Psychology Structured Interview Assignment

   Deal:  The Smart Stepfamily, chapters 1-4

Chapter 1 Through Wilderness Wanderings

“Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us in bringing us out of Egypt? Is not this what we said to you in Egypt: ‘Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.”

And Moses said to the people, “Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for you today.”

Exodus 14:11–13

Disillusionment is nearly a universal experience for the adults in stepfamilies, and it often occurs within a couple of years. Believing that remarriage will release them from the bondage of divorce, loss, loneliness, and painful emotions, couples load up their children and possessions and launch into the wilderness toward the Promised Land of marriage and family life. The wedding seems to mark a release from oppression. At last, they think, I am loved and important again. I am free from the confines of single-parent living and my children will have the benefit of a two-parent family. This is going to be great!

But just as with the Israelites, what often occurs for couples in stepfamilies is a shift from celebration and positive expectation to self-pity. The realities and challenges of stepfamily living overwhelm unrealistic fantasies, and disillusionment sets in.

Remarriage or a stepfamily marriage for most adults seems to be their second (or third) chance on life. Already life hasn’t worked out the way they planned, and to some degree or another life has been painful. But things are looking up—they’ve fallen in love again and the dream of a normal family life has returned. A new journey of hope has begun.

The journey, however, almost always takes some unexpected turns. For example, your spouse’s dedication to his or her children was noble before the wedding, but now seems to be a challenge to your marriage; a teenager living in one of the other homes decides to live with you; parenting styles differ more than you expected, and conflict erupts frequently. The trip is filled with uncertainty, and couples realize they feel lost much of the time. Like the Israelites, people sometimes think, “Is this marriage going to die, too?” “Who is to blame for bringing me out to the wilderness?” “I feel trapped—maybe it would have been better to stay in Egypt.” Meanwhile, the daily grind of stepfamily life continues and progress is slow. It seems like being lost in the wilderness.

Let me pause for a moment and make a quick prediction. Those of you who were feeling disillusioned before you picked up this book are now thinking, “Oh my, has Ron been peeking in our windows? How did he know I felt this way?” On the other hand, those of you who haven’t yet reached a place where you feel caught between Pharaoh and his army and the Red Sea—usually dating or recently remarried couples—are thinking, “What is Ron trying to do, scare us to death?”

Let me assure you, I’m not trying to be a pessimist or a killjoy. I am trying to be realistic. I have spent more than twenty years as a stepfamily therapist, coach, educator, and researcher, and I’ve heard the stories enough to know what is normal. There are some stepfamilies whose journey from Egypt to the Promised Land is quick and painless, but for the vast majority, the journey takes much longer than anticipated. Because I care about your family, I promise to shoot straight with you—more important, I promise to guide you through the wilderness. But you do need to acknowledge that feeling lost in the wilderness is par for the course.

Let me share a different situation that is similar in creating disillusionment. Since the death of my son (the Preface provides some background to his death), I have a whole new set of life issues and circumstances that make me feel lost much of the time. How do I grieve well? How do I help my wife and other two sons grieve? How do I parent my sons—when should compassion for their sadness moderate my expectations and when does sympathy get in the way of instruction and discipline? When will this generalized depression about life go away, and how do I function as a father, husband, and employee in the meantime? Will life ever feel normal again? Do I always tell every new person I meet about Connor, and what do I do when they quickly skip over or flat-out ignore the largest piece of my life story? What do I have to do to feel normal in a crowd of people, instead of odd and like an outsider?

Hold on to Hope

Because “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life” (Proverbs 13:12), make sure to hold on to hope. A common emotional experience for couples is first anticipation and excitement, then disillusionment and fear, then struggle and discouragement, then satisfaction and safety. Allow hope to see you through each season.

It’s my guess that you, too, have a set of unanswered questions like this. There is a new normal in my life and yours—and much of it is unwelcomed. Much of it is not within our control and we have to find our way through. There’s no going back. With God’s help, we will find our way through the wilderness. As I implied, finding our way starts in part by acknowledging common stepfamily struggles and feelings in the journey.

Don’t Look Now; We’re Being Pursued!

Just as the Israelites found themselves caught between the Red Sea and Pharaoh’s army, so stepcouples frequently find themselves caught between the future and the past. Behind them, debilitating pain and loss from the days of bondage (divorce or death of a spouse) are quickly pursuing. In the present, feelings of anger, resentment, rejection, and guilt siphon energy from people’s emotional tanks, while losses too numerous to count (especially for children) make for cautious emotional investments with new stepfamily members. In short, the pain of the past makes for a tremendous fear of the future. Consider these statements from the Thomas family:

BIOLOGICAL MOTHER, MEGAN: “I’m afraid it’s not going to work, and we’ll get divorced. And then three times I’ve failed. I’m afraid Frank [her new husband] is going to get aggravated with his stepchildren—my kids—and he’s going to walk because as he’s already said, ‘There’s only so much I can take.’ I’m afraid my kids are going to turn against me because they didn’t want Frank as their stepfather. It would just be another failure.”

OLDER SON, JOHN (AGE SEVENTEEN): “I’m afraid of getting close to anyone. I’m not very trusting. With all I’ve had to live through, I keep waiting for it to happen all over again—the constant blaming and getting stuck in the middle. And I won’t let it ever happen again.”

MIDDLE DAUGHTER, SUSAN (AGE FIFTEEN): “I ain’t afraid of nothing. I’m not scared of anything. I mean, if you broke up, it wouldn’t be the first time. I might be a little worried where we’d go or something like that. But as far as you breaking up, I mean, two times gets you ready for it to happen at any moment.”

YOUNGER SON, RANDY (AGE FOURTEEN): “I try to get closer sometimes but then the fear happens and I hide out from doing things with Frank and keep farther apart from him than I should be. . . . I want to get close, but not too close, for fear of something that might happen in the future.”

STEPFATHER, FRANK: [regarding his marriage] “I’m afraid to be in another relationship where I’m nobody and have no say about what’s going on in the house. [Regarding the stepchildren] I’m afraid that if we don’t change things right away, they’re going to grow up and we’ll never have a relationship. They’ll just be stepkids who come and visit at holidays. I don’t want it to be that way.”

It’s easy to hear that the pain of their past is driving their fears of the future, which, in turn, is leading them to be guarded and untrusting in the present. If these heartaches and losses are not successfully resolved for this family (and yours), the result will be a tired, disillusioned couple unable to draw close to each other, let alone meet the emotional needs of their children. Painful emotions from the past must be resolved in order for you and your children to move on.

Are These Fears Typical?

