Listen Closely to My Words
It was vacation Bible school week at Shelly’s church. She was the children’s minister, and like all children’s ministers during VBS week she was busy—and things were hectic. Shelly was at work when she got the call, just after lunch on a Thursday afternoon, that her husband had been in a car accident and was being flown to the hospital. At around three o’clock she was told that he had died in the helicopter on the way to the hospital. They had started out the morning together; she had talked with him on the phone at around eleven, and now he was gone. So unexpected. How could this be happening?
After being told her husband had died, she walked down the hall, not knowing where she was, when the reality hit her.
She was a young mother left to raise their three children who were six, four, and two. Probably because she was a children’s minister and a counselor, she understood more quickly than most that her kids were going to need help getting through this time.
She remembered the quote from Fred Rogers: “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’”1 Shelly said the Lord impressed upon her to do something similar with her children.
Every time someone came to the house to help with something, she would say to her kids, “Do you know why Mr. So-and-So did that at our house?” They would say, “No,” and she would say, “Mr. So-and-So loves God and loves us, and that’s what you do when people are hurting. God sent him to help us.” Over and over she told her kids this. She burned into their minds that the helpers were God’s people. What a simple but ingenious way of putting biblical principles before her children. (I wish I had thought of this when I was raising my kids alone.)
Now they are teens, and every so often she hears them say, “That reminds me of when Daddy died and people came and helped us.” Shelly was so afraid her kids would be angry that their dad had died so early in their lives. So far this doesn’t seem to be the case.
Shelly kept her eyes fixed on Jesus, but her life was not without problems. Even strong Christian people and church staff members experience crisis and trauma. Shelly was blessed to have a church family that surrounded her, but still she was the one who had to raise those kids without a father.
When her daughter, Lexi, was in elementary school, other dads would come each year and take her to the father-daughter banquet. When Lexi was thirteen she went to the banquet and came home very upset because the speaker, who was probably trying to guilt the dads into giving their daughters more attention, had given statistics about what happens to kids who do not have a father in the home. Lexi was hurt and grieved about this. Similarly, when the fathers of Shelly’s younger son’s friends were coaching them in basketball, her son came home and said, “Mom, I wish my dad was alive to coach me.”
Through Shelly’s unyielding faith, her kids picked up and found their own faith walk. Without any prompting from her mom, her daughter put “Psalm 68:5” on her high school letter jacket. Lexi came to understand God was a “father to the fatherless.” Maybe because she was a children’s minister and had been to seminary, Shelly knew how to continually pump God’s Word and principles into her children through simple stories on their developmental level. Having them attend a two-days-a-week preschool program at their church helped fill in the gaps.
She also kept some of the same traditions and rituals after her husband’s death. When her husband put the kids to bed he would always end prayers with them by asking God to help them “grow big and strong and wise.” Mom continued this ritual, giving them reminders that God loved them, which helped keep a relationship with their heavenly Father prominent in their young lives.
She taught her children to listen closely to what she was teaching them, and she kept them close to the Lord and to their church family. She allowed others to help her and her children. She allowed her kids to grieve and realized that as the kids aged, they would revisit the issue of missing their dad. She is a wise mom. The Bible gives us many examples of wise people.
A Wise Person’s Words Help Us Understand Life
Solomon was wise, and it is thought that he wrote most of Proverbs. We can find our own wisdom by applying the author’s words to our lives.
Let’s read Proverbs 4:20–27 (NIV), and then we’ll break the passage down and discuss how it applies to single parents’ lives.
My son, pay attention to what I say;
turn your ear to my words.
Do not let them out of your sight,
keep them within your heart;
for they are life to those who find them
and health to one’s whole body.
Above all else, guard your heart,
for everything you do flows from it.
Keep your mouth free of perversity;
keep corrupt talk far from your lips.
Let your eyes look straight ahead;
fix your gaze directly before you.
Give careful thought to the paths for your feet
and be steadfast in all your ways.
Do not turn to the right or the left;
keep your foot from evil.
As a single mom, I came across this passage of Scripture during my morning quiet time, and for some reason it jumped out at me. I knew I needed to seriously consider this wisdom in raising my own children.
Have you ever said to your child, “Listen to what I am saying,” or “Pay attention when I’m talking to you,” or “Be quiet when I’m talking”? I remember trying to compete with the television when I first became a single parent, and then it dawned on me: When I wanted my kids’ attention, I needed to walk over and turn off the TV or stand in front of it.
