By Melissa Walsh

As a single parent, do you feel as if you’re constantly moving? Are you facing one challenge after another? Do you regularly feel forced to expand well beyond your comfort zone physically, emotionally, and spiritually?

If you answered yes, I feel your pain, sister, because I’ve been there. For many years as a single working mom of four little boys, I was overwhelmed. overburdened, and overtaxed.

I was tired and lonely a lot. Mostly, I was scared. I fretted each month about making ends meet financially. Keeping a roof over my small sons’ heads, food in their mouths, and shoes on their feet were really tough to manage, that with childcare expenses. I was also concerned about not being there for my boys during the day, uncomfortable with having to hire a “mother” for them while I was at work. I constantly wondered whether they would be emotionally damaged by the whole single-parenting situation. I certainly felt emotionally damaged myself.

The sweet dreams I had for raising my children were shattered. Gone. Parenting instead became more akin to a scary, wild, dangerous adventure -- like finding the way out of a dark, critter-dwelling cave, or going whitewater rafting without life jackets. Many days it felt like zip-lining without a security harness.

During those years, I recall people saying to me, “God doesn’t give us more than we can handle.” Trying to hold a smile, I would think, “Sure he does!” Getting through each day was a miraculous feat of strength -- the kind of strength I couldn’t have mustered up without divine intervention.
Life for us for many years was surviving one day at a time. Each day I had to take a leap of faith into life, with the hope that God would catch me and my sons should we fall. And He did. In His grace, He strengthened me.

Those years were really hard and very painful, but amazingly, I’m grateful for them. They taught me and my sons so much about the world, about people, about struggle, and about how much God loves us.

...like an eagle that stirs up its nest and hovers over its young, that spreads its wings to catch them and carries them aloft.
Deuteronomy 32:11 (NIV translation)

This verse is taken from the chapter of the Bible known as “The Song of Moses.” It’s a lyrical account of God’s leading and protection of the Israelites during their exodus out of slavery in Egypt and their journey to the Promised Land. God chose Moses to lead them through that frightful and miraculous adventure. Verse 11 is a metaphor within a larger passage that details God’s love and guard over His people.

Not only is the eagle imagery an illustration of God’s promise to His people, it is also a model of faithful and hopeful parenting.

Consider the verbs “to stir” and “to hover over.” The New Living Translation uses “rouse” instead of “stir.” The King James and American Standard versions use “flutter over” instead of “hover over.”

Do you have a visual in your mind? The eagle rouses, stirs her young. She wakes them up, gets them moving until they take a leap from the nest to learn what flight feels like. Then she hovers or flutters over them, watching them. Should they fall, she dives below them and catches them on her strong wings. She carries them back to the safety of the nest until it’s time for the next stirring into flight.

Remember that statement about God not giving you more than what you can handle? A better statement to a struggling single mom might be, “God grows your wings and its feathers. Care for them and trust in the strength God designed in them.”

You see, like eaglets, once we have grown wings and feathers, God allows seasons of irritating stirring from our comfy nests. Then He urges us to fly in faith. He tells us clearly in his word to trust him during our flight, to know that He’ll bear us on His wings should we fall.

God has designed special wings for each of us. And with our wings we tap power for flight. Our job is to clean and preen our wings, so that we may soar to great heights. Properly maintained, our wings can carry us through and above stormy weather. They’ll be sturdy enough for us to bear our children during flight.

Trusting that God has equipped us with strong wings, we can confidently parent our children, even without an earthly partner. In fact, I believe that God refurbishes and reinforces our wings when we find ourselves parenting in crisis. If we allow Him, He will lengthen our wing-span, grow our feathers longer, and strengthen our muscle to parent our children alone. He will also sharpen our senses and balance the winds.

Single moms are known to have some very powerful wings. How? God, that’s how.