Not all family members have this much fear. Kids, for example, can sometimes be very excited about the new family, but they can be confused about it at the same time. Adult fears seem to escalate when dilemmas generate feelings of uncertainty. Fears are common; don’t panic when facing them. Recognize them and the actions they lead you to take (these actions are often problematic). Focus on understanding fears and preventing them from determining your actions. Fearful responses are often experienced by others as unloving ones.

Facing a Sea of Opposition

Blended families face a Sea of Opposition. Common uncharted waters include:

achieving marital intimacy after being hurt

parenting and stepparenting roles and rules

questions of spiritual integrity and church involvement

how to integrate the members of a stepfamily over time

dealing with ex-spouses and co-parenting issues

helping children emotionally and spiritually

handling sexual pressures between stepsiblings

issues of money management and financial autonomy

Be careful not to let these common issues change the direction of your heart. It’s not uncommon for persons to start wondering, much like the Israelites did, if maybe they should return to the bondage of Egypt, that is, divorce or single-parent living. Sure, it was miserable and unfulfilling, but at least they knew what they had. Disillusionment gives birth to grumbling, complaining, and conflict. Emotions run high and problems escalate. Here is a common story: The stepparent, who from an outsider’s position can more clearly see and feel the disharmony in the home, often voices this disillusionment first. The biological parent, who is still blinded by their strong relationship with their children, frequently discounts the stepparent’s request for change. Slowly but surely, this builds distance and blame in the couple’s relationship. To make matters worse, this often comes at a time when they are trying to figure out how to manage their family and really can’t afford to be out of touch.

The temptation to return to Egypt continues: “What have I done? Maybe I should have stayed single. Maybe God has abandoned me.” Wrong! While I doubt that the God of the universe will reveal a path to you with a cloud or pillar of fire as he did the Israelites, he has most certainly not abandoned you and will provide strength and direction for your journey, even when the path seems dismal.

If there is one message that stepfamilies need to hear, it’s this: There is a stepfamily Promised Land of marital intimacy, interpersonal connectedness, and spiritual redemption! God has not abandoned you. If you will listen, trust, and continue walking by faith, you will hear him confirming your journey, offering guidance and healing, and providing a path on dry ground. But you must trust him. Don’t be like most remarried couples who end their journey in divorce within the first three years; they quit before ever crossing the Sea of Opposition or finding the rewards on the other side. God beckons you to remain persistent and see your family through to the Promised Land. There is a reward to be gained. But you must hold God’s hand and walk through your Sea of Opposition.

Is the Journey Difficult for All Stepfamilies?

Stepfamilies vary greatly in composition and complexity. While it isn’t always true, generally speaking the greater the complexity, the greater the family stress. For example, some stepfamilies have children from just one spouse and involve only one household. This usually occurs after the death of a parent and a remarriage to a stepparent without children. (This is not to imply that the death of a parent makes stepfamily living easy; it is just less complex.) Other stepfamilies are much more multifaceted with “yours, mine, and ours” children, two or more ex-spouses, plenty of stepparents and stepgrandparents, and visitation schedules to multiple households.

Not all stepfamilies have a difficult journey, but most will experience unexpected challenges. Some will face a great many barriers. It is important to remember that the number of barriers you face reflects neither on you nor on whether or not you should have married. When encountering opposition, some people convince themselves that it wasn’t a good idea to marry in the first place. Then they begin looking for a way out.

When stepfamily life gets tough, remain dedicated to your commitment. A man once drove six hours to talk with me about his stepchildren and marriage. He hoped that once I heard him describe the Sea of Oppositions he was facing, I would give him “permission” to leave the marriage. I did not (and he was terribly annoyed). What I did do was agree with him that the marriage, in its present condition, was not healthy, nor was God honored by an angry, resentful relationship. I suggested that with guided help he could choose to work on his marriage and remain open to how the God of the impossible might provide a path through the Sea of Opposition. Furthermore, avoiding divorce by simply tolerating a miserable marriage, I suggested, does not honor God. Commitment requires that you strive for a better life together, even when you don’t feel like putting forth your best effort or have convinced yourself the marriage should never have happened. Ironically, people who make the effort often discover the safe marriage they had given up on.

A Quick Word to Dating Couples

To those of you who are perhaps engaged or considering remarriage, I am so glad you are reading this book now. I can’t tell you how many couples attending my stepfamily seminars have said, “Why didn’t anyone ever tell us these things before we married? We could have saved ourselves a lot of grief if we would have only known.” May I suggest you learn from their experience? Keep reading with these intentions:

Use this book to enlighten yourself to the possible struggles you may face in your stepfamily journey.

Equip yourself and your relationship with practical strategies to meet the challenges.

Use the stories and information here to help you make an informed decision about marriage.

Remarriage and stepfamily life can be filled with many blessings, but the journey probably won’t start out that way. You’ll have to work diligently to reach the Promised Land. To that end, have you truly considered the costs? Do you know what the costs are? This book will help you identify them. I’ve also written an entire book walking single parents and those dating them through the process of meeting someone, dating well, making decisions about marriage, and planning for stepfamily living—all with an awareness of the children throughout the process. I highly recommend you take the time to read Dating and the Single Parent so that you manage your dating and marital decisions with wisdom.

In addition, I recommend that you find a group of stepfamilies or a stepfamily couple in your church or community and ask them some questions:

What do they wish they had known before they remarried?

What are their three greatest challenges?

How could they have better prepared themselves for stepfamily living?

What painful emotions from the past did they not resolve well prior to remarriage?

What blessings have they experienced at this point in their journey?

The lure of marriage is tremendous. Finally, you think, someone to take care of me. I feel so good when I’m with them. But stepfamily life is so much more than just your couple relationship; it also includes children, loss, and a variety of family complexities. In biological families, the couple’s relationship (i.e., the marriage) provides the foundation to the family from day one. In stepfamilies, the parent-child bonds predate the couple’s relationship, often making the marriage the weakest relationship in the home and vulnerable to family stress. Being in love with someone who “makes me feel good again” is just the beginning of what it takes to survive. In Dating and the Single Parent, I put it this way: “Coupleness” does not necessarily lead to “familyness.” They are two separate processes; falling in love with a person does not necessarily mean you can be a family. So please, do yourself and your children a favor—find out everything you can about stepfamily living, and count the cost before deciding to marry. If after much prayer and dating you do marry, give it everything you’ve got, and trust God to lead you through.

The Wrong Time to Date

Parenting responsibilities should impact the timing of dating. For example, I discourage dating if one child is struggling with emotional issues (anger or defiance, depression or anxiety) or is displaying prodigal behavior. These children need a focused, available parent, not one dividing their time. Plus, kids don’t need to add to their concerns feeling unimportant or in competition with a parent’s new love. Help your child through a difficult season, and then open yourself to romance. This order will also make the child’s acceptance of a new stepfamily more likely should dating lead to marriage.

