Joy and Laughter for Single-Parents
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Troy is a pro-life advocate because he saw firsthand the trauma and guilt his wife experienced for many years due to a past abortion. And that's why they became monthly supporters of the ministry. We're always encouraged by what Focus on the Family has been doing and the impact that that has on life in general. I feel that it's more than a worthy cause and

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I'm Jim Daly. By working together, we can be a lifeline for pre-born babies and their moms. And we can help bring godly truth and healing to families like Troy's. Become a friend of Focus on the Family by calling 800-the-letter-A-and-the-word-family. Or you can donate at FocusOnTheFamily.com slash families. As a single parent, how do you find joy? How do you find reasons to smile? There's so much on your plate.

Well, you're going to find encouragement today on the show. Thanks for joining us. I'm John Fuller, joined by the head of our parenting team, Dr. Danny Huerta. And we're going to listen to a little clip from Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, in which Jim spoke with Pam Farrell and Peggy Sue Wells. Now, Peggy Sue was a single mom for a number of years, and she opens up about how she learned to find joy in the difficult days.

Let's turn a little corner and talk about elements of fun. Right, healthy home. My mom was great. I remember, I think I was five or six. And again, I'm the youngest. So I've got much older, if my siblings are listening, much older siblings. My closest sibling is six years away from me. So they were born a year apart.

you know, bang, bang, bang. And then six years later, I was the accident baby for all the oops babies. Bonus baby. And you must be introduced to friends of your mom like, this was our accident. It lifts you up right away. But she was great at fun. I mean, her personality was fun. And I can remember it was the beginning of school and she brought Twister home. You remember the game Twister? Yes. And she had worked with my brother Dave and

to kind of rig the game so that he would lose. And each time I won, I got clothing. Like I got a shirt or I got pants or I got new socks. But we played all afternoon and that's how she dispersed the school clothes to me that she'd already bought. But I felt like I won them not realizing that Dave was far better at Twister than I was. But just...

engaging and fun in 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, okay, I've got to get her parallel parking so we can finish this permit and she can get the license. I have to move forward. So I said to the kids, okay, 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 van. So we're all in there.

And the reason they came is because she's really spastic. And so we're like 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. You hurt, you know.

Yeah, it hurt. And then we were laughing so hard that there were some people that maybe have wet 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.

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 wanted to play music and somebody wanted to be in the Civil Air Patrol. And so everybody, 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 in

And then we would also watch a comedy video every so often. Like if we hadn't laughed in a while, 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. No, it's so good. And humor is such an antidote that I think God has created in us. Mary Hart is a good medicine.

Yeah, diffuse the heavy burden of life and the thing like that. So that's great that you use humor and encourage your children to laugh. Peggy Sue had a really fun thing she did with her kids too around the table.

The thing that's great about you is. Like, she really made a positive environment. She's sure about that. Yeah. We would do what we call greatnesses. And, of course, the little people like it the best. They're, like, at the table, and everybody's kind of like, you know, we're here. And they're like, let's do greatnesses. And you'd see the big ones roll their eyes, but we would do it. And so I would say, like, Jim, the greatness I see in you is. You look terrific in that yellow shirt. And you would say, yes, I do.

And then we would go around the table and each person would say something to that person about the greatness I see in you. And then we would move to the next person. And so we were giving some really good gifts to each other that this is how you are in my eyes. And then the other people would receive that and they could, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It's okay. That's good. We even give like lists of like unusual holidays, you know, like National Ice Cream Sunday Day. You know, you can create holidays and that can bring happiness into a single- Every day is something. Exactly. Actually, on the internet, there's like a list of unique holidays. And you can celebrate them as an individual, you know, back to school and Christmas and trying to bring as much happiness into the home. My parents-

The first time they saw each other was at my wedding. They had not seen each other since the divorce, and they saw each other the first time at the wedding. And my mom was so wonderful. She's like, you will have a normal, happy wedding, and we will be on our best behavior. And so we at Proactive created a plan so that there were family members that were

assigned to my dad so he would make good choices. And then there were family members assigned to my mom to carry handkerchiefs. And I had a beautiful wedding to Bill because that was the goal. That was the goal is, you know what, let's bring as much normalcy to a crazy situation as possible. That's good. Hey, 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. I'd love to. 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, resentment.

revenge, and repeat. Yeah. And which one stands out for you? 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 R's and then we have damage to a relationship.

Well, Danny, we know that it's really difficult to be a single mom, single dads as well. They've got to struggle with so very much. How do I help? How do I reach out and give an assist, a meaningful hand of help to my friend who's a single parent? An assist. I love that. Just like in basketball, you have an assist so they can slam dunk it, right? There you go. That's great. Man, I...

Really with single parents, what they're looking to have, there's some practical sides to the whole equation. So it could be gift cards. You can bring a gift card, just knowing what restaurant they tend to love to go to. And that's a little bit of listening that you give them in that type of relational connectedness. And notes, notes of encouragement, encouragement.

observations of things they're doing well and just say, "Man, I noticed you did this, your kids love it." Or, "I love this about you." They need that type of encouragement because there are a lot of self-doubts that single parents are carrying. There's loneliness. There's also just the busyness where they don't take time or have time to consider, "What am I doing well?" They're just paying attention to things that aren't going well because they need to take care of those things.

And then the other part of this is maybe make some time to invite them to something you're already doing. Maybe it's a group or you're having board game night or some kind of game night or movie night. Keep them in mind. They may not get invited to as many things because they have to say no so much or it's all couples getting together. So you feel bad inviting them. Figure out a way to invite them when you can. Ask them questions. And when you ask them, hey, how are you doing? If you have enough relationships, stop.

and really listen for the response. Don't make it just a practical, hey, how are you doing? Okay, great. I mean, it's tempting to do that, and that's how we do things. But maybe sometimes stop and say, how are you really doing? I've been praying for you, and commit to praying for them so that you're being honest there. And you say, I've been praying for you. Is there anything else I could pray for? And then just stop and be present with them, notice them. And if there are some things that they start to mention they need...

maybe you can ask, how can I be of help with that? Or if you know of someone that can be of help, point them in that direction.

There's always something we can do, and it can be as simple as a smile or a note, and it can get as deep as you can. Yeah, I appreciate that. Well, our heart is for you as a single parent, and we want to offer a couple of things here in response to what we've talked about and heard today. One is an article by Peggy Sue. We're going to link over to it in the show notes. It's called How to Make Good Decisions as a Single Mom. It's free, and it's going to give you some suggestions and perspectives on

on working through trauma and coming to a place of making good decisions.

And then a deeper dive is the book by Pam Farrell and Peggy Sue. It's called The 10 Best Decisions a Single Mom Can Make. And it talks about so many different aspects of the journey that you're on. Make a donation today if you can to focus on the family of any amount. And we'll send that book to you as our way of saying thanks for being a part of the support team. I think you're going to find it to be a really great dose of encouragement in your journey.

And again, we all have details about that book and the article as well, a free article in the show notes. And we'll have more from Peggy Sue and Pam next time. For now, on behalf of Dr. Danny Huerta and the entire team, I'm John Fuller, and thanks for joining us for the Focus on the Family Parenting Podcast.

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