A Word From The Editor
I have known for over fifteen years that God was calling me to minister to women. It grew out of some tender mentoring relationships God provided for me just after my first son was born and my own mother died. I caught a vision for how God intended women to nurture women. Thankfully, He is wise and knew I was not yet a useful vessel for that purpose. He was beginning to prepare me for it by taking my own mom to heaven, but it also took being abandoned by my husband four years ago, failing in various attempts on my own to be the perfect mother, business woman, and homemaker, and then also losing my dad suddenly last year.
When my dad died I found myself more alone than I had ever been, and I began to experience being a single mom in its truest sense. Although I had repeatedly asked God to never let me forget the wide range of emotions and challenges that go with the experience of being abandoned, divorced, and living as a single mom, my experiences the last year have increased my desire to use all of my gifts and talents, as well as my experiences, to minister to single moms. One of God's greatest gifts to me in the last year was to allow me to discover other single moms who were devoted to homeschooling and raising their own children. In particular, He gave me the close friendships of five women who are as like-minded in their determination to obey His Word as they are different in the ways they came to be single moms and in the ways they live as such. Being with these extraordinary moms has broadened my views on what it means to minister to single moms and has challenged me to think beyond my own experiences in doing so.
Oh, and incidentally, if there are single dads out there who are feeling a little left out with all my talk of women's ministry and being a single mom, I am considering ways that I can encourage you too. One of my best friends is a single dad, and I have great admiration for men who take on such a tremendous task. Please let me know how I can help you. Even though I have three boys, it is often hard for me to anticipate the needs of men, but I'll do my best.
The TOS Single Parent e-Newsletter was begun with the hopes of ministering to and encouraging those single parents who sacrifice so much to pour themselves into the lives of their children for God's glory. Its secondary intent was to educate members of the church in ways to help, encourage, and support single parents who homeschool. It is my desire and intent to carry on the original vision in establishing this e-newsletter. Suggestions, questions, articles, and ideas of how to do that are welcomed.
Lisa A. Baker, Single Parent e-Newsletter Editor
SingleParent@TheHomeschoolMagazine.com
Nuts and Bolts: Homeschooling on a Limited Income
By MaggieRaye Hunt and Lisa Baker
Frustration sets in as the new school year begins and we single parents wonder how we will find affordable curriculum for our children. Of course, the first answer is to pray for God to provide. He does so in so many amazing ways! As you wait for His answer, you can also check out some of these sites that offer curriculum and services for those of us in need.
There are several quality online curriculums. Ambleside Online is a free online curriculum using the principles of Charlotte Mason. You can check out their curriculum at www.amblesideonline.org. An Old Fashioned Education, at oldfashionededucation.com, is a complete online curriculum using books that are now public domain. You can find an organized directory of curricula, literature, and textbooks that are free. The Robinson Self-Teaching Curriculum is a K-12 curriculum designed to teach young children what they need to know to educate themselves with less and less help from parents as they grow older. Although it is not free, you receive everything you need for all subjects and grades on CDs for less than most people spend on curriculum for one child's use during one year. To learn more, visit www.robinsoncurriculum.com.
The Book Samaritan provides free curriculum to families with financial need. You can get more information on obtaining or donating curriculum at booksamaritan.com. Project Noah, found at 64.168.111.88:10009/noah/discuss.htm, was organized to replace or provide curriculum for families in financial crisis. They provide curriculum under circumstances such as natural disaster, death of spouse, divorce, sudden family illness, or loss of job. The Homeschool Foundation offers assistance at www.homeschoolfoundation.org. They have various programs for assistance including a Widow's Fund, a Special Needs Children's Fund, and a Compassion Fund for other unspecified needs, including those of parents single by causes other than death of a spouse.
Two blogs at www.HomeschoolBlogger.com can be a help to parents looking for low-cost or free assistance with curriculum. Free Stuff for Homeschoolers (www.HomeschoolBlogger.com/FreeStuffForHomeschoolers) has lots of freebies that can supplement homeschooling. All Things in Common is a blog set up to help find curriculum for those in need. For more information on assistance or making donations, visit www.HomeschoolBlogger.com/AllThingsInCommon.
You can also sign up for e-Newsletters on Free Unit Studies and Homeschooling for Free straight from TOS.
Thanks to MaggieRaye at www.HomeschoolBlogger.com/JehovahJireh for compiling these suggestions on affordable ways to homeschool. She has great information there for single parents, including links to blogs of other homeschooling parents.
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Parents Helping Parents: Establishing a Routine
By Lisa A. Baker
Several weeks ago I was considering why I have such a hard time sticking to a schedule. For a long time, I have blamed it on my laid-back personality, on being too lazy, or on lack of discipline. While all those things probably play a part in it, I realized there is also another factor. As a single mom who stays home, my day is missing the natural rhythm of a routine imposed by another adult with a schedule. No one in my home is getting up for work, expecting breakfast or a kiss goodbye. No one is calling on his lunch break or coming home at the end of the day looking for dinner. Nobody calls to me from the bedroom to hurry up and come to bed. The result for me is a lack of imposed structure in my day.
Doubtless I am not the only one with this problem. So for those of us who need a little help, I'm asking you to e-mail me with suggestions for creating rhythm and routine in our days. How do you create structure and routine from day to day? What do you include in your day to push you and your kids to complete assignments by a certain time, to finally declare the school day over, or to make sure dinner is on the table before you realize it's bedtime?