Kids Talk

“I wish she would recognize her own impulsivity and emotional roller coaster. She does and says things without recognizing that to some extent our whole family is dating this guy.” —Rachel, twenty-two years old1

The God Who Heals

Shortly after escaping from Pharaoh’s army, the Israelites journeyed through the Desert of Shur. For three days they traveled, and the only water they found was bitter and not fit for consumption. Again the people complained, and again God provided for his people. God had Moses throw a piece of wood into the unpalatable water, turning it sweet. God then refers to himself as Jehovah-Rophe, the “LORD who heals you” (Exodus 15:26 NIRV). In so doing, God declares a promise. If his people will listen to his voice and do what is right in his eyes, he will heal—he will make the bitter waters of their life sweet again.

I believe God is waiting for a chance to heal your past hurts and to eliminate all that pursues you. But that’s not all he offers. He will provide strength to keep your commitments, and he will provide wisdom to overcome the obstacles that lie ahead. He wants you to be successful. But you can’t rely on yourself. Depend on him and he will clear a path.

Food for the Journey

Water was not all that God provided for the Israelites. He also caused manna and quail to rain down upon the people. Similarly, I suggest two types of food to help nourish your journey: practical information and support from fellow travelers. This book will provide the practical stepfamily information. After laying down some key stepping-stones for the stepfamily journey, I will discuss common challenges to the stepfamily and provide practical guidance.

Getting Smart Has Benefits

“We sing the praises of your seminar to everyone. God totally answered our prayer. It was five years of hard trials and not knowing what to do with our family and why certain members acted the way they did. God painted a clear picture through your conference. It has been eight months since the seminar and God has changed us so much. My family is awesome. The children are different because of it and so are we.” —David and Tracy

But don’t stop there. I highly recommend you find another couple or a group of couples and meet together on a regular basis to study and encourage one another. Discussion questions for individual dating and married couples are included at the end of each chapter in this book, but just the two of you talking is not the same as meeting with a group of couples. I have been involved in support and therapy groups for a number of years, and stepfamily groups are among the most dynamic I’ve seen. The common stories that are shared and the pressures and crises that are experienced together create an incredible bond among group members. My small-group material, The Smart Stepfamily Small Group Resource DVD and accompanying Participant’s Guide, is an educational resource you’ll want to consider. Watching the teaching video and discussing the group questions will help you process the information in this book, internalize it, and apply it in your home. For more on leading an educational group or stepfamily ministry, see SmartStepfamilies.com/view/learn.

Is It All Worth It?

Tim was remarried, and after three years he was just beginning to understand how difficult the journey was going to be. His life experience had shown him that the stepfamily journey can be tough, and now he was hearing me confirm that in a live seminar. During one of the breaks, this conscientious thirty-eight-year-old man asked an honest question: “I’m beginning to think the payoff can’t be worth all this hard work. It feels like I’m married to my wife, and she’s still married to her kids. That makes it very hard for me to work at liking and accepting them. If you don’t know what you’ll have in a few years, is it worth the effort?”

He spoke for many people who silently wonder if they’re heading down a dead-end street. My answer is no, you’re not. A smart stepfamily is worth the effort. The Israelites discovered the Promised Land to be everything they dreamed. Not all stepfamilies have all their expectations realized, but with hard work and commitment, the rewards are worth striving for.

Promised Land Rewards

Theresa, reflecting on her family’s journey through the wilderness, contributed these thoughts to my website recently (SmartStepfamilies.com), and she is right on target:

The change from being a single divorced family to a stepfamily has been very challenging . . . don’t expect a miracle overnight. . . . God is always faithful in every situation and with Him as the central part of all your decisions you can make it through. It is a day-to-day process, and only putting your faith and trust in God will make things better. Having a stepfamily is very rewarding and it is worth working on!

At the heart of the stepfamily journey is the search for family identity. Knowing how to relate to one another, what to expect from yourself and the roles of others in the family—even how to introduce each other in public—are basic questions stepfamilies ask themselves repeatedly throughout their journey. And as stressful as this journey of family identity formation is, there are some rewards along the way, including:

high-quality marital relationships

a new marital heritage to celebrate

a healthy family means healthier kids

cooperation between homes results in well-disciplined children

respect and care between stepparents and stepchildren

multigenerational blessings in later-life stepfamilies

experiencing love, extending grace

redemption of your family story

High-Quality Marital Relationships

Research of couples in stepfamilies—conducted by internationally recognized marriage and family researcher Dr. David Olson, president of Life Innovations, and me—confirms that couples in stepfamilies can create high-quality marital relationships. In our book The Smart Stepfamily Marriage, we detail the qualities of high-quality stepfamily marriages and reveal how couples can deepen their intimacy and gain relationship strength. Qualities like effective communication, the ability to resolve conflict well, a relational style that is flexible and adaptable, enjoying leisure activities together, and couple spirituality prove to be very predictive of a high-quality marital relationship.

In other words, couples can create mutually satisfying, intimate, God-honoring marriages within stepfamilies. Undoubtedly there are a number of unique barriers to overcome (see chapter 5), but remarriages can be healthy relationships. Furthermore, I’ve observed that couples who endure the adversity of the journey frequently have a bond that is powerful enough to withstand anything. There is strength and a sense of victory after surviving what for some is a difficult journey.

How long does it take for couples to find an increase of satisfaction? E. Mavis Hetherington reports in her highly scientific book For Better or For Worse: Divorce Reconsidered2 that it takes most couples five to seven years to get through the tensions of stepfamily life to the point that their stress level declines to match that of a husband and wife in a first marriage. Furthermore, surviving the tumultuous early years common to stepfamily living seems to give couples a staying power that keeps them going . . . and growing. There is a honeymoon for couples in stepfamilies, but keep in mind, it comes at the end of the journey and not at the beginning.

A New Marital Heritage to Celebrate

A strong stepfamily marriage is critical for the relational development of the children. Stepfamily children, especially those who have lived through a parental divorce, need to witness and learn from a healthy marital relationship. This counteracts the negative and destructive patterns of interaction they witnessed in their parent’s previous marriage (and since the divorce). Instead of arguments filled with yelling and personal agendas, they watch two people who maintain a win-win attitude negotiate the best solution for their family. Instead of a distant relationship between two people living parallel lives, they witness two people giving time and attention to their relationship. Instead of an unbalanced relationship, where one spouse is constantly chasing an ever-distancing, never-available spouse, children see a husband and wife who continually seek to sacrifice for the other out of love. On the other hand, if children witness repeated marital breakups, the net effect is a weakening of the child’s sense of permanency to marriage and an increased lack of trust in the people they love.3

It’s worth mentioning that many children do not welcome their parent’s remarriage, especially in the beginning. They may even be antagonistic toward the stepparent’s efforts to join the family. This is normal, as children hold on to the dream that their biological parents will remarry. Despite the children’s resistance, a strong stepfamily couple will have positive benefits for them over time. The key is to remember that during the early integration years, children may resent the stepparent’s presence in the home. Maintain a long-term perspective and live as if a healthy marriage is just what the kids desire. Someday they may come to appreciate, even celebrate, your marital commitment.

