Summer Wasteland
For a single parent with a low income, summer is hell. My first stint of single parenting was from 1995-96. I was a rural pastor, on minimum salary, with very few resources to drawn on, and my children were very small: 2 and 5 at the beginning of the divorce, 4 and 7 by the time I remarried almost two years later. During the school year, they were with me weekends and holidays. During the summer, I alternated entire weeks. Early on, I discovered a painful reality: on my parenting weeks, I had no freedom. I could only visit people who enjoyed children. I had to do all my office work from home. And I could forget about exercising. They were just too small to be by themselves, and I didn't know my new congregation well enough to ask for babysitting help. Fortunately, rural ministers enjoy far greater flexibility than practitioners of almost any other trade or profession I'm aware of. I survived my first summer largely unscathed, and by the second, I had gained enough experie...