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Best of 2024: Leading Your Family as a Single Mom (Part 1 of 2)

Focus on the Family / Jim Daly
The Truth Network Radio
December 3, 2024 2:00 am

Best of 2024: Leading Your Family as a Single Mom (Part 1 of 2)

Focus on the Family / Jim Daly

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December 3, 2024 2:00 am

If you’re a single parent, you’ve got the job of two people and doing all you can to keep your family afloat! On this two-day Focus on the Family broadcast, Pam Farrel (raised by a single mom) and PeggySue Wells (a single mom of seven!) offer guidance to single moms (and dads!) as they navigate life with their children. They examine some of the best decisions a single mom can make—things like choosing to thrive, creating a nurturing home, introducing your child to Jesus, and learning to respond to situations in healthy ways. It’s an encouraging conversation for the single parent!

 

Receive the book The 10 Best Decisions a Single Mom can Make and the audio download of the broadcast "Leading Your Family as a Single Mom" for your donation of any amount! Your Gift DOUBLES to Give Families Hope! Save 2X the marriages and families this Christmas with your life-changing gift today!

  

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Giving Tuesday, a global day of giving, is a great way to share your blessings with hurting families. Give families hope with your support of Focus on the Family this holiday season. Let's partner together to help save marriages, equip parents to raise children in faith, rescue mothers and babies from abortion, and more. When you give now, your donation will be doubled through a matching gift. Go to FocusOnTheFamily.com slash Giving Tuesday or call 1-800 the letter A in the word family. And she's with us today along with her co-author and friend Peggy Sue Wells. This is Focus on the Family with Jim Daly and we're looking back at our best of 2024 episodes. Thanks for joining us. I'm John Fuller. John, did you know that one in four homes is led by a single parent?

I did not. That's a staggering number. I think it represents somewhere around 20 million children too. So a high number of children are living in the single parent household. And man, I imagine many single parents never thought their marriages would fail. Or it could be a situation where, you know, a person is a widow or widower and that's the situation they're in.

We don't know all reasons for single parenting, but circumstances happen and there it is. We want to help you. We want to come alongside you.

You are doing probably the hardest job in the world and you're doing it with one hand tied behind your back. And we want to recognize that. We typically lean toward talking about a single parent mom because the predominant number of single parents are moms. But we recognize that dads are there. We see you and we want you to know that. And a lot of the content we're going to talk about today you can translate into your experience. So don't feel like we're ignoring you. We want to, though, help all of you and single parent moms are the predominant structure that we see. So we'll be talking about that today.

Yeah, we've got help, by the way, at the ministry for all kinds of families wherever you're at. But this conversation features, as I said, Pam Farrell and Peggy Sue Wells. They're both authors and speakers and Pam is married to Bill. You've heard them before on this show and seen them on the Focus website. Peggy Sue has seven children and, as we'll hear, she raised them on her own. And these two ladies have authored a book together called The 10 Best Decisions a Single Mom Could Make, a biblical guide for navigating family life on your own. Look in the show notes for details or give us a call if you have any questions.

Our number is 800, the letter A in the word family. Pam and Peggy Sue, welcome to Focus. Thanks for having us. It's so good to have you. And Peggy Sue, is this your first time on the broadcast?

It is, but I have watched all my life. Yeah, that's so great. And we're going to unfold your stories, but we're already thinking sainthood for you, given that you raised seven kids on your own. We're all going, ah.

I mean, that right there is very amazing. Seven kids. What was the age spread of those children? The oldest was graduating high school and getting ready to start her life. The youngest was a year old and that's when my single parent journey began was when she was one. I'm looking forward to hearing that because that had to take so much resourcefulness on your part to do that.

And I'm sure a lot of moms are going, okay, I have two kids and she had seven. I can learn from her and we'll talk about that. But let's start with both of you just describing why you created this resource, this great book, Ten Best Decisions. And how did you get to ten best decisions?

I mean, I'm always wondering, did God give you a dream or what? So the ten part, that's where my side comes in. Peggy Sue was working at a radio station and I was a frequent guest there and talked about parenting a lot. And Harvest House has our series, Ten Best Decisions a parent can make, a single can make, a woman can make, a man can make.

Okay, if I write Ten Best Decisions a dog can make, you just got to stop, right? But we had talked a lot about parenting off air, not just on air. And when I heard that she's a single mom of seven, you know, I'm like excited to learn about Peggy Sue. And so we had a lot of friendship conversations off air. So then one day Peggy Sue called me and I said, would you partner with me on writing this book? And she said, oh, you need to probably just go find another single mom to write with who's an author. And I said, no, Pam, I am going to pursue you because Pam's mom was a single mom.