Please send your advice and any other questions for which you'd like to have some answers or advice to SingleParent@TheHomeschoolMagazine.com.
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Encouragement for Single Moms: A Better Kind of Husband
By Lisa A. Baker
Late nights are the hardest time of day for me. The kids have wound down and are in bed, things have quieted down, and again . . . I'm alone. I find my mind wandering off to a perfect world found only in my imagination, where the perfect man suggests we sit down for coffee so we can talk over the day. My imagination can seem like a comfort as I face day after day trying to do the work of two people with half the work force. It can seem to offer escape when my phone calls to friends offer only unanswered rings. It seems to offer comfort, but what it really delivers is heartache, because eventually I have to come back to the real life God has given me--one without that perfect man.
When I indulge this tempting escape from reality, I construct in my imagination the perfect husband, the perfect home, the perfect marriage, and the perfect me. Unfortunately when I surrender to the temptation to visit that place, I miss out on true perfection. I have heard it said that God is the husband to the widow, so I often meditate on what that would look like to me. Slowly I am coming to realize that it is only in God that I find the perfect husband. The hard thing for me has been to translate that into real life. So I stop and think about what things were like when my marriage was good and my husband did take care of me.
"Dear, can I go out this Friday night with the girls? I'll have to hire a babysitter, but I'd really like a night away."
"Sure, honey. You work hard. It'd do you some good to be away for a while. I'll keep an eye on the kids while you're gone."
"Dear, I'm really embarrassed to tell you this, but I foolishly spent money on decorating things again. I know I shouldn't have. It wasn't a good use of our money, but I did it."
"Well, you'll either have to take them back, or decide what else you will do without. I can't just give you the money to use that way."
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Conversations like this were typical in my house, so I remember what sweet things my husband would have done for me and imagine how much more my Beloved Kinsman-Redeemer wants to do for me.
All of us as single moms come from different backgrounds. Some of us were abandoned by our husbands. Some are widowed. Some are single moms because of choices we now realize were foolish and sinful. Among us are those who have been single moms for many years, those who are still in shock because it is so new, and many of us in between. Some of us have great hopes of remarrying, and some of us have lost hope. But I believe all of us, somewhere deep inside, have some picture of what we think that ideal marriage would be like. Many of us walk around longing for that missing picture in our life. We feel sorry for our children who are missing out on that picture. We feel sorry for ourselves because we certainly didn't plan on being on the outside looking in. Suddenly we find it easy to slip into self-pity, bitterness, and depression.
I have found the remedy and prevention to this requires several steps. The first is to "take every thought captive." According to 2 Corinthians 10:5, this will prevent us from succumbing to speculations and lofty ideas about the knowledge of God. In order to keep our thoughts on what is true, we must discipline ourselves not to visit fantasyland. This has been hard for me. I have quite an imagination and can picture a pretty exciting life, but I remind myself why I need to stay away from it and ask the Holy Spirit for help, and I can control those thoughts. It takes a lot of determination and much help from God to find success. Also it is easier to control your thoughts when you give them a better alternative upon which to think. What better substitute than our true perfect husband? This requires I spend time in the Word each day, focusing my attention on who God is and what He has done for me.
It helps a little to look for the things God is trying to teach me through this place in life where He has put me. Staying alert for things He wants me to do where I am helps me to stay busy and occupied with other things--real things. I also find it easier to control my thoughts when I develop the habit of talking to Him throughout the day. At times what I have missed because of being a single mom is that person to call up to tell about the latest funny thing my youngest son said, or to ask how we will ever replace one more broken appliance. I am slowly learning to let God be that person with whom I share my life. By retraining myself to relate to God as my husband, I find I don't miss having one quite as much.
The blessing in this new relationship with God astonishes me at times. I see Him buy me a new washing machine (my broken one was replaced for free over a year ago!). I see Him select men to counsel and mentor my sons. I watch amazed as He pays the bills while I continue to homeschool and care for my house. The way God looks as our better husband won't be the same from one single mom to another, any more than you could take two wives and expect their husbands to be the same. But we get to see an exciting and ever-expanding picture of God as He uniquely fills the individual needs of single mothers and their children. Our part is to watch for Him to be the better husband He promises to be.
The Schoolhouse Store Spotlight
Book Review:
"That's My Son: How Moms Can Influence Boys to Become Men of Character" by Rick Johnson
 I have three sons, and I feel very poorly qualified to raise them to manhood since I grew up with only a sister. When I was divorced, I began to suspect that men think a little differently than women think, and so I began to study my boys and to read everything I could get my hands on about the differences between boys and girls and between men and women. Recently I read That's My Son, by Rick Johnson, and was impressed with the encouragement and suggestions he offers mothers, and single mothers in particular, on raising boys.
The book is firmly grounded in the belief that boys and girls are created uniquely and differently by God for different roles, and the first couple of chapters cite evidence of this, all the while pointing at the fact that God has a special plan for sons. Then Mr. Johnson addresses the kinds of issues in which moms struggle to understand in their boys--everything from communication and discipline to role models and, yes, even sex.
One of the things that made this book so helpful to me is that it is compiled from materials that the author used in seminars for single moms. Because of this previous ministry, the book is written with special sensitivity to helping single moms become understanding advocates for their sons.
It is not a long book, but it packs a lot of helpful information into a few easy-to-read chapters. There are also questions at the end of each chapter to help the reader consider ways to apply the counsel directly to her life. That's My Son is a helpful resource for a mom raising a boy . . . or several . . . alone.
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