Many individuals who have stepped out to do amazing things with their lives were raised by single moms. Pastor of my church of Kensington Orion, Dave Wilson, was raised by a single mom. So were Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Alexander Haig, Ed Bradley, Halle Berry, Alicia Keys, and Ricky Henderson.

Detroit’s own Ben Carson, the renowned pediatric neurosurgeon, was raised by a young woman who grew up in foster homes, was married at age 13, then was on her own to raise Ben and his brother alone. When Ben’s grades radically declined, she required him to read two books a week, among other disciplinary measures. His grades soared, and he grew up to become a great surgeon. Commenting about his life, Carson said, “My story is really my mother’s story.... Over the years my mother’s steadfast faith in God has inspired me, particularly when I had to perform extremely difficult surgical procedures or when I found myself faced with my own medical scare.”
Oh, the power of trusting God during struggle. He can meet us in our struggle in creative and awesome ways. (In my experience, He often shows up in humorous ways too -- a topic for a future blog entry.)

So as society seeks to label the single mom’s nest as “broken” and her eaglets “at-risk,” soar above shame and fear. With God, your family can be complete and your children can know and realize their purpose.

Our job is to care for our wings by praying and meditating on God’s word, to be alert to the needs of our brood, and to have faith that our heavenly father is watching over our single-parent flight. With God, you and your brood will soar to amazing heights.

...but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.
Isaiah 40:31 (NIV translation)

By Melissa Walsh

​What do hockey moms do on Mother’s Day? They go to the rink of course.

With most youth hockey players participating in Spring hockey, hockey- mom duties continue well beyond the arrival of May flowers. At least one of my boys has had a game or tourney each Mother’s Day for the past several years. The first season or two I was somewhat bent out of shape over the situation. “C’mon,” I would protest seeing the Spring schedule. “Can’t we even get Mother’s Day off.”

I came to realize that, no, hockey moms do not get Mother’s Day off, but we get used to it. I dare say, we even learn to enjoy being at a rink on our special day.

My best hockey-mom Mother’s Day memory happened years ago in Toronto, where my oldest son’s team was participating in a weekend tournament. In the hotel, getting ready for the rink early that Sunday morning, my son announced, “Mom, the coach said there’s a team meeting downstairs.”

So I followed my Squirt down to the lobby. One of the coaches directed me and the other moms to a conference room. “Everyone’s in there,” he said.

Lo and behold, our little Squirt hockey players had planned a wonderful surprise for the moms. They served us breakfast and gave us flowers. It was certainly more pampering than I would have received at home.

Ever since, I don’t complain about having to be at the rink on Mother’s Day. It’s become part of our family’s Mother’s Day tradition. I can’t imagine the holiday without hockey — watching my boys play, catching the NHL playoffs, and then playing in my Sunday night league with my hockey-mom buddies. Mother’s Day doesn’t get any better than that.
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I’d love to hear about your hockey-mom Mother’s Day memories. Send them to me via Twitter @powerplaywriter or my Facebook page.

​© 2011 Melissa Walsh

By Melissa Walsh

My mother’s quest to understand boys recently prompted me to re-read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn while traveling with my family over spring break. I’m so glad I did. As a mother of four “rapscallions,” the experience of re-reading the adventures of Mark Twain’s “rapscallion” Huck Finn was an epiphany.

Huck’s narration reinforced for me how critical it is for those of us mentoring boys to nurture patiently and boldly a boy’s “rapscallion” instincts into the sense of noble purpose he’ll require for his rite of passage into manhood. Twain provided several mentors for Huck, from the widow who sought to “sivilize” him to Aunt Sally who nearly lost her sane mind caring for him and Tom as they executed their “elegant” plan to rescue Jim. And just as Huck’s pap was the antithesis of a father’s love and respect for a son, Jim became the man- hero Huck and Tom needed.

