Will my children love God?
Will they honor his name?

These are questions that most Christian parents find themselves asking. We wonder if our children will keep the faith and how we can help them do so. We wonder, perhaps, what it will mean about us if they don’t.

For single parents, these heavy inquiries can feel especially burdensome. Wendy Alsup writes that she found herself profoundly aware of the limits of her influence on her sons after her divorce. She felt orphaned and alone, left with a task too great to bear on her own.

“Our Father in heaven is our children’s Father as well,” Alsup writes. “He is our sovereign coparent, and he hears our pleas that his kingdom will come in our households—that he will be obeyed in our home the way the angels obey him in heaven.”

These truths do not make all of the stress, grief, or loneliness go away. But they remind Alsup—and can remind us—of a truth that can sustain us on the darkest of days: God is here. We are never alone.