Some time ago a woman sent me an anniversary card she received from her stepdaughter. Debbie had kept the card because it meant so much to her. It made her realize just how much her stepdaughter was watching and learning from her marriage. Nearly a decade into her remarriage, Debbie received the card, which read, “Glad to see you two still haven’t lost the magic. Happy anniversary, Mom and Dad!” The handwritten note inside the card was even more encouraging: “Happy Anniversary! I just wanted to thank you for the wonderful Christian example of how a marriage should work. The way you solve conflict with humor is fun to watch. When the time comes for the Lord to bless me with a mate, I hope I am as lucky as the two of you are! I love you both, Kara.”

Now, that’s what I call a Promised Land reward!

A Healthy Family Means Healthier Kids

In 1998 James Bray published research culminating the first ten-year longitudinal study of stepfamilies in America. His research revealed that a loving, well-functioning stepfamily over time can negate many of the detrimental psychological impacts of divorce on children. While not all of the negative effects can be reversed, it is certainly a message of hope for parents and children. It seems that with time, healthy stepfamilies can have benefits that counteract the negative costs of divorce.

Bray says, “A strong, stable stepfamily is as capable of nurturing healthy development as a nuclear family. It can imbue values, affirm limits and boundaries, and provide a structure in which rules for living a moral and productive life are made, transmitted, tested, rebelled against, and ultimately affirmed.”4 The key here is a “strong, stable stepfamily” which, of course, takes time and effort, but brings many blessings to children.

Recent research, for example, suggests that a healthy stepfamily can help to diminish behavioral problems in children that arise after parental divorce. Parental divorce occurring when children are in preschool (age five or younger) predicts an increase in behavioral problems throughout preschool and even into mid-childhood (ages six to ten). However, the transition into a married blended family before children reach age ten appears to have a calming effect on child behavioral issues. What’s more, a child’s residual negative behavior seems to be more related to the original divorce than the new stepfamily.5

But there’s even more good news. The benefits to children from healthy stepfamilies carry over to their adult years and positively impact their marital choices. It appears they have a lower divorce rate (compared to other children of divorce), and the quality of their own marriages more closely mirrors the stepfamily’s healthy marriage than the poor-quality marriage that ended in divorce.6 In other words, a strong stepcouple begins to undo the generational cycle of divorce—in just one generation! This is great news for parents, their children, and society at large.

Stopping the Cycle of Divorce

A high-quality stepfamily marriage provides a positive role model for children and may mitigate the effects of observing a low-quality parental marriage that ended in divorce.

Cooperation Between Homes Results in Well-Disciplined Children

When children grow up in a stable stepfamily home, they benefit tremendously. When co-parents (birth parents, separated by divorce) cooperate, the benefits are even more profound. It doesn’t happen often, but some co-parents, like Jason and Leigh, have learned not to let their marital differences and past conflicts keep them from cooperating when it comes to the discipline of their children. For a long time Samuel (age nine) and Wesley (age six) told Jason, their dad, one story and Leigh, their mom, another to get out of school responsibilities. When Jason and Leigh realized what the kids were doing, they buckled down on the boys with the school’s help. When Samuel and Wesley figured out that they couldn’t play one parent off the other, their misbehavior at school diminished significantly. Gaining this level of cooperation is not easy for most, but seeing the rewards in well-disciplined children makes it worth the effort. I will spend concerted time in chapter 6 discussing how co-parents can cooperate for their children’s well-being.

Respect and Care Between Stepparents and Stepchildren

Over time, stepparents and stepchildren can develop a tremendous bond with one another. The pace of this developing relationship varies (see chapter 7), and some will never be more than respectful friends (especially if the children are adults at the time of the marriage). But for most, a basic sense of mutual respect and care for one another is genuinely attained. Others will develop a deep, loving, and trusting bond that is very special.

Multi-Generational Blessings in Later-Life Stepfamilies

Many couples marrying later in life mistakenly assume that because their children are adults, their transition to a stable intergenerational stepfamily will be smooth. As with younger stepfamilies, later-life marriages bring many emotional transitions for adult stepchildren. Initial fears that grandchildren will not be prioritized, feelings of abandonment, renewed grief over a changing family heritage, and concerns with family inheritances and finances are common. However, these negative emotions can eventually give way to feelings of bondedness and connection, and multi-generational blessings.

A later-life couple, Bob and Vicki, and I were being interviewed for the national broadcast FamilyLife Today®, when host Dennis Rainey asked Bob’s adult daughter, Katie, to tell her stepmother how she felt about her. Between you and me, I gasped when Dennis asked her to share because none of us knew what she was going to say. What I did know was that there had been some struggles the first few years. Would Katie have anything positive to say? I held my breath just a little as she started to respond.

I guess Vicki already knows this because we do have such a close relationship, but right after she and Dad got married, I went through some personal stuff and she was there for me in a motherly and friend way. She talks to me like a mother, she calls me out like a mother, she loves me like a mother, and she is one of my best friends. The way that she loves my children warms my heart. . . . The things that she does behind the scenes—if you knew this woman—she’s always thinking of someone else. And I just love her.7

I was so relieved—and so inspired that this family was experiencing multi-generational rewards. Later-life stepfamilies, like younger stepfamilies, sometimes struggle to find their fit. But the rewards are worth the effort.

Experiencing Love, Extending Grace

Learning to love again after being hurt is a fearful, risky endeavor—very risky. Extending grace is part of that risk. Without it we cannot give and receive love. God taught us this. Romans 8:12–24 reminds us that God through Christ’s sacrifice has adopted believers as his children. Despite our sinfulness, his grace casts out of us a spirit of fear and replaces it with a spirit of hope. He chose to love us; he chose to extend grace to us. In so doing, he made it possible for us to experience love and grace in deeply profound ways.

I have seen this process replicated many times in stepfamilies, for example, in adults who extend to ex-spouses the grace that God has given them and stepparents who choose to love stepchildren who are cold and aloof. Imitating God’s love and grace can bring about profound changes to relationships. The warmth of one heart eventually softens the anger of the other. I’ve watched children once empty due to the abandonment of their mother or father begin to bloom under the loving care of a stepparent. I’ve been inspired when a non-custodial mother speaks well of her children’s stepmother and insists that they respect her. Despite personal fear and risk, people in stepfamilies are choosing love and extending grace.

