Finding God as a Single Mother

                   My journey to find God has been a 10+ year journey and counting.It's not that he didn't make himself available to me; I just didn't feel worthy. While visiting churches, in my quest to find peace, I heard many sermons about how repentence and baptism covered a  multitude of sins.Surely they didn't mean my sins I thought to myself.Since he's supposed to be able to see and hear everything,was he not seeing not and hearing how I was living and behaving? I knew there was no way he could forgive someone like me.
                  However, it turned out that he could and he did. How do I know you ask? Because there was no way I'd be here today had he not loved me through all the good,the bad and the ugly. As I sit here and recall, he placed several influential people in my life at just the right times to help me through. He allowed me some pain, but they were learning pains,and without them I would have been none the wiser today.
                  As a single mom, I often struggle with the consequences of my decisions. Sometimes I battle the feelings of inadequacy as a parent.I also allow the guilt of their fathers' absence to justify my need to overcompensate in my rearing of them;often to their detriment when I am left with nothing monetarily to care for them for a two week stretch.
                 Then one day the Lord led me to his Word after many a tearful night.It was as if the words were illuminated on the page: " The Lord is a father to the fatherless". In an instant, it was as if tons of struggle had been lifted off my shoulders; I was set free.No longer did I have to tackle the perils of parenting alone.No longer did I have to "steal from Peter to pay Paul" because he would make a way out of no way,and worked on my pride so that I could accept the gift in love and not as charity.
                By no means do I want to give off the impression that life for me is  a bed of roses. God is no respecter of person and I often deal with the same trials and tribulations as the next person. The difference now is I have a whole new outlook;the outlook of a person who has a relationship with God. I know the Lord will never put more on me than I am able to handle (whether I agree with his opinion of what I can handle or not).And I also know that the times when I walked through life " and saw only one set of footprints,it was then that he was carrying me".