My first reading of this great classic was as a high school student. I must not have gotten much out of the story back then, because I didn’t remember much about it. But now having re-read this story as a mother of sons, recognizing more clearly my calling to raise boys as the most important mission of my life, Twain’s prose echoes in my mind each time I feel that urge to scream at the top of my lungs, “Boys, what are you doing?!!!! What were you thinking?!!!!”

Three of my four sons are about the age of Huck and Tom, early adolescence. And because we live very close to the middle school, I often find myself hosting half a dozen or more adolescent boys in my home after school. Arriving home from my day at the office, I step over the mound of large shoes kicked off near the doorway, holding my breath for the stink of course, and head straight to the kitchen to bake scores of pizza rolls and stir a fresh pitcher of kool-aid.

Sure, adolescent boys don’t smell great, they track in mud, they’re loud, they eat a lot, and they’ve destroyed many things in my home, “by accident” of course, but I’m so glad to know where they are and what they’re up to. And it’s been fascinating to observe them up close. Soon they’ll have driver’s licenses and be lost into the world. Yet though I fully appreciate how precious these American sons are, their squirreliness leads me to feeling from time to time quite “looney,” just as Huck described Aunt Sally after the spoon prank. (I identified strongly with the character of Aunt Sally.) Instead of aiming to “sivilize” them, as Huck accused the widow of aiming to do, I send them outside into the suburban wilderness of manicured lawns and blacktop or insist that they work off the testosterone spikes with the free-weight set in the basement (a worthwhile investment for any family with adolescent boys).

Increasingly, I grow a deeper fondness and empathy for boys this age. I enjoy their child’s curiosity coupled with their rather mature conclusions about the events and people around them. I smile noticing how their total height has yet to fall into proportion with their long, lanky limbs and large feet, like six-month old floppy-eared pups awkwardly scurrying about on oversized paws. Re-reading Huck Finn enhanced my appreciation for adolescent boys, as Huck’s narration of his journey invited me into the heart and mind of an adolescent boy. I learned that an adolescent boy’s rationale and motivation are more dependent on what he senses in the present and less on what he visualizes for the future, though ironically so much of what the boy discovers in the now shapes the man he will become.

We (mentors of boys) must learn to live in the moment with them as they, in the here and now, discover who they are and will become. I’m convinced that adolescent boys do not discover their identity and purpose by pondering it, but rather experiencing it. They actively pursue discovery of their identity and purpose through hands-on exploration and action-packed challenges.

In The Wonder of Boys, educator and therapist Michael Gurian concluded that American parents and mentors are failing boys by not supporting them properly during adolescence, a period of life he dubs “the hero’s journey.” According to Gurian: "Our culture has robbed boys of the hero’s journey in myriad ways. Some among us have feared its warrior extremes and thus tried to teach boys to deny their need to perform and compete. Some among us, seeking to utterly destroy the male sense of role, have taught boys to avoid protecting and providing, to avoid that piece of their heroism. Some among us, too busy to help boys become the hero each needs to be, have neglected our elder responsibility. Most of us, feeling unheroic ourselves, have avoided looking into a boy’s eyes and seeing his desire to be a hero."

So what would Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) think about how we’re raising American boys today? I suspect he’d be disappointed that beer commercials have become the premier medium for conveying a manning-up message, that drinking alcohol is prescribed for manliness. I also suspect Twain would be appalled at the pervasiveness of ADD diagnoses, labeling typical “rapscallion” qualities as disorders and then drugging the Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer out of our boys.

A great truth that Mark Twain so brilliantly presents in Huck Finn is that adolescent boys are, at their core, seekers. We ought not so readily label them dysfunctional, criminal, at-risk, or hyperactive misfits. Every adolescent boy is a sapling of a man-tree living in the moment of discovering what kind of tree he was designed to be, each wanting to grow up tall and straight and each wondering what kind of fruit he was created to bear. Adolescent boys take risks to discover their courage, wrestle with one another to discover their strength, tease one another to discover their propensity for wit and humility, and roam the neighborhood to discover independence. We, their mentors, must be there for them to enable them to discover their virtues freely and responsibly on the hero’s journey. We must be present, discretely holding our breath while stepping over their shoes. We must live in the questions of discovery with them, actively listening, respectfully advising, and unconditionally loving them as they experience the joys and struggles and endure the consequences of the hero’s journey.