Redemption of Your Family Story

Is there a part of your personal life story or family story that you wish you could change? At this point does the tragedy in your story seem to define you? And what of the choices you made in the past that you now regret—those can’t be changed; they haunt you. What can you do about the legacy of shame they have created?

In his insightful book A Grace Revealed: How God Redeems the Story of Your Life, author Jerry Sittser suggests that each of us is living a story. As Christians our story is being caught up into God’s story (even if we’re not aware of it), specifically, the story of his redemption of those who call upon his grace. It doesn’t really matter that you can’t change the past. What matters is that God is changing the trajectory of it. For example, the worthless, nonsensical parts of life can find purpose, and our tragedies can become service to others (remember Joseph, sold by his brothers into slavery, became the one who saved the Hebrew nation and his family from famine).

Nan and I have most certainly experienced this. Just four years after the loss of our son, our journey to find his legacy resulted in the completion of a giant Lego-like art center in Ghana, West Africa, that provides therapeutic support and healing through creative expression to rescued child slaves. It’s an amazing story (stunning even still to me) that includes the collective energy of five former designers and two carpenters from ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, hundreds of volunteers and donors, and the healing care of two parents, Pam and Randy Cope, who themselves lost a child and in his memory established the Touch A Life Foundation. The Copes reached out to us after our son died just as they reach out to trafficked children and rescued us from drowning in our sadness.

The Connor Creative Art Center is helping to redeem the stories of children from tragic circumstances—and at the same time it’s redeeming our family story. Does this beauty from our ashes bury our ashes? Absolutely not. I tell people all the time I will live with my suffering every day for the rest of my life. But that’s not all I have. Right beside my pain is my faith; it doesn’t cancel my pain, but it does inform it. My faith calms my pain, provides perspective to it, and reminds it that this life is not all there is. Because God is redeeming all things, he will make Connor—and me—new someday and then I’ll see him again. Where would I be if I weren’t allowing God to wrap my story up into his bigger story of redemption? I’ll tell you: telling a sad story of loss without any hope.

And what of your story? Does the story you tell of your past include any perspective of a redemptive present? What if remarriage and this new family is the present-day portion of God’s redemptive work in your life? When you seek to demonstrate the fruits of the Spirit, you partner with God’s activity to move your family story out of the past and into a redemptive present. And here’s the amazing outcome of the far-reaching power of God’s redemption—when God works all things for the good of those who love him (Romans 8:28) it doesn’t change the past, but it does change the story we tell about the past. When light is directed on the dark, it casts the dark in a new light. It changes our understanding of it, our interpretation, the meaning we give it, our role in the story, the outcome we see for our lives, even how we live in the present in light of the past. The past is, therefore, redeemed.

Your family story, even the part that is embedded in the past, is not over. You are in process—God’s redeeming process. When you walk with him in faith, your story, even the worst parts of it, is caught up into what he is doing to redeem all things to him. There are more chapters to your family story yet to be written, some in this generation and some in the generations to come. Walk in faith and watch in awe how God authors a new legacy.

Noticing What God Has Done

During the journey to the Promised Land, the Israelites experienced many periods of doubt; perhaps you have too. I hope, when they stopped to look back at how far they had come, they could see the hand of God and how many times he had acted on their behalf. Perhaps you haven’t looked back recently. Perhaps the barriers that stand in front of you now are fueling doubt and pessimism. Take a few minutes to notice what God has done to help you navigate your journey so far. In what ways has his Word provided insight for decisions and encouragement? How has trusting in his truths about marital fidelity, kindness toward your enemies, and having a servant’s heart helped you and your family to overcome obstacles along the way? Make a list of his faithfulness and thank him for it.

Ritu Ghatourey said, “You must never forget who was there for you when no one else was.” Noticing what God has done for us sometimes includes realizing that the very family members with whom we struggle are also the ones who have been there when others weren’t. Seeing one another as a gift—yes, sometimes a frustrating gift—moves your heart in the direction of gratitude. When that gratitude is experienced by family members, their heart can’t help but be softened a little, and they move closer to you—and everyone together moves a little closer toward God.

Is there a Promised Land for stepfamilies who don’t quit, who faithfully follow their Lord, and who learn all they can about navigating the journey? Absolutely. And it’s well worth the effort!

Questions for Discussion

To help you apply what you are learning, each chapter concludes with questions for parents and children, pre-stepfamily dating or engaged couples, and all couples (appropriate for all couples, whether dating or married). I suggest you work through the questions on your own before discussing them with your kids, dating partner, or spouse. Not all of the questions are appropriate for children or stepchildren, so before talking with them, consider their ages and your overall relationship with them.

Recommended resources for further discussion:

Life in a Blender by Ron L. Deal—this booklet for children ages ten and up brings perspective and practical guidance to children in stepfamilies. The accompanying Parent Discussion Guide helps you engage your children in insightful conversation about what they’ve read. Available at FamilyLife.com.

The Smart Stepfamily DVD Small-Group Resource by Ron L. Deal—an eight-week video curriculum for small groups or personal study. Available online and in bookstores.

FOR PARENT-CHILD DISCUSSION (Discretion based on the age of the child and the quality of adult-child relationships is advised.)

Begin by briefly telling your child the story of God’s rescue of the Israelites from the hand of Pharaoh (their age will dictate how much detail you share). Then say, “Our family is kind of like that story. We are traveling together as a new family, and some days it’s difficult to know where we are going or how to get there. Other days we are doing well. But every day we have to trust God to lead us through the wilderness.”

What part of this story can you relate to?

What joys (or rewards) have you already experienced?

What questions do you have for me about our family and our journey?

FOR ALL COUPLES

1. What aspects of your past did you hope marriage would “cure”?

2. Which of the following emotions have you felt in the past? Which still haunt you from time to time? Anger. Bitterness. Depression. Sadness. Longing. Hurt. Resentment. Guilt. Fear. Pain. Rejection.

3. In what ways have you experienced disillusionment in your steprelationships and at what point did you realize things weren’t working out as you had expected? How have you adjusted your expectations?

4. In what ways was your remarriage another loss for your children? How can you be sensitive to that loss without being guilt-ridden (or easily manipulated because you feel guilty)?

5. Look again at the list of uncharted waters (under Facing a Sea of Opposition) early in this chapter. Which of these represent areas of growth for you or your stepfamily? What areas do you consider to be the priority growth areas right now?