So Pam is the promise. This is not your identity. This is your experience. And you can still be fine. You know, God is going to work even in this. Your kids might turn out.

Yes, it is possible. It's a good place to start, Pam. Let's turn your direction. You were the child. I was also raised in a single parent mom household so I can identify with you. Your story makes you cry. I love it.

It's so inspiring. But in your situation, what happened? What broke apart?

Right. So I'm the firstborn daughter of an alcoholic dad with severe rage issues. Like I always thought that I would make the headlines, but not for a good reason. More like, man shoots family than shoots himself. A lot of domestic violence in the home that I grew up in. My dad was crippled by, like emotionally handicapped and crippled, tormented by the alcohol that he had consumed since he was basically a child. Alcohol runs in my family tree like sap.

It goes back many generations. And so my mom, she tried her best to hang in there and make the marriage work for quite a while. And then in my high school years, things started getting worse and worse. And my mom was kind of a functional single mom most of my childhood just because my dad traveled for work.

So he was gone five days and only home on the weekends. And then the weekends were scary. And so that's kind of the home that I grew up in. But my mom's best friend, she saw the chaos that we were living in. And when I was about seven, she invited us to come to church. And there I met people who love Jesus. And I'm like, this is what love looks like.

Oh, I want to know the author of Jesus. So I was eight when I made the decision to come to know Christ in a personal way. And my mom was 28. So we kind of grew up in our faith together.

And by the time I was a senior in high school, things were getting very scary. And so things came to like a decision point because my mom had this fracture with reality that day. My sister called and she my sister was wise enough to come on my mom's friends who was in Al-Anon with her. And she said, we need to get her to the doctor.

And I don't know this doctor, but I am so grateful for this doctor who said, and your husband may kill you because he had tried to throw my mom out of the second story sliding glass door off the patio that week. You can stay and your husband may kill you. You can stay and you might snap and you would kill him. Either one of those, your kids won't have a parent or you could stay and lose your mind. And then who would raise your kids or you could separate hoping your husband will get help for his alcoholism. And you can rescue your kids because it is dangerous where you live. And I'm so grateful for that doctor because my mom said, you're right.

And she finally got the courage to call her parents. The other the other component of that is I read the book was he also said you can medicate, but I'm not going to write a prescription. He would not write a prescription. That is big because I think too few doctors in today's culture would refuse the medication.

Right. He's like, I should. You could become numb.

You could become numb, but you wouldn't be a good parent then either. Like he was really watching out for us kids. That was amazing.

I thought I thought that was really good. And Pam, that I mean, my heart goes out to you. I mean, that oldest daughter getting that phone call. You bore all the responsibility trying to be the stable one in the household that was chaotic.

No, I get it. I mean, I was the youngest of five. So but that burden, you are an adult child. That's what that environment creates out of you. To which people go, oh, yeah, OK, so God equipped you to be an author and a successful speaker with your husband. And I remember doing some counseling with Jean and the people were like, oh, yeah, that's tough life, Jim.

But it gave you the tools to be CEO and focus. Now let's move over to Jean. You know, I'm going to wait a minute, wait a minute. I want some sympathy here.

Can we unpack this just a little bit more? You know, you have to make decisions earlier. You become either broken or responsible.

And for those that are able to grow up responsibly in that. The other thing is you learn not to do what they did. Exactly. I'm sure that was your experience, too.

Mine, too. I'm not going to become what my father was, who was also an alcoholic. Exactly. So you learn from it if you can, if you have the wisdom. And then you have to decide how you don't, you know, kind of carry the burden of that, too.

What was key about what you said is that you have to make the decision not to do those patterns. And that's where part of the book titled Ten Best Decisions is because a single mom and the children, when that relationship splits, it's a trauma. And then her brain, the thinking part of the brain goes offline and we go into trauma mode. And trauma mode is fight, flight, freeze or please. And you're in that.

So you're reacting, you're not responding. And so there's no way to get out of that except to have someone either help you or walk through some steps or something where you can finally trigger your brain to come back online and start thinking again. And so with the book, we said, let's take you through some very important steps.

Follow these, walk with us. And then as you go through this, pretty soon you're going to be thinking again. And then you'll be able to make those decisions because that's a lot of times you look at a single mom, you're watching her life, you're watching her behavior and you're like, what is she thinking? And then you see the children that are down at the principal's office on a regular basis because of their behavior. And everybody's saying, what are they thinking? And it's because they're not thinking. It's impossible.