We want our kids to listen to us because we are usually
As our heavenly Father, God is also trying to get our attention. In Proverbs 4:20 God is talking tenderly to us, and He is indirectly calling us His children when He says, in other words, “My son, listen to me because I have something important to tell you. I have these instructions for you and these commandments for you to live by.” Let that sink in for a moment. He actually addresses us as “my son.” That is a special privilege.
In verse 21, “Do not let them out of your sight, keep them within your heart,” the author is referring to the words of God. God had given His chosen people His Word through prophets and by writing them on stones, as with the Ten Commandments. Up to this point, that Word had been external. But in several verses in Proverbs and in Jeremiah 31:33, God says He is going to put the commands in their minds and write them on their hearts.
“‘This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time,’ declares the Lord. ‘I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people’” (Jeremiah 31:33).
It is important to read God’s Word, but His Word is also to be engraved on our hearts. When I wanted to get a point across to my kids or give them a Scripture, I would write it on their bathroom mirror. I’d use a dry erase marker so it would wipe off easily. At other times I’d put Scriptures on Post-it Notes in my car or around the house.
There is something about seeing Scripture every day that makes it begin to stick with you. I’d pick out a passage that related to a problem and made sense to my kids. Or the Lord would direct me to particular Scriptures to use with them or to help me parent my children in a particular situation. I wanted my kids to see God’s Word brought to life and to experience how trusting in His Word brought wholeness and answers to life’s problems.
Another way of applying Scriptures comes from Dr. Scott Turansky and Joanne Miller, RN, BSN. In a weekly Biblical Parenting Thought Exchange, they write,
Matthew 12:34 says, out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks. As you learn to listen to your child’s heart, identify target areas that you sense are a problem. Behavior indicates what’s happening inside, so when you see a particular weakness, jot it down on a piece of paper. You might list things like procrastination, pride, fear, gloom and doom, or lack of confidence.
You’ve probably known these character weaknesses were causing problems. By identifying the misconceptions at the root of the behavior, you’ll be ready to do some deeper work in your child’s heart.2
The Role of the Heart
In Proverbs 4:22 we read, “For they are life to those who find them and health to one’s whole body” (NIV). Putting God’s Word in our hearts gives us a new life and can affect our entire beings. Of course, we know what powerful emotions can flow from the heart as well as the brain. And those of us who are single parents raising our kids alone have also felt our hearts break. Sometimes our heads realize something, but it takes a while for our hearts to catch up. When Shelly was told her husband had died, her head heard it, and she acknowledged it, but the reality didn’t set in until her heart felt it.
Anyone who has lost someone or experienced a broken relationship knows what it feels like to experience a broken heart. The heart is the center of our emotional being.
We are to guard our hearts and teach our children to guard theirs. Verse 23 warns us about this: “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it” (NIV). Most single parents have a deep understanding of the importance of teaching their children to guard their hearts, as many of us have watched as our kids’ hearts were broken when one of the most important people in their life, their parent, walked out. Or when their parent passed away and the child didn’t understand why that parent had to die. We want to protect our kids, but in some single-parent homes, that’s just not possible. We can, however, be there to help soothe the pain, and we do this by taking our kids to the Word of God.
Proverbs 3:1—“My son, do not forget my teaching, but keep my commands in your heart.”
Proverbs 3:3—“Let love and faithfulness never leave you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart.”
Proverbs 4:23—“Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.”
The heart in a human body has to be protected because
A Personal Heart Problem Story
When my nephew was born he had heart problems. He wasn’t expected to survive past the first twenty-four hours, but thanks to my sister-in-law and her protective care, he was able to live a fairly normal life. When he was little, though, his lips would turn blue due to lack of oxygen and blood flow, but he was smart as a whip so apparently this did not affect his brain.
My nephew was a couple of years older than my son. When Brian was little we would pray for Jason all the time. My son would ask, “Mom, why can’t God heal Jason?” And he would say, “Mom, we have to pray for Jason, for him to get better so he can run and play like me.”
Year after year Brian would pray for Jason because my son had a heart condition too—he loved his cousin and his heart hurt when his cousin couldn’t run and play like he did. When Jason had to have his first heart surgery at the Mayo Clinic the summer after he finished fifth grade, and when he underwent the second step of the surgery the summer following sixth grade, we prayed and prayed and waited on updates.
