For the Parent Who Carries the Day-to-Day Load

 

                           “A father of the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in His holy habitation.”

                            Psalm 68:5 (NKJV)

There are seasons when a parent suddenly becomes the one who carries almost everything.
The morning routines.
The evening meals.
The emotions.
The tantrums.
The tiredness.
The bedtime prayers.
And the quiet tears when the house finally settles.

Sometimes this shift happens by choice.
Often it happens by loss.
But in both cases, the weight feels the same:
“I’m doing this on my own.”

And the question rises quietly in the night:
“Am I supposed to be both mum and dad now?”

I’ve walked with parents who carry this weight, and I’ve lived through my own version of it. When the family changes shape, it’s easy to think you must change shape too. The trouble is, God never asked any parent to become two people. He only ever asked them to be the one He designed.

What a child needs most is not two roles forced into one body.
What a child needs is one safe parent who is present, steady, and true.

It took me years to understand that God never required me to imitate the parent who was no longer there. I thought I had to compensate… soften where I wasn’t soft, harden where I wasn’t firm, stretch somewhere between both roles. But children read authenticity better than adults do. They know the difference between who you are and who you’re pretending to be.

And God gently says:
“Be the parent I made you.
Let Me cover what you cannot.”

When one parent is no longer present day-to-day, God fills the gaps in ways we could not imagine. Sometimes it’s through close friends or grandparents. Sometimes through church family. Sometimes through the child’s own growing relationship with Him. And often it’s simply through His quiet presence flooding a home that feels stretched thin.

You can’t be two people.
You were never meant to be.

But if you stay steady, stay warm, stay gentle, stay prayerful, and stay faithful, your child will grow around your presence, not around the absence.

One strong, loving, grounded parent shapes a child more deeply than two distracted ones ever could.

And the Lord walks with you in it.
You carry the child…

and He carries you.