They can't. They're in trauma brain. And so she's reacting. And children, the only way they can show they have a broken heart is through their behavior. And so they're not bad kids. They're kids with a broken heart. That's a very good point. I think this is good for the listeners and the viewers to connect with where you're coming from.

And so I appreciate that vulnerability. Pam, Peggy Sue, you have a different story in this single motherhood journey. Describe what happened with you and your husband. How old were the kids? What was going on?

Yeah, the oldest was graduating high school and the youngest was a year old. And it was kind of the same thing where there had been a lot of travel in the career. So there would be times where, you know, just being the kids, motoring along, doing fine.

And then, you know, he would come home for a while and then he'd be gone again. And we just kind of like had life like that for a while. And then things just began to escalate. And as they began escalating, it finally reached a point where I had to say, you know, we just all gathered together in the family room. And I said, you know, this isn't a good situation. You know, it's not good for kids to see that this is how adults interact. It's not good for us to, you know, have that this is what family looks like.

It's damaging. So we have to make a decision. We have to decide if we're going to make some shifts here or we have to decide that I have to put some boundaries up that this has to be safe for the family. And so everybody got to make a choice. And, you know, people do what they do for their own reasons.

I think it has everything to do with me. The truth is that really we do what we do for our own reasons. And they make choices based on what we what we have to do internally.

And interestingly, that choice, even though they're making it because of their own reasons, it can have a Grand Canyon size impact on the people around you based on the choices. But, yeah, he chose out, you know, and that was his choice. And we have done our best with that.

So, again, husbands can better understand what took place there. I mean, you two talked about it. You were trying to be adult about it. And we did so much counseling. We tried all the counseling, all the books, all the prayers, all the fasting, all the mentoring.

I mean, we really worked hard. I know when it was it was at the end where I'm like, there is nothing more that I know of that I could do physically, emotionally, spiritually. I, I, I've done all the things that I can possibly know to do. And his point was, it's too hard. I'm done.

I'm checking out. I, you know, again, being the person I am, the place I came from, I can't believe a man would leave you with seven kids. I mean, that's rough.

But it's also what is their experience and what are they working through? You see what I'm saying? Yeah, I get that.

There's a man. Sorry. It's still you're leaving your wife, even if you're not getting along, but you're leaving seven kids.

That, that's almost an insurmountable mountain for you and the kids. And we do. I'm sorry to be that rough on that. No, but we do pray that men will rise up and do what you say and not walk out.

And again, I so appreciate your tenderness. And, you know, I'm sure we all have family of origin issues, but at some point as believers, we got to say, okay, we're going to break those chains. I know I'm coming across as a little cold, but it really irks me that we don't live up to what we profess. And, you know, we need to. I think if the church acted more Christ-like, we'd have greater healing in our families.

And men particularly, it needs to start with us as leaders to do the things we need to do, even out of obligation. That's okay. That's a good call. But, okay, so he left.

What do you do day one? How do you get your kids together and go, all right, everybody, here's what's happening. That's, I mean, one year old up to a senior in high school. That's a broad spectrum of explanation. It breaks everyone's heart. Everyone just has a broken heart.

Everybody feels betrayed. One of my kids said, everything I thought was true about our family was a lie. And I kind of had to go back and say, it wasn't all a lie, but I understand. That's the level of betrayal that you feel from someone that you think is going to stay with you and be there all the time. So, yeah, so we had to work through that.

And I have adult kids that are functioning, contributing part of society. I'm just so proud of them. I like to say I had good material to work with.

They're doing well, but they will always have a broken heart. And like you said about things that we've gone through, sometimes it's like we've got to leverage this either as a tool to move forward or we can drown in it. Well, yeah, I applaud you giving the kids that kind of path. You know, the Lord certainly sets the path. But a good parent in this kind of situation, in your case, a good mom, which was my story with a good mom, laying the foundation that the Lord could use to build on. That's not easy, but it's doable.

It is. And, you know, I want to give my mom credit. She's like my hero. She went from that broken place to like seeking Jesus with her whole heart. And when I began a friendship with Peggy Sue, I saw her as a hero. I mean, seven kids.

Wow. And she's an amazing mom. And so we thought through what are those decisions? What are those smart decisions that Peggy Sue made, that my mom made, that gave her kids, gave me and then Peggy Sue's kids, that head start, that ability to heal, the ability to move forward in life. And on the front cover of Tempest Decisions, a single committee, there's two umbrellas and people are like, why do you have umbrellas on there? And they're not even pink and blue.