I think that my son is a doctor today because of his love and concern for his cousin Jason.
When Jason died right before his senior year of high school, my son was devastated. Jason’s heart had been fixed the year before at Mayo Clinic, and for the first time in his life, he could ride a bike, drive a car, and shoot hoops. But for some reason, his heart just quit working one night. My son’s heart was broken. He and Jason shared special cousin secrets and jokes, and as time passes, my son likes recalling some of the funnier times with his cousin.
We never know all the ways God is working in our kids’ lives. We must continually keep them in the Lord’s family, in the church, and in His Word, praying with them when problems arise and teaching them that when there is something bothering them, they should automatically go before the Lord. And we must also teach them that God doesn’t always answer their prayers the way they want Him to. Sometimes we have to sit quietly before the Lord and listen for Him.
One Wise Single Mom’s Personal Theology
A wise single mom once told me that she purposefully worked with her children on being quiet. I asked her what she meant, and she said, “There are times, like in a doctor’s office or in the car, I tell my children they need to be quiet. I am teaching them to sit quietly without saying anything. How else will children understand Psalm 46:10, which says, ‘Be still, and know that I am God,’ and know that this verse applies to them?” Think on that important concept for a few minutes. Will your child know how to sit quietly before the Lord in order to hear God speaking to him or to her?
A Dad Teaches His Daughter to Listen to Her Heart
My friend Barry Cummings, a single dad in Florida, shared with me about how he used a crisis situation to help his daughter explore how her heart felt and how she could use those feelings to minister to others. His daughter was six years old at the time. Barry says,
On April 27, 2011, my hometown was devastated by an F-5 tornado, and many people lost everything. Nineteen lost their lives in Northwest Alabama that day. Help began to pour in soon after the weather was safe.
I became involved with a ministry that cooked and provided meals to the victims and recovery workers. Being a single dad and wanting to teach my six-year-old daughter, Tara, about serving God and serving people in need, I made the decision to start taking her with me to see service in action. It’s my responsibility to help mold her heart to love God and have compassion for others, but what can a six-year-old do to help? The answer came from some blank paper and crayons.
We love to draw, so at night we would draw and color pictures of Jesus, crosses, etc., and the next day she would hand them out at the tables when the people were eating. One picture stood out, and the story she would tell melted their hearts along with mine.
The picture depicted a tornado with rainbow colors along with some crosses, angels, and pets. She called it the “Rainbow Tornado,” but it was a good tornado that brought back the things people lost that day. People’s homes, belongings, pets, and their hope. People got such a blessing from something so simple, along with hearing the Gospel shared.
People came from all over the U.S., and even some from other countries to help with the recovery efforts in Northwest Alabama. It amazed me to see how much joy people got out of Tara and me serving together. Many people came to Christ through that tragedy. That terrible day was seven years ago, and just like in her “Rainbow Tornado” picture, our town and area has been built back strong. This was a lesson of compassion and love for Tara and myself that we continue to use to this day.
Wow, what an example of a godly single parent. He could have moaned and groaned and said, “Why me?” but he didn’t. He got busy and got involved in a local ministry. Then he took his daughter with him to that ministry. I imagine many people were blessed by little Tara. I also imagine that as Tara grows, she understands the deep love of the Father even more. She has been acquainted with trauma and watched as God’s people ministered.
Deepening Our Relationship with Father God
The rest of our passage gives instructions that will help us deepen our relationship with God. These are also wise instructions to pass on to our children.
Proverbs 4:24 addresses being careful with our words: “Keep your mouth free of perversity; keep corrupt talk far from your lips” (NIV).
In our world today, it can be difficult for our kids to avoid careless banter, corrupt talk, lies, and gossip because it is so easy to do these things on social media. It is much easier to lie when the person is not standing right in front of you. It’s easy to just type out a fast message and click send, or snap a snarky picture and send it out.
As parents we need to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus and not get tangled up in the world’s lies. “Let your eyes look straight ahead; fix your gaze directly before you” (v. 25 NIV).
It is easy to begin to believe lies about what other people experience. We see our neighbor driving a new car and think, “If only I had a better job” or “If only I could win the lottery. Then my troubles would be over, and I would be driving that new car.”
