Solo Parenting

(From our April 2024 Issue)

Caught in a Spring Snowstorm

By Scoti Springfield Domeij

I left my home at 5 p.m. to speak at a women’s function and forgot my winter coat. I thought. Oh well, I’ll be home in a couple of hours. I’ll survive.

Three hours later, I stepped outside. Bone-chilling snow engulfed my ankles and my low-heeled, peep-toe slide-sandals. Wet snow pouring from the skies soaked my hair as I brushed snow and scraped ice off all four sides of my car—coatless. I grabbed a crocheted afghan blanket I keep in my car, wrapped it snuggly around me, snapped on my seatbelt, and started my car. When it’s cold, my car refuses to start, because of a sluggish alternator I can’t afford to replace. I thanked God my engine turned over.

As I inched forward on the slippery roads, praise and worship music blasted from my radio. All around me semi-trucks, cars, SUVs, and police cars with lights flashing lay sideways and backwards in ditches. The heavy snowfall blowing across the road blinded my vision. The whiteout obscured the street signs. I turned left on a road I thought led home. Cars bogged down on a steep hill sat askew, blocking my snowy trek home. My gas gauge dipped dangerously close to empty, making me feel trapped. “God, please help me get home.”

I spotted a small opening between the cars littering the incline. Inching my way through the maze of stalled, stuck cars, I broke free. A few SUVs whizzed past at dangerous speeds, endangering everyone in their icy path. I thought, Idiots! Four-wheel drive can’t stop on a dime on a snow-packed road. I continued my glacial ten-mile-per-hour crawl.

In the shroud of the snow squall, no landmarks looked familiar. My shoulders and chest tightened. The panic in my heart gushed out of my mouth. “Where am I God? I don’t know where I am. Where does this road lead? Please let me come to a street I recognize.” A familiar building comes into view. I relax. What a relief! I’m on the road home.

The steep hill of the street leading to my home immobilized cars struggling to scale its icy, upward trajectory. To avoid the log jam, I ducked into a parking lot near the bottom of the hill, then wheeled onto the street above the precipitous slope. As I pulled into my driveway. Wading in ankle-deep snow to the warmth of my crash pad, I thanked God for safe passage home.

And that describes my single-parent journey. My faith inches along. My emotions slip and slide, sometimes ditching my hope that daily life will ever be mostly sunny and mild.

The spiritual snows blanketing my emotional and financial winter water my faith and trust in God to provide. I wrap my heart and mind around God’s promises. An expectation breaks free from my trepidation: God wants to accomplish what he desires for my life and my trust in Him. For all the blessings that I cannot see, I wait for God, who rides the heavens and the skies like the snow to help me.

Propelled into single parenthood with a four-year-old son and a nine-month-old son, Scoti encourages other solo parents to find humor in the craziness of their lives. She’s been published in The New York Times, Southwest Art, Family Life Today, and other regional parenting magazines. She writes from a Gold Star Mother’s perspective for HavokJournal.com, an online military journal.