Mark Twain said, “There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy’s life that he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure.” Well said. Let’s embrace the rapscallion that is at the core of a boy and support it, not tame it, into becoming a man on a good mission.
“A boy remains a boy until a man is required,” warned Daniel Boone’s mother. Indeed, let’s remain close to our adolescent sons as they meet requirements for manhood. As we patiently and boldly nurture them with a concoction of equal parts love and respect, let’s remember to listen up, laugh it up, and lighten up.

By Melissa Walsh

​Look around the rink and conduct a little study. Exhibit A: the rookie hockey mom. Exhibit B: the veteran hockey mom. How are they different?

I expect you won’t detect differences in how rookie and veteran hockey moms dress, walk, sit, check their smartphones, or hold their coffee mugs. Rather, you’ll spot the delta between rookie and veteran by what comes out of the mouths of hockey moms.

From the time a mom enters her rookie season of youth hockey parenting through the finale of watching teens playing midget or junior hockey, the voice of the hockey mom evolves. I’ve discovered that as a mom’s hockey knowledge grows, so do her screams become cheers, her expressions of worry become expressions of hope, her rants become prayers, and her angst becomes faith in the power behind this great game.

So what are the differences between the voice of the rookie hockey mom and the voice of the veteran hockey mom? Below are some differences I’ve noticed.

First of all, the rookie hockey mom is confused by the ref signals (unless she plays hockey). She can’t distinguish the tripping call from the slashing call, nor the crosscheck call from the interference call. And she thinks that every time a kid crashes or falls, a ref’s arm should go up.

Conversely, veteran hockey moms become pretty good officiating analysts of this fast game. They can also see the systems forming, the guy who’s open, how the lines are gelling, and the goal that is about to happen. For instance, if you want to know exactly what went wrong on the backcheck, ask the veteran goalie mom. She’ll break it down for you. Rookie hockey moms don’t have this vision (unless they play hockey).

Here are some comparisons of what a rookie hockey mom might say with what a veteran hockey mom might say in similar situations. As her kid begins moving the puck out of his team’s zone, the rookie mom screams, “SKAAAAAAATE!!!!!!” The veteran hockey mom, quietly mutters, “Okay now, set it up.”

When her kid’s team is hit with more penalties than the opposing team, the rookie hockey mom comments, “These refs suck.” The veteran hockey mom says, “That’s okay, the hockey gods are fair. It’ll even out in the long run.”

When there’s bodychecking, the rookie hockey mom cringes and says, “Ooh, I hate this checking.” Yet the veteran hockey mom acknowledges clean hits with, “Nice hit.” She might even raise her voice from the bleachers to advise, “Hit somebody!”

Watching NHL hockey, the rookie hockey mom says, “I don’t get the fighting.” The veteran hockey mom says, “There’s a code.” After a tough loss, the rookie hockey mom says, “I feel sorry for the goalie.” The veteran hockey mom thinks, “I respect the goalie.”

Watching HNIC, the rookie hockey mom says, “Don Cherry is nuts.” The veteran hockey mom says, “Don Cherry is prophetic. Nice suit.”

Toward the end of the season, the rookie hockey mom says, “I’m so sick of being at the rink.” The veteran hockey mom says, “Let’s tailgate.”

Planning the family spring break trip, the rookie hockey mom thinks, “Finally, we’re going to have a week with no hockey.” The veteran hockey mom suggests to the family, “Hey, on our way to Orlando, why don’t we stop off in Nashville to catch a Preds game?”