We see beautiful-looking people on the covers of magazines. We want to look like them, dress like them, and be wealthy like they are. We can begin pulling away from the life God has in store for us and from a deep relationship with Him.
Keep your feet on level ground. “Give careful thought to the paths for your feet and be steadfast in all your ways. Do not turn to the right or the left; keep your foot from evil” (vv. 26–27 NIV).
It is hard to walk and keep our balance when the ground we are walking on is crooked or filled with deep ravines or large boulders. Ever try standing upright when walking on a mountainous path that has huge boulders on it? Sometimes you have to grab onto a tree branch to keep from falling, or you have to put out your hands to climb over a rock in the middle of the path.
Keeping your feet on level ground might mean removing moral dilemmas that pull you away from God. Let’s divide this up into two different categories. First are the moral dilemmas that affect our children:
Second are the moral issues that affect you. I’m sure you can think of your own, but here are a few to get you started:
Think about ways to remove these temptations from your life. Did you know that pornography use is one of the main reasons many marriages fail, and that it is a growing problem among women as well as men? If you are a woman, you need to understand what porn does to a man so you’ll be aware that any man who is into porn is not marriage material.
In his article “Has Your Porn Addiction Made You Absent?” Neill Morris writes that pornography makes “wives miss all the things that a loving husband can give, i.e., his attention, his affection, his honor, his affirmation, his loving touch, his listening ear, his romancing, his intimacy, his caring. When we are so preoccupied with ourselves, how could we possibly make her feel secure in our love? But in that scenario, we are so gripped by our love of porn and of self that we have nothing to give her.”3
If you are a man, it would be prudent to read the rest of the article. Porn is an addiction, and it will eventually destroy you. Morris says, “I have talked with these men and counseled them, one-on-one, during the past fourteen years—more than four thousand men, each with his own story of destruction through the cancer of pornography and its seeming irresistible attraction.”4
Your Single-Parent Family
Take time to figure out how you think these verses in Proverbs 4 apply to how you are raising your children. Study these verses. Discuss them with your children. There is a lot of wisdom that single parents can glean, and it is wisdom that can change the course of your single-parent family.
What Happened to Shelly and Her Kids?
Shelly went back to school and is now Dr. Shelly Melia, assistant professor of childhood education and program director for the master of arts degrees in children’s ministry and family ministry at Dallas Baptist University. She serves as the associate dean for the Graduate School of Ministry and is a counselor specializing in grief and trauma in children.
Her kids are growing, and her older son is now finishing his first year in college. Her middle child, her daughter, is a high school senior this year, and her younger son is now fifteen and in high school. Life has been good, but not without the usual trauma and crisis all of us as single parents have experienced.
Last year her daughter was on a mission trip to Utah when Shelly got a call at eleven at night saying that Lexi was sick and had been taken to the local hospital. As Shelly drove herself to the airport at three in the morning to catch a flight, she thought, Why do I have to do this alone?
It was four days before she could bring her daughter home. Lexi had E. coli. Shelly brought her daughter home only to have to take her to the emergency room when Lexi’s kidneys shut down and she had to be put on dialysis. It was quite a summer with Lexi in and out of the hospital several times. Mom had to face her daughter’s surgery as a single mom alone. Lexi finally made it out of the crisis, but it was rough going for several weeks.
Like all single parents, Shelly did what she had to do. She put her life on hold in order to care for her daughter. She prayed and worried and handed her concerns over to Jesus.
The best way to influence our kids and turn them toward the Lord Jesus Christ is to model being a Christian and maintain a strong prayer life and a joy-filled faith walk.
“Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:2).
GOING DEEPER
1. How do we “engrave” God’s words upon our hearts? Upon our children’s hearts?
2. What have you discovered about your child’s heart? What character weaknesses do you need to work on with your child?
3. How does comprehending that the heart is the center of our emotional being help you in understanding some of the hurts you have experienced in your life, such as a divorce or the death or desertion of a partner?
4. How can you help your child put away perversity from his or her mouth and not talk out of both sides of his or her mouth?
5. How will you help your child (and yourself) avoid the following offenses?
6. What causes you to take your eyes off Christ?
7. Proverbs 4:26–27 instructs us, “Make level paths for your feet and take only ways that are firm. Do not swerve to the right or the left; keep your foot from evil.” What do you think “Make level paths for your feet” means?
8. Considering everything in this chapter, what stands out as the most important thing you need to do with your children?