How to Get Happy about Singleness!!!

The Sunday that I returned to my old church, my socks were blessed off by an inspiring message on singleness that challenges single people to look at their situations not with self-pity, but rather with a spirit of adventure. Pastor Gene calls us to put on our adventure glasses since we singles aren't as tied down by another person and are free to have more fun. What a wonderful way to embrace my singleness from here on out as I journey beyond Oz!

Motivated after hearing the sermon and seeing Facebook pictures of another single mom friend doing it, I decided it's finally time to tackle that burning item on my bucket list: the hot air balloon ride. So, God-willing, I'll be floating in the clouds this year on my birthday.

Single moms, here's how you can embrace an attitude of gratitude about your own singleness:

1. Listen to Pastor Gene's message. Click here on the message entitled "When Facing it Alone": http://eastside.aspireonemedia.com/
2. Find your own adventure glasses and put them on.
3. Surround yourself by family, friends, and support groups so you are not alone. 
4. Get back to your bucket list and get ready to check off the next item. 
5. Get in touch with your dream. 
6. Make time for fun. 
7. Be thankful you get to be yourself and don't have to compete with some guy's porn habit, drug or alcohol addiction, or even his own personal chaos! 

For most people, singleness is just a temporary season in life. Why not make the best of it by changing your perspective?

Lifesaving Principles for Single Moms from Author and Speaker Karla Downing

Do you ever wish you could wave a magic wand and fix the repetitive relationship difficulties in your life? Do you wish things were easier with your ex? Most days, we face perplexing problems, challenging people, or unexpected conflict. These issues are a part of life, but sometimes they become overwhelming and even unmanageable. When that is the case, it’s good to know where to turn to get support, helpful advice, and a different perspective. Author and Therapist Karla Downing can help.

Karla Downing offers relationship help as a speaker, author, Bible study teacher, and licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. Her books include 10 Lifesaving Principles for Women in Difficult Marriages, When Love Hurts: 10 Principles to Transform Difficult Relationships, and The Truth in the Mirror: A Guide to Healthy Self-Image. Karla’s passion is to see individuals, marriages, and families set free from the chains of dysfunction, misunderstanding, and emotional pain both personally and relationally. Her messages provide practical and biblical truths that bring balance and clarity to life and relationship issues. She is the founder of ChangeMyRelationship.com.

Recently, Karla helped me with a difficult relationship in my own life. Since her advice was so practical, realistic, and helpful, I realized other single parents needed to know about Karla, her books, and her free online resources, such as weekly e-newsletters on ways to fix negative relationship patterns. I had the opportunity to interview Karla about her beneficial resources that can support stressed out single parents and am excited to pass them along.

Q. How did you get started in your career as an author, speaker, and therapist?

A. I was the oldest child of four in a dysfunctional home with an alcoholic agnostic father and Christian mother. I met my husband in church and got married at age twenty thinking that since my father was finally sober that the dysfunction was behind me. I was wrong. Both my husband and I brought the dysfunction of our childhood homes into our marriage. I spent the first twenty years of my marriage struggling with how a Christian wife should respond to the difficulties. I was confused with what the Bible said about submission, love, respect, boundaries, divorce, forgiveness, perseverance, gentleness, and confrontation. I found help in a secular 12 step program but found conflict between what I found helpful in the program and what was taught by the church. I was convinced that the God who created families and marriage had to support healthy relationships. What I found was that the church often misrepresents what the Bible teaches.

I began serving in my church recovery program working with women in difficult marriages. Shortly thereafter, I attended a seminar on turning a passion into a speaking and writing ministry. It was there that I had the idea of writing my first book 10 Lifesaving Principles for Women in Difficult Marriages. I then decided to get my master’s degree in Marriage and Family Therapy. I wrote two other books: When Love Hurts: 10 Principles to Transform Difficult Relationships and The Truth in the Mirror: A Guide to Healthy Self-Image. I began teaching these books as classes at my church and found people coming from other churches hungry for biblical and practical information on relationships.

I have a friend who has a website ministry, The Scripture Lady. She offered to guide me in putting all my material online three years ago. This was the birth of ChangeMyRelationship.com which includes my articles, audio and video studies, an e-newsletter and other resources for Christians needing help with relationships.

