Getting Real

I have been waiting…waiting for the right time…waiting until I could be the role model I need to be…waiting until I was the perfect mom…and I am still waiting.

I have procrastinated…I have held off on launching Eve’s Daughters. Somewhere in the back of my mind I thought I needed to be through the ups and downs of single parenting…I needed to be in a place of relative calm so that I could help other single moms. Tonight I realize…that calm isn’t going to come. Not the calm I want…the human calm… the “all is well with the world” calm.

The last few weeks have been tough. My teenage son made a mistake. A mistake that has stopped me in my tracks and made me doubt my parenting skills, and brought me back to the same ‘ole question, “am I qualified to start a non-profit for single moms?” How can I possibly be a support to other single moms when I can’t seem to “control” what is going on in my own household, when I keep experiencing “mini” crises?

Karen and I have spent countless hours trying to “perfect” our mission statement. From the beginning we felt that Eve’s Daughters needed to be authentic, needed to reflect the realness of walking with God. So our “working” mission has been “living out the wild love of Christ by walking alongside single moms in crisis”. I have been asking God to reveal what that looks like.

Could it be that “living out the wild love of Christ” means serving single moms despite the fact that my life isn’t perfect, that my children make mistakes, that I make mistakes? Is part of God’s plan that I be vulnerable…and walk the same walk that other single moms are walking…while building my foundation on Christ? Is it as simple as being real, being imperfect, experiencing trials, and all the while loving Christ?

Christ’s love is wild. It is filled with peaks and valleys, with trials and obstacles, and with seemingly illogical paths. But at the foundation, Christ’s love is certain. He is a rock…always there…he will never leave us…no matter what we do. He loves us in spite of our warts, in spite of our inadequacies. He loves us enough to give us opportunities to grow. He loves us enough to experience storms. He loves us enough to let us fail.

The wild love of Christ doesn’t guarantee us calm, doesn’t mean a life without obstacles, and surely doesn’t mean we won’t experience pain. It does mean that when the storm is raging all around us, when we can’t see two feet in front of us, that He is there ready to be our rock, ready to be our shelter.

God wants us to get started. God wants us to step out in faith so that He can use us, in all our inadequacies as parents, to support other women as they go through the single parent journey. He wants us to be his hands and feet, his shoulder to cry on, his ear to listen.

The waiting is over…it’s time to get real