They're olive and red. Right. And they really, the top umbrella is that God is our shelter. And in Psalms 27, it says, he will keep me safe in his dwelling. He will hide me in the shelter of his sacred tent. And that's really a promise from God that he will take care of you, single mom.

He will shelter you if you give him a chance. And then the second umbrella is the single mom and the promise that he will send showers of blessing. That's what we pray that as a result of the contents of Tempest Decisions, single mom can make, that those decisions, those choices will become a life that God can bless her, the kids, their future. And this is Focus on the Family with Jim Daly.

You're hearing from the heart. Our guests are Pam Farrell and Peggy Sue Wells as they encourage single parents in their very important role. The book that is a terrific resource written by our guests is The 10 Best Decisions a Single Mom Can Make.

And as Jim said earlier, these are principles that any single parent can apply. So contact us today for a copy. Our number is 800, the letter A and the word family.

And we've also got details, of course, in the episode notes. And while you're there, be sure to sign up for our free audio collection. It's our best of 2024 programs.

You'll gain access to an entire library of trusted faith building, parenting and marriage shows. And so sign up today. And again, I just want to say this because we'll hear from the single parent dads. We know you're there and the shoe is probably on the other foot.

It was your spouse, perhaps, that said I'm done and left you with the kids. And we get that. So apply the principles and we know this applies to you too. And you also have one arm tied behind your back and we get that.

Let me go to both of you. What are the dangers of stuffing emotions when you're going through this kind of hardship like a divorce or separation? I mean, it's easy to do. Let's not talk about it in front of the kids. And of course, the kids, as a kid in that situation, Pam will ask you first. You know something's not right as that child. I mean, it happened to me when I was five and I could tell something wasn't right. And all of a sudden, dad wasn't around much or at all. But you didn't feel like you could say, where's dad? Because there was something wrong about talking about him. Does that make sense?

It does. I think the harder part for my mom and I, because I was older, I became like a confidant to my mom. But she was wise enough to realize, oh my goodness, Pam shouldn't have to be my counselor. I need to get a good counselor. I need to go talk to my pastor.

I need to find a Christian counselor. One of her first best decisions that she made is she surrounded herself with support system, other single parents that had moved forward in life. And so she made a lot of decisions very quickly, moving us out.

Well, she moved us out of California back home to where her parents lived. Oh, so you had support. Yes, right down the street from wonderful grandparents. We went there a lot because they were stable and encouraging.

And grandpa was like a male role model for my brother, especially. Yeah. And so there were some good decisions that she made quickly. And sometimes that's really tough to do because you're selling the house. You're like splitting finances. There's lawyers.

It's a lot. And so we always encourage single moms, like don't go through it alone. When Bill and I were pastoring, we had a two step process. And so a woman would come in for counseling or the couple maybe have been counseling with Bill. And then the guy opts out. We get the single mom in a room with her best friends from the church that are healthy and her family maybe from the area. And we say, OK, we need a crisis plan, six to eight weeks.

And then we'll work on the long term plan to move you and the kids forward. Wow. Peggy Sue, from a mom's perspective, that stuffing of the emotions. I mean, some of that, what Pam is describing is wisdom. So it's not like completely healthy to just unload. And it's like you said, it's not ideal. The situation is not ideal, but it is our real. So we have to deal with our real. And one of the things that was really important was to be able to still have those feelings, because I went through a place of this just hurts too much.

I'm just going to shut it all down. But they're like grapes. You know, our emotions are like grapes. So if I shut that down, then I don't have the love and the joy and the happiness that goes with it.

So you have to be bold and courageous and brave enough to feel all the feelings, because that's what makes us human. And so I would we made some rules in our home because everybody was at a different stage at a different time. So somebody would be fine. Somebody else would be just terrible. Somebody else would be angry.

Somebody else would think it was, you know, everything was good and somebody else would be like, you know, worst day ever. So we kind of had to put some ground rules, which said you can feel what you feel and we want you to feel it. However, you cannot take it out on someone else. And you also cannot demand that that person change how they feel.

So feel your feelings, but it cannot come out on others. And you will honor you. This is where you are right now. And that's where you are right now.

And it's going to shift. I would think that really helped the kids regulate their emotions in a healthy way, not to stuff them down, but to release them appropriately. Because we need to be able to feel them in order to be whole and healthy and then to be whole and healthy for our relationships that we will be involved in and that we're involved with now. That's really good. Let's turn a little corner and talk about elements of fun in a, you know, an environment that easily says, hey, why are you having fun?