Q. What resources from your ChangeMyRelationship.com website and
ministry would benefit single moms?

A. The website is designed to offer biblical and practical advice for Christians in relationships. I have information on dealing with difficult people (ex-spouses often fit here), dating, divorce, self-image, communication, dysfunction, self-care, boundaries, and more. My e-newsletter offers a relationship truth along with a prayer, challenge, and Scripture meditation that are appropriate for everyone. My audio studies “Transforming Difficult Relationships” and “Discovering your Real Image” are very popular with single moms.

Q. What encouragement and advice can you offer single moms who are
trying to rebuild their lives?

A. Parenting is one of the most rewarding, yet challenging tasks we can face, and single parenting is even more difficult. Sharing children with your ex is not easy. It is not a mother’s heart to be separated from her children. Many women stay in a bad marriage to prevent having to share custody. Having your children be with your ex when he is doing things that you feel are unhealthy for your children is heart-wrenching and frustrating. And difficult husbands make difficult ex-husbands. Add to this financial pressures, balancing work and home, fears about your future, loneliness, dating, and the logistics of single parenting, and it can be an overwhelming experience.

Yet, like all difficult circumstances one can face, it can be done. Single parenting is a challenge, but it is sometimes a better alternative than staying in a toxic marriage. A difficult ex-spouse doesn’t have to control your life and rock your world. You can learn how to deal with him by detaching, taking care of yourself, setting boundaries and speaking the truth. Acceptance of the things you cannot change and the courage to change the things you can is empowering. It helps you to come to terms with the mistakes of the past, the realities of the present, and the possibilities of the future. The devastation of divorce can be healed over time and a wounded self-image restored.

Here are three pieces of advice I would like to share:

1. Offer yourself grace. You can’t do everything perfectly. Accept your imperfections. You don’t have time to waste beating yourself up. Use that time and mental energy for something else!
2. No matter how hard it is, take care of yourself. Find ways to rejuvenate yourself emotionally, physically, mentally, spiritually, and relationally. Even if it is only in small amounts and simple ways, it will go a long way.
3. Don’t let your children’s father control your life. Empower yourself with the tools you need to detach from him whether it is his continued attempts to control, manipulate, and create drama or by the left-over pain from the breakup.

And know that the Lord will care for you with the same loving devotion that you have toward your children because you are His daughter. You are not alone.

For more information about Karla’s resources, or to sign up for her free e-newsletter, check out her website at ChangeMyRelationship.com.

A Mother's Day Blessing for Single Moms

Your job is not easy. You did not chose this life, but through single momming it, you grew strong. You learned to love and let go. You learned to sacrifice. You learned to lean on God when everything else and everyone else failed you. Even when you thought you could not take one more step on your journey, you discovered the strength inside of you. You realized just how amazing and capable you are because you finally glimpsed at how God sees you.

To all single moms everywhere, I wish you a blessed Mother's Day!

The Importance of Fun in a Single Mom's Life

Yesterday, I got the pleasure of reconnecting with an old single mom friend, and we talked about how important it is to for our sanity to take breaks and have fun even when we don't think we have the time. 

In fact, as I write this post, I sit with piles of laundry waiting to be folded and put away, heaps of wood chips in my front planter that should sit in the yard waste bin instead, and an empty fridge in need of its week worth of groceries. But everything can wait until tomorrow because I needed a Sabbath day of rest today. In the past, I would have kept pushing myself until I was cranky and exhausted, but I don't beat myself down like that anymore because life is too short and chores will always need doing. 

Last Saturday, in fact, I took the day off from errands and housework to enjoy the Huntington Library with some single mom friends. Someone wishing to remain anonymous blessed me with a free guest pass. We ooohhhed and aaahhhed at the pinks, reds, corals, and purples of the spring gardens in full and found a rose named Nicole. (To me, that's a kiss from God.) The famous artwork, Blue Boy and Pinkie, also inspired us and we left feeling relaxed, refreshed, and not wanting to go home to face our responsibilities, of course, but it's all about balance! These afternoons of fun are essential for busy single moms. 

What Happens after Oz

The grass isn't greener on the other side. In fact, it's yellow.