6. In what ways have you or your stepfamily members experienced God’s leading or his healing hand? Be sure to share with your stepfamily how you see him at work in your lives.

7. What Scriptures have been helpful or inspiring to you recently? If you haven’t been reading your Bible much lately, how can you begin to do so again?

8. Share a time with your spouse when you weren’t sure the work was worth the effort. If that time is now, what do you need to help you stay determined? If you trusted God to bring you through, what would you be doing differently than you are now to work in that direction?

9. Which, if any, of the Promised Land Payoffs have you experienced to some degree already?

• High-quality marital relationships

• A new marital heritage to celebrate

• A healthy family means healthier kids

• Cooperation between homes results in well-disciplined children

• Respect and care between stepparents and stepchildren

• Multi-generational blessings in later-life stepfamilies

• Experiencing love, extending grace

• Redemption of your family story

10. To give and receive support for your journey, I recommend that you create or join a stepfamily small group. Is one available in your church? If not, go to Familylife.com/blended to search for a ministry in your area or find resources to start your own group.

CASE STUDY IN STEPFAMILY FEARS

Read again the fears from the Thomas family at the beginning of this chapter, and then answer the following questions.

Which fears of the biological and/or stepparent can you relate to and why?

What are you doing to prevent these fears from becoming a reality?

Think through your previous losses and painful family experiences (either family of origin or first marriage). How do your current fears connect with those experiences? How have they sensitized you to avoiding more pain in current relationships?

If you weren’t hamstrung by the past, how would you be different in the present?

Consider the fears mentioned by the children. Which might your children also feel?

FOR PRE-STEPFAMILY COUPLES

1. In what ways do you feel intimidated and frightened after reading this chapter?

2. What challenges are you beginning to see that you had not thought about before?

3. Think of a stepfamily couple that you can interview. Ask them the following questions. If possible, start attending a stepfamily support group to help you make a more informed decision about marriage.

• What do you wish you had known before you married?

• What are your three greatest challenges?

• How could you have better prepared yourselves for stepfamily living?

• What painful emotions from the past did you not resolve prior to marriage?

• How long have you been traveling this journey?

• What blessings have you experienced and at what price?

(Chapter 2) Key Stepping-Stones

It’s been a real struggle trying to be a stepmother to my husband’s son. We butt heads quite often, and my husband doesn’t know how to help. Usually he and I start arguing about his son, but before long we’re arguing with each other. It’s been three years, and I just thought things would be so much better by now.

Without question, this stepmother is struggling. I receive numerous emails such as this, and most of them come from good-hearted people who are discouraged with their journey. The Promised Land can seem so far away when daily problems continually drain your energy. The real question is, can you trust God and persevere in your journey while trying to understand what obstacles stand in the way and what solutions will help you overcome them?

Let me pause for a moment and clearly say that I don’t ask this question flippantly. I realize spiritual advisors and ministers often hand out the easy “Just trust God” solution and then walk away. Since my son’s death, I really understand how incredibly difficult trusting God can be when the cost of your circumstances is extremely high. Two weeks after his brother died, my youngest son, Brennan, then age ten, opened Connor’s CaringBridge website (created when Connor was in the hospital so people could receive updates and share prayers). He pointed to the counter on the screen and said, “Look, Dad. We had over 35,000 people praying for Connor. Why did God let him die?” With my eyes filled with tears I said all I could come up with: “I don’t know, buddy. I’ll have to get back to you on that one.” In hindsight, I’ve realized that in part Brennan was asking, “Can we trust that God is good even when he allows life to stink?” It’s a very good question.

I had read the book of Job before Connor died, but after his death I realized that I had never really read the book of Job. I have read it dozens of times since and committed some parts to memory as a way of coping with my son’s death. One aspect of his story that has sustained me is how Job’s faith was transformed through his tragedy. Not immediately, I assure you, but only after a long argument with God. For thirty-five chapters, Job argues, petitions, and takes on God regarding the loss of his family, wealth—essentially his life. Believing that God is punishing him for some evil he knows he has not done, Job accuses God of injustice. In his suffering, essentially for thirty-five chapters Job postures that God cannot be trusted to bless good people.

Then God speaks (see Job 38). Unfortunately for Job (and me) he doesn’t explain the behind-the-scenes circumstances and Satan’s involvement, nor does he tell Job why he allowed the death of his ten children. Wasn’t there some cosmic purpose that God could share with Job that would somehow settle his suffering? Instead, when he speaks, God reminds Job that he alone is God, the creator of the universe and everything in it, with power and intellect beyond anything Job can understand. God doesn’t defend himself, he just defines himself.

And somehow, in this response, Job’s faith is transformed. How do I know? In chapter 42, Job makes an interesting remark after listening to God: “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:5–6).

The man whom God himself at the beginning of the story said was blameless and upright (see Job 1:8) was now indicating that his faith had grown significantly; something had matured his faith. Suffering had invited Job to “see” God in a way he never had before. For months after my son’s death, I asked everyone I knew what they thought Job now saw. Finally, after many disappointing conversations, Jimmy Adcox, a trusted ministry friend of mine, suggested that what Job learned was that he could trust God with the things that in this life he would never have the privilege of understanding. Apparently Job had trusted God to be good, but didn’t know he could trust him with the unknown circumstances of life that brought great sadness and suffering.

I cannot change my past sufferings; neither can you. I cannot predict the unknown of the future; neither can you. But we can trust that God is good in both our pasts and ours futures, even if we don’t understand the circumstances.

Stepping-Stones: Step Here, Not There

There are a few land mines to avoid while journeying through the wilderness. In part, trusting God with the unknown means trusting that when he says, “Step here, not there,” doing so will bring blessing to your home. Essentially, stepping-stones are important attitudes and perspectives that will enable you to endure the wilderness and cross your Sea of Opposition. Each one overtly says, “Step here,” meaning do or act this way. But there’s always an implied, “Don’t step there, that’s a land mine” message as well—that is, avoid doing this or acting like that. The “Step here” message is provided below; I invite you to determine the “Don’t step there” message yourself.

As you read these key qualities, celebrate the ways you have already begun living them and imagine ways you need to improve.

Spiritual Integrity and Christlikeness

This stepping-stone goes straight to the heart of any successful family. It occurs when family members voluntarily put themselves under the lordship of Jesus Christ and make an internal, personal commitment to follow him and accept his gracious forgiveness of the sin that separates us from God. Living in faithful response to this grace will ripple into every aspect of your home. For example, when we understand how much we have been forgiven, we can extend forgiveness to those who have deeply hurt us. Furthermore, just as Christ was not swayed from acting fairly toward those who falsely accused him, stepparents who seek to imitate Christ can find ways of rising above their stepchildren’s manipulative ploys and not “pay back evil with evil” (see Romans 12:17–21 NIRV). Christ’s spiritual integrity (doing what is right despite how you feel about it) is a model for how you are to treat one another. When his integrity becomes yours, a transformation will begin in your home that defies the odds.