There's nothing to have fun about here. We had not smiled for a while. And I realized at one time when I'm like, OK, life has to keep going.

I can't just crumble even though I felt like it. And one of my daughters needed to get her driver's license. And so I'm like, OK, I've got to get her parallel parking so we can, you know, finish this permit and she can get the license.

I have to move forward. So I said to the kids, OK, I'm going to take her driving for practice. And everybody else is like, we're coming. And they all pile into our nine passenger or 12 passenger vans. So we're all in there.

And she there was and they came is because she's really spastic. And so we're like, you know, jerking in the car and almost crashing into things. And we laughed. We started laughing and laughing and laughing. And in that moment, I realized my face hadn't laughed in months.

I mean, you're hurt. And then we were laughing so hard that, you know, there were some people that, you know, maybe about their pants. I'm not naming names, but it was good fun. And I since realized that fun is part of helping everybody to be able to have a healthy life. And then one of the other ways that we did that was we would go visit places. We needed to get away from our home and realize that our problems were this big.

But the world is this big and God is this big. And so it put things back in perspective. And then each of the kids, I would say to them, what is your interest? What do you want to do? And so somebody wanted to raise animals and somebody want to play music and somebody wanted to be in the Civil Air Patrol. And so everybody we we sent them to all their things so that they could develop and they could have fun with other people and they could laugh with them. And and then we would also watch a comedy video every so often. Like if we hadn't laughed in a while, there was a every Friday night there was a comedy video on. And now my family speaks to each other in video quotes, movie quotes and book quotes. We had to laugh.

And it was very, very healthy. That's so good in the book. And we're right at the end here.

So let's come back for another day and keep this discussion going if you can. But right at the end, maybe to tease this up for next time in the book, you talk about five roots of conflict that break out in family. Let's just list the five and describe them briefly. They are rejection, resentment, resistance, revenge and repeat.

Yeah. And which one stands out for you? And not that there's a favorite in that category because they're all pretty negative. It all starts with rejection.

It all starts that is the beginning of the five hour parade is when I feel rejected and then I go through the rest of the hours and then we have damage to a relationship. Why don't we pick up there next time and we'll go through those a little more slowly and explore them. Can we do that?

Yeah. Well, what a moving conversation with Pam Farrell and Peggy Sue Wells on today's episode of Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. There is a lot more to come next time. Pam and Peggy Sue gave us some solid footholds for single moms and I so appreciate that and dads too. We know being a single parent is not an easy journey, but we're here to help you know that you can come to focus on the family. You are doing a difficult job and we want to support you. We're here for you.

That's the clear message we want to give you. And we have caring Christian counselors who you can talk with and they will pray with you and suggest other resources as you move forward in your healing and develop the hope that the Lord wants in all of us. We also have Pam and Peggy Sue's terrific book, The 10 Best Decisions a Single Mom Can Make, a biblical guide for navigating family life on your own.

Yeah, and as you heard, it's a useful guide for single moms that will help your family remain healthy and thriving. And that is needed now more than ever it seems. And John, we've seen a year full of stressful politics, financial challenges, unbelievable social changes, and those pressures that just seem to keep mounting. And struggling families could really use some hope. I mean that we can get this job done, staying married together, having a marriage that lasts, raising our kids in such a way that they are healthy and productive.

Most of all to share the hope that Jesus Christ came to give us and that's eternal life in him. You can come alongside hurting individuals to give families that hope through your support of Focus on the Family. And with today being Giving Tuesday, a global day of giving following Thanksgiving, we would be blessed and honored if you choose to support Focus on the Family. And when you give a gift of any amount today, we'll send you a copy of The 10 Best Decisions a Single Mom Can Make as our way of saying thank you. Also, we know that your finances could be stretched as a single parent.

Just get in touch with us. We'll trust others. We'll cover the cost of getting that book to you. So donate today and get your copy of The 10 Best Decisions a Single Mom Can Make when you stop by our show notes or give us a call.

Eight hundred, the letter A in the word family. On behalf of the entire team, thanks for listening to Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we continue the conversation with Pam Farrell and Peggy Sue Wells, and once again, help you and your family thrive in Christ. fun Christmas activities to do with your family and reminders of Christ's love for us. Listen at Focus on the Family dot com slash Christmas stories or like and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Whisper: medium.en / 2024-12-03 02:16:32 / 2024-12-03 02:28:50 / 12

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