With grand hopes and wild dreams of entering my own personal "promised land," I moved from my hometown of thirty-three years into a new area several cities over and thirty minutes away in the country. Thinking I could just transport my entire life over, chop off old ties, and start anew by somehow making insta friends, nothing lived up to all my unrealistic and fantastical ideals of A NEW LIFE. What I discovered is how good we had it back home and how much I took my church family and friends for granted while we were surrounded by them. After months of semi-isolation and not so much as making a decent acquaintance in my new town, we caved in and went back on Sunday. To the old church, that is. The half-hour drive each way is a small price to pay for touching "home base" and gaining enough gumption for re-entering the big, bad world week after week.  

The youth pastor welcome-backed Reina immediately with a huge smile despite her deceptively different blue hair, and she, jumping up and down, reunited with a friend she's missed for an entire year, while I got to see all my old-school peeps. And the message!!! Well, I knew we were absolutely meant to be there when the pastor started preaching on singleness (and the Lord knows how much I need some good coping techniques seeing as how I'll probably be single until the day I die at this rate--please, no pity comments on this issue as I am actually OK with it). Nevertheless, I felt home again and realized home isn't a physical structure per se. No, it's definitely not one particular place anymore in this fast-paced society. Home is being with people who love and accept you. Wherever that may be. 

Okay, so now this is getting ultra mushy and I'm starting to sound a lot like Dorothy as she clicks her ruby red speckled heels and chants, "There's no place like home." So, I'll stop. But first I need to add this one more tidbit. Only after going through Oz could I finally appreciate my family back home in black-and-white Kansas. No, I'm definitely not in Kansas anymore. My journey from this point is what happens after Oz . . . and there's more to come.

I could never venture into Oz without my church family: "His unchanging plan has always been to adopt us into his own family by sending Jesus Christ to die for us. And he did this because he wanted to!" ~Ephesians 1:4 

7 Reasons I'm Grateful for My Anxiety Attack

Several weeks ago, I experienced a panic attack at work that taught me many lessons in gratitude. Feeling faint, nauseated, and on the verge of a heart attack (or so it felt like), I rushed from work to the doctor's office. I knew I was out of sorts when even the doctor's office wasn't good enough; I needed the hospital, darn it! She instructed me to take two days off work, start seeing a therapist, and join a yoga class. But of course, we also learned the medication I'm currently taking (that's preventing me from a complicated hysterectomy) causes anxiety, and there's nothing I can do about that.

My Big Realization is I push myself too hard each day without a stopping point. Obviously, it's time to alter my life by relaxing, letting go of perfection, and enjoying each moment. The other weekend, I took my first step toward downshifting (the word God gave me this year, wouldn't you know it?) by going on a retreat in Murrieta Hot Springs, where I did little else but soak up the beneficial minerals, enjoy the sun, and recharge through the speaker's inspiring words.

After several week's reflection, here's what else I learned from my anxiety attack and why I am thankful:

1. It taught me to do one thing at a time. I'm not convinced anymore that multitasking is effective.
2. I've implemented an end point to my day. When that time approaches, I stop everything and relax.What doesn't get finished can wait for the next day. 
3. I have a much more realistic perspective of what's important and what isn't. My serenity is most important.
4. It showed me I need to let go of perfection. Last week, I wrote the word perfection on a piece of paper and let it go into a stream. Goodbye, perfection. You've been little help to me all my life. 
5. It gave me permission to take the time and enjoy each day instead of feeling like I need to get all the work done before I can enjoy anything. Heck, maybe I'll eventually take it a step further and learn to "whistle while I work." Fun while working could be possible for even me. 
6. I learned am not alone. Apparently, a bunch of people I've talked to experience anxiety and had horrible attacks that even temporarily debilitated them.
7. I now understand how to go with the flow. I just don't have the energy to fight against Life, People, or Situations anymore. All is well, and I am much calmer when I go with it all instead of resisting. 

I guess I wasn't kidding when I re-titled my blog. Nope, definitely not in Kansas anymore. I'm somewhere without a map. And I'm stepping forward in my ruby red slippers.

We made a craft at the retreat. I love it!

Happy Easter Collage

Happy Easter, everyone!!!