Soli Deo Gloria!

The boy has been home for less than a week, and I am amazed at how dif­fer­ent life is when he’s not here.  He is truly the LIFE in our home.  Every­things seems so much bet­ter and brighter with him bounc­ing around, smil­ing and act­ing silly.  I find that I’m more patient with him now.  I heartily rec­om­mend that every mom take a break from her child, if you can.  Those 5 days were ago­niz­ing, but obvi­ously I needed them. 

I was so happy to have him home, I just kept star­ing at him.  I swear he grew another inch.  I noticed that he was a lit­tle more inde­pen­dent and self-sufficient, which is a WONDERFUL thing.  He’s not the kind of kid that will answer twenty ques­tions, so I have to let him slowly tell me about his expe­ri­ence.  He made sure to tell me that he did what I said:  Since he’s a picky eater, I told him that he couldn’t be picky at camp, and to eat what they gave him.  He proudly told me that he ate steak AND ham­burg­ers. (He doesn’t eat much red meat.)  I told him I was proud of him and asked him if I could now make those things for him at home. I got a prompt “NO!”  He said, “I only ate those things because you told me to!”  At least he’s obe­di­ent. While wash­ing his hair on Sun­day night, I learned that he took ONE shower the whole week, and it did not include soap. I told him he was a dirt­ball, and he replied, “Mommy! Boys ARE dirt­balls!!”  How quickly they learn.  smh.

When I opened his suitcase…good LAWD…the SMELL!  Dirty socks, damp towel, wet wash­cloth, dirty clothes.….I had to wash that mess IMMEDIATELY.  He came home WITHOUT his san­dals. I couldn’t be mad at him. It was his first time away from home.    Other than that, every­thing went well. 

Today we’re going to his new school for ori­en­ta­tion.  His first day is August 3, less than a week from now.  But he’s excited and so am I.  We picked up his uni­forms on Sat­ur­day.  He has a blazer that he has to wear, begin­ning in Octo­ber.  He was really excited about that!  He told me, “Mommy, I’m gonna look like Mr. Moseby!”  (If you don’t know what that means, you are Dis­ney defi­cient and I sen­tence you to a night of watch­ing “The Suite Life of Zack and Cody”.  IMMEDIATELY! 

I am done with MY school ori­en­ta­tion. Classes start August 26.  I’m ready for it to start NOW. 

I’m still teach­ing youth Bible study on Wedne­day nights.  I have a small, but ded­i­cated group of kids. They lis­ten, think and ask intel­li­gent ques­tions. Every week, we talk about what the Gospel is, and lately we’ve been talk­ing about how to LIVE it. I can tell they’re GETTING it. God is good! 

I keep read­ing a lot of  “sin­gle mom” blogs.  I love them. One thing I see is that a lot of them talk about dat­ing.  They make me feel weird, because I have ZERO inter­est in dat­ing.  Maybe men have got­ten on my nerves one too many times, or maybe I just have too many other things to think about, but I just have no desire to cul­ti­vate a rela­tion­ship now or in the forsee­able future.  I like my life the way it is. Well, I could stand to get out and do more, but oth­er­wise, I’m cool.  Don’t get me wrong: I occa­sion­ally have moments when I would like male com­pan­ion­ship, but it never gets to the point that I want it enough to do some­thing about it.  The feel­ing passes and I keep it mov­ing. 

I kinda like it this way though. I have wasted so much time in my life think­ing about men and rela­tion­ships. It’s a relief not to be dwelling on it now.  My focus now is on three things: Living a life pleas­ing to God, rais­ing my son to live the same way, and going to school.  I think that those things keep my plate pretty full.

Things I need to do:  Write out my thoughts on “The Pur­suit of Holi­ness” and “Know­ing God”.  Keep focused on the Lord and trust­ing him to pro­vide for me, no mat­ter what my cir­cum­stances look like..and finan­cially, they are look­ing PRETTY BAD right now..but I think I see a light at the end of the tun­nel. Get myself men­tally pre­pared to dive into the world of being a col­lege stu­dent.  Tak­ing notes, writ­ing papers, doing assign­ments.  Yeah…Pray for me!

Bye, Mom!, orig­i­nally uploaded by MsRikki.

