she was living in a beautiful gated community, very wealthy. My dad was very successful at work, despite the fact that he was living out of the bottle and drinking all the time.

But he was so brilliant at what he did. He was able to function and until he got home at night and then the violence would appear. And so I got this phone call from my sister begging me to come home because she had left in the morning for school. And when she came home, my mom was still in her pajamas. Now, you have to know something about my mom. My mom is a type A driver. Get it done. Serve the community.

PTA president. She was like all of that. I'm not like looking at your mom right now. I didn't hear it some of the best traits from my mom.

Bless her. So that's who my mom is normally. But my mom was still in her pajamas at the end of the day. And she was sitting in the shower cleaning the grout with a toothbrush. And she had been there all day. And my sister's like, something's wrong with mom. I think that her heart and her mind have broken. I think the trauma of all this, you know, and she told me what had happened the last weekend, that they had all barricaded themselves in again, like we always did in one room, puts the dresser in front of the door, you know, so dad couldn't get in with a baseball bat, all that kind of stuff. So they had spent the weekend trying to survive and it had finally caught up to my mom. And I said, I'll be right there.

I'll be right there. Pam, let me ask you at any point where you kids saying, mom, you need to get out. You need to get safe. Yes. In fact, for probably a decade, we were saying, it's OK, mom. Yeah. If you need to leave, it's OK. She just had this core value of wanting the marriage to work.

Probably for you kids. She did. She knew that even if it's chaotic, that there was always this hope that dad would go to AA, that dad would go to church with us because the four of us went to church. My mom and the three siblings, we all went to church. And it was because my mom's best friend, Kathy, saw the chaos that we were living in when I was about six, seven years old. And she invited us to come to church.

And there I met loving people like you, all the Wiltons. And I saw what love looked like. And as a little girl, I said, I want to know the author of love, Jesus. And so I made a decision for Christ when I was little and I began reading the Bible and God fortified my life. He gave me hope and joy in the midst of chaos.

And my mom came to Christ right after that, within that same year through being the craft lady at Vacation Bible School and hearing that Jesus story through child's eyes. Let me pause just for a second, because I'm thinking of all of us who are scared to invite our neighbors to church or to share the gospel or like, oh, will they be offended? That's what brought you guys life.

Exactly. On this planet and in eternity, like changed the course of our family tree. I was able to go back to that little tiny church and that little teeny tiny town, less than 100 people.

I'm related to most of them. And so this little teeny white church I brought at that time, I had written like 20 books. And so I brought 20 books and I handed them to the church librarian. And I told the story of me coming to church and that church was my sanctuary as a little girl. So every time the doors were open, me or my siblings or my mom and I, all of us would be there in this safe place.

And Kathy, my mom's best friend, was sitting next to my mom with a Kleenex box between them. And they just sobbed through my whole story about how God can make anyone a woman of influence, anyone a difference maker. If we just are willing to give our heart to him in the middle of the muddle and the chaos and the mess. God can take you from the pit to the pulpit.

He can make something magnificent out of a mess. Wow. So keep going. So you you give your life to Christ. This is beginning to transform your life, your mom's life.

Right. But she's in that bathroom. Take us back to the grout. So she is sitting there and I come home from college. My roommate was even afraid to leave me there because she was so worried about what my dad might do.

But we were so used to crazy that it felt normal to us. And I'm assured her it would be OK because they're all all of us are here together. And my mom had called one of her friends that was a lovely Christian lady, but also in Al-Anon.

And my mom and my sister, they they went to the doctor and this godly doctor said to my mom, all right, you have a few choices here. You can stay and eventually your husband may kill you. You can stay and you'll fracture and you might kill him. You can stay and maybe one of your kids will get killed and you won't be able to live with that or your husband wouldn't be able to live with that.

Or you can leave and get help with the hope that that will wake your husband up enough that he might reach out and get help, too. And so a wise counsel, just, you know, he'd probably seen it so many times. And when Mom laid out all those things in front of us, we said, that's what we've been trying to say, Mom. So she came and told you.

