Do you, as a single-parent faithfully bringing your kids to church, truly feel welcomed and at home on Sundays? Do you, as a shepherd of a local church, know how to care for the single-parent families in your flock? For lay members of the church—regardless of age and marital status—are you aware of the ways you can uniquely love and care for the single-parent families in your midst?
A Book to Help us See
In God’s Grace for Every Family, Anna Meade Harris shares encouragement for both single-parents and the churches that seek to love them well. She discusses nuances that come with different single parent situations, and how the church can come alongside them and their children in the most ordinary ways to bless them. By sharing her own story as a single-parent raising three boys as well as the stories of others who were interviewed for this book, Harris shines a light on God’s sufficiency and love for single-parents as they grapple with fear, grief, exhaustion, loneliness, and so much more.
Harris’s introduction is a key part to understanding context and statistics that highlight the unique vulnerability of single-parents and their children. Furthermore, her discussion of the single-parent family experience in the church illustrates the many ways that the average church has been designed to benefit the nuclear family above all.
The God Who Sees You
Harris writes with moving conviction and helpful clarity. Her biblical encouragements bring comfort, and reminds me that God promises to always stay and protect even if others have left. She writes so the single-parent feels truly seen and loved by God, regardless of the history that brought them to their current circumstances. Harris often provides her ‘before and after’ perspective—she reflects upon the difference in approaching certain situations when she was married versus after she was widowed. She speaks with humility, pointing to herself to illustrate ways she did not understand or seek to understand the single-parent’s perspective until she became one herself.
One of the most touching chapters is penned by one of Harris’s sons. He writes about his experience growing up in a single-parent house, his own struggles to grieve, and how the church community loved his family. Now well over a decade after the events which left him without a father, it is encouraging to hear his account and how the strength of his family and community kept him going in his walk with God.
God’s Grace for Every Family should be standard reading for church staff and for anyone who seeks to love others the way that God does. It is fitting to end this review with an exhortation from Harris, “God leaves no believer out as he crafts his home, so we shouldn’t either. You cannot grow into the fullness God has for you without me, and I cannot grow without you. This family of God is itself a grace. May we embrace one another in the love of our Father, which never fails.”