Parenting alone can be a tough journey when one doesn’t feel well. Most single parents will continue to go to work when they don’t feel well. They do this so they can save their sick days for when their child is sick so they can stay home with that child. But, what happens when the single mom or dad is really sick and they need help?
I know there were a few times in my single parent life when I got sick, but I never had to be hospitalized or face a life-threatening situation. I would like to think had that happened my church family would have stepped up and helped. But do churches do that for single parents?
I know of one single mom that faced cancer. She had a four-year old child. During her cancer she came to know Christ as her Savior through our church reaching out to her. When she found out the cancer was terminal she reached out to our church and to me more than she called on her non-Christian family. Here are some things she liked for us to do:
- Come to the house and visit with her or sometimes just sit with her.
- Bring fun things to the house for her daughter such as ice cream to eat. My friend couldn’t eat ice cream, but she enjoyed watching her daughter get excited that she had ice cream to eat and she had someone to eat it with her.
- Come and read the Bible to her.
- At one point, she asked me to help her plan her own funeral. She wanted a Christian funeral, and her family couldn’t comprehend what that would look like.
- When she went into the hospital toward the end of her life, she liked for me to come and sing her favorite praise songs to her.