Yes. We had very tight relationship. That's great. And we were all teens, you know, anywhere from 14 to 19 at that point. How many of you were there? Three of us.

I'm the oldest of the three. And my grandfather had said to her when he when she married, he wasn't very excited about my dad. And so he had said, if you make your bed, you lie in it. But years later, he was so grieved that he had said that to his daughter that he said, come home, Afton, bring the kids and come home.

And so that's what we did. We moved a quarter mile away from my very healthy, happily married grandparents who had modeled wonderful love over all those years. They ended up being happily married more than 60 years. In fact, I asked Grandma and Grandpa, hey, it's your 60th anniversary. And Bill and I, like, we travel the world telling people how to stay in love for a lifetime.

What's your secret? And Grandma, she looked at me and then she looked at Grandpa and she's like, oh, girl, pure grit and determination. She had something. Right.

Yeah. So we went back home and going back home to Idaho, to familiar spaces, places, people that knew my mom since she was born. My mom has lived in that city that so long that the road she lives on is named after our family.

I mean, that's how far it goes back since we immigrated from New Zealand. So she went back to a safe place. And that's a lot of, we encourage women, if your life is in a hard spot, go back to the places and the people and the Bible verses that you know, that you know, that you know, that you last heard the word of God.

Because those are the safe places. And so we, my grandparents then stepped in. My grandfather stepped in and be a great role model of what a dad looks like, a healthy dad to help finish raising my siblings. And that's the year I also met Bill and we fell in love. So the first time my parents saw each other was at my wedding. Whoa. That was fun. Her story is very much like yours, Dave.

Yeah. I mean, it's crazy how your story is so similar to mine. I won't get into the details, but the same thing.

My mom went to her parents from New Jersey to Ohio. I didn't know why. Now I obviously know why you were seven. I was seven. Had a little brother, five. He died that year.

Leukemia. So you talk about trauma and three older siblings that were in college. And your sister was in high school. Oh, my goodness. The economically I'm just like teaching.

And that's what I saw my mom go from like very wealthy and he was like a single wide mobile home on her parents property. And we were all happy to be there. Believe me. Yeah. And so, I mean, listen to your story.

It's it's very common what you're experiencing. I mean, as hard as it is. And Peggy, so you go through it as the mom. You know, we're both the children. But how do you dig out of that trauma?

How does a single parent get their feet back? And I know that there's a different timeline for everybody. And I watched my mom. But what would you say? One of the things is to get a circle around you that is trustworthy and is strong. And that is a hard thing to do, because when my children and I found ourselves by ourselves, the first thing that my kids said to me was, can we not tell anyone? Oh, so they felt that shame as well.

Totally shamed. And my dad left when I was a kid. And the thing that I internalized, you know, we we take facts and we tell ourselves a story. The story I told myself about that was that I wasn't valuable enough for him to make the effort to stay together, to be a family, to stay and be my dad and raise me.

So I already had that. I'm not valuable. I took that same story and then applied it when my husband left. I'm like, oh, I'm not valuable enough for him to want to hang out and make this thing work either. And so I think that's part of what played into my children, because they're like, we are embarrassed. I mean, you know, things looked pretty OK from the outside, but we're embarrassed that we are this family that, you know, is what society calls a broken home. And let's be quite honest, the church hasn't known what to do with single mom families and they've not felt really welcome there. And there's always kind of been this little rule like we don't encourage divorce.

Well, you talk to any single mom out there. We don't encourage it either. It's hard. Yeah, this is not what anybody wants.

We want to get married, live happily ever after. And so there was an embarrassment and a humiliation. And so it was six months before my children one at a time found somebody in their circle that they felt comfortable enough to say, because we had also hoped, you know, he'd get himself together and come back. And then maybe a lot of people wouldn't have to know, you know, so that humiliation thing, that shame thing was pretty big in our circle. Were you going to church at the time? Was. OK.

Completely was. And so you found your circle of people there? Nope.

Interesting. No, in fact, that was one of the places that we felt probably we didn't want them to know it wasn't received really well. And so I had one close friend in town and then I had a best friend out in California.

