I’ve been a single parent longer than I was a married parent. Our daughter was only two years old when my husband died. In some ways, I don’t know anything different than holding the weight of parenting by myself. During those first two years of her life, we didn’t have to make the high stakes decisions that I have to make now. Now, it’s easy to quickly become overwhelmed by all the decisions, the division of time, and the statistics that tell me all the horrible things that are more likely to happen to her just because her dad is gone. While I feel like I’m still very much in the trenches of single parenting, I’ve taken many moments to sit and reflect on God’s truth to calm my anxious heart. Here are some of those truths.
I recognize that there are many circumstances where a married couple may be raising a fatherless child, including through foster care or adoption. This is an important dynamic, but one that I don’t have space to discuss here. I will focus on the perspective of mothers raising children without their fathers, whether that’s through death, divorce, abandonment, or any other situation that leaves a child essentially fatherless.
Christ Is Our Child’s Greatest Need
We know how hard parenting is, and we know we can’t possibly be both parents to our children, no matter how hard we try. I just can’t fill her dad’s shoes. That might sound devastating, but here’s what’s freeing about that: God doesn’t ask us to be their father.
Not only that, but our children’s greatest need is not that they grow up with a dad. Make no mistake, good fathers are a magnificent grace that point us to the character of God the Father. May the church be filled with God-glorifying dads who love their children and raise them up to be disciples of Jesus. But our children’s greatest need is a Savior, to be reconciled to God by God himself. Fathers are good fathers when they testify to this truth.
God’s grace is so much bigger than our children’s fatherlessness.
God loves our children more than we can, more than their fathers could—can we even wrap our minds around that?
May we use our precious, highly in-demand time to point our children to God. He is with them, even when we aren’t. He always keeps his promises, even when they’ve been hurt. He provides life eternal, even when they know the pain of death.
God Is Our Strength
What sports should we sign up for? What school is best? What church should we attend? Is this normal behavior? Does my child need counseling? Will they rebel against all I’ve tried to teach them? What is the best way to discipline through this issue? Is this boundary the best? Should I take that job? Should we move? Do I ask someone else to take them to that Daddy-Daughter/Son event?
Oh friend, this is not the way it’s supposed to be.
Without a child’s father, all the questions swirl in our brains. It feels like sorting through these questions and discerning the best path forward is all up to us. We need to make the best decisions with what we’ve got, and sometimes what we’ve got is, frankly, not enough. We grieve that we don’t have their father here to discuss these things. We weep at the questions that cross our minds that never would have if he was here. We lament the pain that we and our children will live with forever.
So we cry out to God. He is with us, and the Spirit strengthens us (Colossians 1:9–14). He is our helper and comforter (John 14:26). When we feel the urgent need for wisdom, patience, and grace sharply in our chest, we call out to the God who always hears us (Psalm 6:8–9; 22:24). The God of our salvation is with us. May this truth help us face another day of questions that we may not be able to answer. There will be days when it’s hard to see how God is working for good, and when this happens, we go to his Word. Scripture is our ultimate witness to God’s goodness, and we see this in the story of salvation at the cross.
Cry out to him and rely on him for the strength we so desperately need (Hebrews 4:16).
Church Is Good
Going to church as a single parent is really hard. For good reason, most churches are very nuclear. Although this is a positive thing, it means that families like ours can feel out of place. It’s a difficult tension: We don’t want to constantly be highlighted or treated special because we are single parents—many of the things single parents need are the same things married parents need. However, there are unique challenges of being a single parent, and many single-parent families stop going to church.1
Can I encourage you to still go?
By bringing our kids to church, they get to experience firsthand that the family of God is bigger than our individual family. And just like families, there can be conflict, tension, misunderstandings, disagreements, and awkwardness, but by growing up going to church, they see the power of Christ to unify people who would have no other reason to fellowship with one another (Ephesians 2:11–22). They may find godly male role models at church, but more importantly, they get to see the power of the gospel alive in all kinds of people: men, women, young, old. Even if our churches fail to meet all our physical needs, even if they disappoint us, the mere existence of the church is still a comfort to us. This is the power of Christ, to save a people for his own possession, to redeem hearts (Titus 2:11–14). This is the gospel that is our hope when we experience fractured families. Going to church, being with the very people of God, reminds us of this hope.
I love being a mom, and there have been parts of being a single mom that have made me smile at God’s grace in our lives. These moments coexist with all the hurt of loss and the difficulty of raising a child without her dad. Every new stage is going to bring another wave of grief and another set of challenges. It’s so easy to become overwhelmed with all the questions and logistics. So I try to take a moment, give my kid a big squeeze, and remind myself that God is with us.
Friend, God is with us.
Reflection
- How can you treasure the beauty of the body of Christ, even if going to church is hard?
- How can you remind yourself that God loves your child more than you do and that he doesn’t ask you to be both parents?
- What is a struggle in your parenting that you need to cry out to the Lord for strength and wisdom?
Notes
- Anna Meade Harris, God’s Grace for Every Family: Biblical Encouragement for Single-Parent Families and the Churches That Seek to Love Them Well (Zondervan, 2024). ↩︎
Photo credit: Emily Brustoski
Alyson Punzi is an author passionate about discipleship and theology. She became a pastor’s widow when her husband, Frank, died suddenly of leukemia. She now writes on lament, grief, and single motherhood. She is the author ofHe Always Hears, a picture book designed to teach children how to lament and rely on God’s promises. Alyson and her daughter, Lois, live in small-town Ohio. Connect with her on Instagram and her newsletter.