He was eager to explore his sur­round­ings, so he gave me a half-hug and ran off. I yelled for him to turn around so that I could get his pic­ture, and this is what he did.

You would think that he’d feel a LITTLE sad that he was leav­ing his mother for the FIRST time..for a WHOLE week. But no. He shot me the peace signs and said, “Bye Mom! I’m going into my HOUSE!” (refer­ring to the cabin)

I sup­pose this means I’ve done a good job of encour­ag­ing him to be inde­pen­dent.

I need to encour­age myself to be inde­pen­dent from HIM.

I do enjoy the peace and quiet.…..but I am look­ing for­ward to Fri­day.

This is one LONG week!

Peo­ple always tell me that I’m a good mom. I never really thought about whether I’m a good mom or not; I just know that I try to be. A friend sug­gested that I write about how to be a good, sin­gle mom rais­ing a good man in the cul­ture that we live in now. (Thanks, Stacey!) I def­i­nitely have ideas on how to do that, and since I’ve been doing it for over nine years now, with some good results, here we go. I’m going to list them here, and in future posts, deal with each item. This is by no means a com­plete list, nor do I con­sider myself an expert on the sub­ject. If you agree/disagree, reg­is­ter and com­ment. If you have some­thing to add, reg­is­ter and com­ment. If you just wanna co-sign, reg­is­ter and com­ment!

1. Get to know your child! When I was preg­nant, I dreamed that I’d have an adorable, fat-cheeked, laid-back and agree­able (like me!), son. How­ever, my son proved, from the womb, that it was def­i­nitely a dream. He was adorable and had the fat­test cheeks ever.…but laid-back? agree­able? NO SIR! How­ever, one of the best things about being Julian’s mom has been get­ting to know who Julian is…even if I get extremely frus­trated at times!
2. Have a goal in mind for your child. For the first half of my preg­nancy, I thought I was hav­ing a girl. While I am not the most girly girl on earth, I looked for­ward to play­ing with dolls, buy­ing cute clothes and other girly things with my child. How­ever, my boy showed proof of his man­hood in my 6^th month of preg­nancy when he couldn’t evade the ultra­sound any­more. At that moment, I made a vow: My son would NOT be like the males I’ve encoun­tered in my life. My goal is to raise him to be a God-fearing, God-HONORING, MAN. Par­ent­ing Julian is cen­tered around that goal, and I keep it in mind in every­thing I do con­cern­ing him.
3. Intro­duce your child to Jesus as EARLY as pos­si­ble. Julian is very used to going to church. That’s a good thing. But going to church, in and of itself, doesn’t make much of a dif­fer­ence unless one knows Jesus Christ. I began a con­cen­trated effort to talk to Julian about our faith when he was six years old. And it was at that time, dur­ing a dis­cus­sion about the Ten Com­mand­ments, that God showed my child his sin. As I explained what the com­mand­ments meant, it was like a light went on, and Julian said that he was sorry for break­ing God’s Law and he won­dered what his pun­ish­ment would be.….and he repented and believed Jesus Christ for his sal­va­tion when he was six years old. I’m con­vinced that I’d be deal­ing with a very dif­fer­ent lit­tle boy if that had not hap­pened.
4. Take advan­tage of ANY sup­port you get. I may be sin­gle, but I don’t do this alone. I have a great sup­port sys­tem of fam­ily and friends that help me with this par­ent­ing thing. Sup­port is not just finan­cial either. My brother pro­vides a great male role model for Julian and spends time with him often. My friends babysit for me on the rare occa­sion that I go some­where with­out him. My mom and dad do too much to even talk about. I couldn’t be the mom I am with­out my fam­ily and friends.
5. Last, but not least, PUT YOUR CHILD FIRST IN YOUR LIFE. I am all Julian has. He needs to feel secure that he is my pri­or­ity, and I make sure that he does. Too often, sin­gle moth­ers want to pur­sue their own inter­ests at the expense of their chil­dren. How­ever, if you’re going to raise healthy kids, that should never be done. Once I got preg­nant, my life was not my own any­more. It’s all about the boy. That’s not to say that I don’t have inter­ests, because I do. But my son comes FIRST. He knows he’s safe and secure with his mom. He knows mom will always take care of him, sup­port him, and defend him. So he’s a kid with NO wor­ries. Happy and care­free. As he should be.