So, you know, across the nation. So those are my two supports. They knew and I could call them and talk to them and they would help walk me through some things. And then, like I said, I let my kids one at a time choose someone. And most of them chose a teacher.

You know, I had kids that, you know, were from college on down and they would choose somebody like that kind of a mentor in their life that they told. But going back, if I could go back and do things again, I would say if the church that I was in or that you are in isn't a place where you feel like you can be vulnerable and be open and get that support. I would say then please look around in your community and find that somewhere, because that just might not be the chosen place for you to be right now. But there is a good church somewhere who's going to understand you and who is going to embrace you and who will be that place like what Pam had when she was young, where this is what healthy family looks like. And this is what healthy relationships look like. And oh, yeah, we all need a savior. Nobody's life is perfect. And you can be not perfect.

Exactly. I do remember maybe a decade ago or so, I've been pastoring for 30 years, started the church. So a founder with another couple and Dave and I had been doing a lot of marriage series. And so often we would have singles come up to us and say, we feel so left out.

We're never addressed. I remember I felt led to on the stage, say to the congregation, I apologize. I have let you down if you've felt like this church is a church where single parents, blended families, divorce, whatever. I don't even use the word broken, you know, but I had and I just I felt like I needed to start this sermon, which was a day on blended families and say, I'm sorry if you've ever felt that in this community, it's on me. It's on us. We're going to we're going to change that.

And I couldn't believe the line of people that basically said thank you for apologizing. Yes, we have felt that. And I know I felt it growing up in a single parent home at the church. And I would lay in bed at night and go, why me? You know, why us?

Why does it? And it was the same narrative. I had my head. Dad didn't love me enough.

He would have stayed if he did. And I know many single parents listen to right now feel that right. They feel unloved.

And I just want to say you are loved and I hope somebody sees you, but we see you. Our mission at Family Life is to see every home become a godly home. We recognize that every home has its challenges.

Every home is broken in some way. And no matter your circumstances, no matter what you're going through, Family Life exists to help point you toward healing and hope for your marriage and for your family. Dave and Ann Wilson have been talking today with Pam Farrell and Peggy Sue Wells about single parenting and the challenges that come with single parenting. And I'm wondering if during this conversation, perhaps God has brought to mind for you someone you know who's a single parent, who you could reach out to and say, I see you and I understand what you're going through.

I want to be here to help you. In fact, maybe give them a copy of the book that Pam and Peggy Sue have written called The 10 Best Decisions a Single Mom Can Make, a biblical guide for navigating family life on your own. We'd like to give you a copy of this book so you can pass it on to someone else. We're making the book available this week to any Family Life Today listener who would reach out to help support the ministry of family life, help us reach more people more often with practical biblical help and hope for their marriages and their families. If you make a donation today, you can request a copy of the book, The 10 Best Decisions a Single Mom Can Make. We'll send it to you as our thank you gift for your support. Donate online at familylifetoday.com or you can call to donate at 1-800-358-6329.

That's 1-800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. Now, I want to remind you, we have just a couple of days left for you to be signed up to maybe be our guest on the Love Like You Mean It marriage cruise in February of 2022. We are excited that the cruise is happening again next February. We have a limited number of cabins still available. We're giving one of those cabins to a Family Life Today listener.

Here's what you have to do to be eligible to be entered in the drawing for the cabin. Go to familylifetoday.com and download the Love You Better kit. This is a project our team has put together, a 30-day journey to help all of us do a better job of loving one another in marriage. It's a free download. There's no purchase necessary, void where prohibited. All of that legal stuff is on our website. You'll find it there.

But when you download the Love You Better kit, you're automatically entered in the drawing for the Love Like You Mean It marriage cruise. All the details are available on our website at familylifetoday.com, so head there and check it out. And I hope you'll join us again tomorrow when we're going to hear from Peggy Sue Wells and Pam Farrell about how important it is for single moms to have the right mindset as they approach this very challenging task of raising kids on your own. That's what's on tap tomorrow. Hope you can be with us for that. On behalf of our hosts Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We'll see you again tomorrow for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life, a crew ministry helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.