Certainly, what a hockey mom knows and says radically evolves during that wild and bumpy journey that is youth hockey.
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So, you hockey parents out there, please share what you’ve noticed (tweet @powerplaywriter). What has evolved for you in the way you think and speak about youth hockey?

​© 2011 Melissa Walsh

By Melissa Walsh

​For many hockey parents, the pre-ice routine begins with racing home from work to quickly gather the equipment and kids, only to hop right back in the car to head off to the rink. Following the ice-time, it’s racing home again to quickly get the kids in bed. Though you know good nutrition is valuable to youth hockey players, you can’t seem to fit it into the schedule. You may feel that feeding them like the champs they’re striving to become is impossible.

However, with a little planning and teaching, you can foster excellent nutritional habits in your players, which they will continue the rest of their lives.

According to sports nutrition experts Mitzi Dulan and Dr. Chris Mohr of www.fuellikeachampion.com, proper youth hockey nutrition is quite simple. Just remember three fundamental rules: fuel, hydrate, and recover.

FUEL -- Teach your youth players that food is fuel for the body and that winning performance depends on ingesting optimal fuel. But unlike the fancy synthetic fuel required for a race car, a healthy body depends on simple, natural fuel — fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. Stock up on healthy kid-friendly foods, such as berries, grapes, raw carrots, bananas, yogurt, PB&J, oatmeal raison cookies, trail mix, etc. Be vigilant about your kids not skipping breakfast and ensure that they eat healthy carbs one to three hours before hitting the ice. Also, teach them that poor fuel — fried and sugary foods — can deter the body’s performance.

HYDRATE -- Explain to your players that optimal performance also depends on a reliable cooling system. Like engine applications, an athlete’s body temperature is regulated with water. It is critical that youth hockey players understand that when they feel thirsty, they are already dehydrated. Therefore, they must learn to schedule fluid intake regularly throughout the day, rather than waiting until they’re thirsty to grab something to drink. Youth athletes should drink fluids a few hours before an event (16 oz), during an event (sips after every shift), and following an event (24 oz). Get them in the habit of carrying something to drink with them all day. If they don’t want to drink water, juice or Gatorade are fine. Exercise caution with energy drinks, ensuring the ingredients do not include caffeine or sugar.

RECOVER -- Muscles are strained during athletic activity. Not fueling and re-hydrating the body within two hours following athletic activity will impair muscle recovery. Because youth hockey players’ muscles are growing as well as recovering from the strain of playing hockey, it is especially important to ensure that they are nourished with carbs and fluids within two hours after getting off the ice. Ideally, they should eat a healthy snack and intake fluids within a half hour.

While getting proper nutrition is as critical as any other aspect of youth hockey training, keep in mind that youth hockey players are not elite pros who require a sophisticated pre-game carb-loading routine and complicated protein/vitamin-supplement regimen. The key is to teach them the three fundamental rules of fuel, hydrate and recover, then making good foods and fluids available.

Because hockey players are superstitious, you may soon have in your household a kid who won’t play a hockey game without first having his peanut butter and banana on whole wheat washed down with an orange Gatorade. If this is the case, you’ve made a great impact as nutritional coach.

Practical Tips for the Time-Deprived Hockey Parent

• Have your youth hockey player eat half her dinner before practice (Fuel), then reheat the rest after practice (Recover).
• Order your child a grilled chicken wrap or sandwich at the drive-thru instead of a burger and fries.
• Make sure your blender is within easy reach for making berry yogurt smoothies or other nutritional, low-fat drinks that kids like.
• Take your hockey player grocery shopping to choose pre- and post-ice snacks and drinks. Get the entire family involved in stocking the pantry and fridge with healthy foods that are easy to prepare or pack for the rink.
• Remember that chocolate milk is an excellent source of fluid, carbs and protein following a practice or game.
• Require youth players to pack their own healthy snack and drink bottle for the rink, stressing that this task is as important as remembering to bring the stick.

​© 2011 Melissa Walsh