Knowing Yourself

If your spiritual life is currently off course, who could you reach out to for support or guidance? Take one step today toward a local church or pastor that may be able to help.

Christlikeness involves a personal commitment to holy living. There are, of course, thousands of Scripture texts that help us understand living as Christ did. Let’s sample just a few. Read the following and apply them specifically to the relationships within your stepfamily. Ask yourself how you might put them into practice with your spouse, ex-spouse, children, and stepchildren.

Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming. In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.

Colossians 3:5–10

Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

Colossians 3:12–14

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.

1 Corinthians 13:4–8

Finally, my brothers and sisters, always think about what is true. Think about what is noble, right and pure. Think about what is lovely and worthy of respect. If anything is excellent or worthy of praise, think about those kinds of things. Do what you have learned or received or heard from me. Follow my example. The God who gives peace will be with you.

Philippians 4:8–9 (NIRV)

But the fruit the Holy Spirit produces is love, joy and peace. It is being patient, kind and good. It is being faithful and gentle and having control of oneself.

Galatians 5:22–23 (NIRV)

Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.

The application of these texts can be profound for your family. For instance, you might find it much more difficult to argue with your ex-spouse if you “don’t keep a record of wrongs.” Compassion can help you to be sensitive to your spouse who feels caught between love for you and love for his or her children. Gentleness with stepchildren who have made it perfectly clear they don’t want you around is very difficult but may eventually win them over. Finding and focusing on what is “praiseworthy”—instead of rehashing what is upsetting—helps create energy for problem solving and gives you hope for the future. And finally, not letting your children hear “unwholesome talk” about the other household is a gift, just as “building up” your children’s stepparent is a gift you’d like the other home to do for you.

Let me say another brief word about this last example and the wisdom of Scripture. Negative comments about your children’s other stepparent (an ex-spouse’s new spouse) often flow out of frustration or hurt but sometimes are an attempt to keep your children loyal to you. Parents don’t realize they already have their children’s loyalties; a stepparent will not replace a biological parent in a child’s heart. Negative comments are simply unnecessary. If you are successful in getting your children to become uncooperative and disrespectful toward the stepparent, stress is created in the other home, which, ironically, is then carried back into your home by the children. In other words, unwholesome talk about the other home is an effective form of self-sabotage! God’s way really does work best.

Listening

The second stepping-stone involves one of the hardest skills in relationships—listening. If stepfamily members are not willing to hear one another, they can’t know how to love and honor one another. Listening is a process by which persons set aside their own agendas long enough to tune in to someone else. This allows you to see another perspective and gain insight into that family member’s feelings, desires, and goals. In contrast, an unwillingness to listen and value the perspective of another can make them feel invalidated and unimportant.

Outsiders in stepfamilies are those who are not biologically related to other stepfamily members; insiders are biologically related and have a shared family history together. Sometimes an outsider (e.g., stepparent) is told they shouldn’t have a say in a situation because they “just don’t understand” the history or the circumstances. The insider parent (biological parent) feels justified not listening to the outsider stepparent and so, then, do the children. Such invalidation usually brings about resentment in the stepparent and usually prevents them from moving from an outsider to an insider. This should not be. Even though opinions will differ, everyone in a stepfamily has the need to be heard.

Best Practices: Parenting Teenagers

Listening to teens is particularly important when rules are changing or unwanted transitions in the family are taking place. Adolescents need to know they are being heard and that their opinions are being considered. Especially when their thoughts are not changing your mind or the circumstances, take the time to hear and show them you understand their feelings.

When conflict erupts, the biblical admonition to “be quick to listen . . . and slow to get angry” is of tremendous value (James 1:19 NLT). During conflict, most persons want so badly to be heard that they talk over others or are devising their next comment when they’re supposed to be listening. Proverbs 18:13 (NIRV) reminds us, “To answer before listening is foolish and shameful.” It takes great discipline, but people who can apply the principle of listening first to understand the other before trying to be understood will find their conflicts de-escalating and more productive.

Understanding

Listening is the skill that makes understanding possible. It can be difficult to fully understand someone else’s perspective, but standing in another’s shoes in order to see the world from that person’s point of view is a good first step. This is an important process in stepfamilies because, for example, each individual has traveled a different journey into the stepfamily. Imagine yourself standing in New York’s Grand Central Station, the largest train station (by number of platforms) in the world, with forty-four platforms and sixty-seven tracks, watching people arrive on different trains. As they exit the train, you realize that though they started in many different places, they are now all arriving in one location.

So it is with your family. Perhaps some children in your home, for example, after the death of a parent journeyed on a train through the valley of the shadow of death. Their loss is distinctively permanent and their daily longing for that parent is never satisfied. But because their parents had a strong marriage, they are used to responding to united parents. Other children in your home, however, arrived on a different train: the divorce train. They are used to angry, divided parents who perhaps belittle each other. These children must travel back and forth between two homes and navigate the tension of doing so. This difference in history brings to your living room—Grand Central Station—very different children with different expectations, hurts, and fears.

To make matters more challenging, the adults have also traveled on different trains from each other and the children. The result? Biological parents and stepparents experience the stepfamily differently from each other and from the children.

To put yourself in the shoes of the other persons in your family is a tremendous act of courage, but it is absolutely necessary in order to understand their experience of you. You may find, for example, that a stepdaughter’s resentment of you is not so farfetched given how she has been hurt by others in the past. Or you may discover that your husband’s style of discipline is understandable (even if you don’t want to replicate it) once you understand what he experienced in his first marriage and family of origin.

Try putting yourself in the shoes of each person and wonder what it must be like to be them. Ask yourself:

What losses has he or she experienced? (Make a list of the losses your children have experienced, and you’ll be humbled by what they have been forced to give up.)

How do the other members of our stepfamily treat this person? How do I treat him or her?

What is it like for each child to live in the other home?

What challenges does he or she face in trying to belong?

What responsibilities, roles, relationships, etc., does he or she have that I don’t have to deal with?

What is his or her favorite part of this family?

What part does he or she care for the least?

Ask each family member to share the answers to some of these questions with you. Listen intently and strive to understand how these aspects impact his or her daily life with you. Such understanding will help you develop empathy and perhaps compassion for each member of your family, which in turn helps you relate more effectively.

Perseverance

Life is filled with trials, tribulations, and challenges. It is the norm for all types of families (biological, single-parent, and stepfamily). This is especially true at the beginning of the stepfamily journey; in fact, uncertainty, disillusionment, and discouragement commonly characterize the first few years. The stepping-stone of perseverance can carry you through.

I’m talking about being determined and sticking with your marriage and family when the going gets tough. Henry Blackaby in Experiencing God1 talks about the “crisis of belief” that Christians experience when God’s will becomes evident. When God speaks his desire for us, whether through Scripture or circumstance, we face a crisis of belief. Will my belief lead to action and take me wherever God has directed—even if I personally don’t want to go there—or will my belief remain simply words?

This willingness to surrender to what God directs or allows in our life is challenging when the life circumstance is a little inconvenient, but it is extremely unsettling when the cost is very high. Loss is one of those circumstances that gives birth to a crisis of belief for most of us. Whether it is the loss of a child, a marriage through divorce, a spouse by death, financial ruin, or lost dreams about a new family, we often find ourselves, like Job, having to examine our assumptions about God, our ability to control our circumstances—even the foundations of our faith. Many people drift from God and the fellowship of his people when loss happens; not understanding or feeling disappointed with God leads to withdrawing. Others run to God in blind trust, hoping to find strength to endure. What about you? Which direction have you gone in the past? In which direction are you headed now?

I have a great deal of admiration for people who face the discouragements and disappointments of stepfamily living with raw determination and resolve. Because determination in this situation is sacrificial, it is not a convenience. It is a crisis of belief. In effect, determination says, “Trusting God to be faithful as the Lord of Possibilities, I will be faithful and persevere in my marital responsibilities even if this marriage and family is not what I want it to be.”2 Perseverance, then, while at times is quite costly, paves the way for hope to become reality.

Commitment

Determination, when combined with the decision to persevere, results in a strong commitment to building your stepfamily. The bedrock of this commitment is dedication to your spouse and your vow to love, honor, and cherish each other for a lifetime. But sometimes we need to be reminded that marital vows are not multiple choice. The preacher probably didn’t let you choose: “I’ll take richer, for better, and in health—but leave off poorer, for worse, and in sickness.” No, you committed yourself to all of them. As life teaches you what that commitment means, keep your dedication to your partner and your vows high.

Commitment means remaining dedicated to the vows you expressed (or will express) on your wedding day. Every day of your life you will make a decision whether or not you will live up to those words. If you choose not to, your stepfamily will not survive.

Growing Us Up

There’s nothing like marriage to teach us just how selfish we are. Marriage is where God grows us up.

Patience

Stepfamily integration hardly ever happens as quickly as adults want it to. Stepfamily researcher James Bray discovered that stepfamilies generally don’t begin to think or act like a family until the end of the second or third year.3 Furthermore, Patricia Papernow, author of the book Becoming a Stepfamily, discovered that it takes the average stepfamily around five to seven years to integrate sufficiently to experience intimacy and authenticity in steprelationships. Fast-paced families can accomplish this in four years, if the children are young and the adults are intentional about bringing their family together. Slow families, according to Papernow, can take nine or more years.4 In my experience, very few adults come into their stepfamily believing it will take anywhere near this long. They assume—and want—a quick, painless blending process. I have often wondered if they had known the journey would take so long, would they have signed on in the first place?

Why does it take so long for stepfamilies to integrate? One reason is that the stepfamily is filled with complex dynamics. For example, family therapists have long recognized that divorce doesn’t really end family life; it just reorganizes it. In effect, it spreads the family out over multiple households, and relational dynamics that preceded the divorce continue even though the family’s living arrangements have been restructured. New stepfamily relationships become part of the larger expanded family. I’ve talked with an ex-husband, for example, who was stunned to find out that when his ex-wife’s new mother-in-law had a crisis, it impacted his home. Children were emotionally affected, and it forced his ex-wife to change her visitation schedule, which, of course, dramatically altered his life and plans.

When does the family integration period begin? Before or after the wedding?

See more on this topic in the Smart Questions, Smart Answers bonus material, available at SmartStepfamilies.com/view/learn.

Stepfamilies need to realize that all the people sharing a relationship (by blood or marriage) with their children and stepchildren are part of their “expanded” family. Start counting, and the total number of people can be exasperating! From a mathematical perspective, the number of possible interactions in a stepfamily containing children who move back and forth between two homes, and who have stepparents who have biological children of their own, can be thousands of times greater than a biological family’s possible interactions. That’s why family therapists and stepfamily educators Emily and John Visher point out that stepfamilies don’t have a family tree, they have a family forest! This complex forest simply takes time to integrate—and time requires patience.

Are Some Stepfamilies Easier to Integrate?

Yes. The less complex a stepfamily is, the easier it is, in general, to combine family members. For example, integration is less complicated when only one adult brings children to the marriage, when children are younger, and when the stepparent is a man (stepdad) and the children are boys. Stepfamilies following the death of a parent are not necessarily easier; they are less complicated because there’s not another home, but still emotionally challenging in their own way.

A conference participant once asked me what he could have done differently to build a relationship with his stepdaughter. He described how he took his new twelve-year-old stepdaughter out shopping and to get ice cream whenever possible. He asked her what activities she liked doing and then made sure they did them together. In his words, “I tried and tried, but she never warmed up to me, so I gave up.” A bit bewildered (he had done a lot of things right), I asked for more information. He had become this girl’s second stepfather after her mother divorced a second husband. The girl’s biological father was uninvolved in her life, leaving a deep wound in her heart. Her first stepfather was aloof, distant, and critical. I suggested to the gentleman that, because of them, he had two strikes against him when he married her mother. But the real clincher came when I asked how long he attempted to win his stepdaughter’s heart. Three months. He gave up after only three months. You see, he simply didn’t take into consideration all that this girl had been through and how long it takes for steprelationships to develop. His intentions were good. His actions were on target. He just wasn’t patient enough.

Flexibility

Have you ever tried to force a square peg into a round hole? Because the stepfamily is different from a biological family, you need to learn flexibility. The rituals, expectations, and assumptions our society trains us to have about family life become our square pegs that, when forced into the round stepfamily hole, just don’t fit. Becoming stepfamily smart starts with understanding the nature of your round peg and how it differs from the biological square peg. Said another way, you need stepfamily answers to stepfamily questions, not biological family answers to stepfamily questions.

What would happen if while riding a bicycle you made a 90-degree right-hand turn by turning the handlebars the same way you would a car steering wheel? You’d flip right over the handlebars and face-plant on the ground! The bicycle is a different vehicle than a car and requires different movements to steer it correctly. If you try to steer your stepfamily the exact same way you would a biological family, you’re bound to flip over a time or two. Almost immediately some rituals, styles of parenting, and expectations will work just as they do in biological families, and others will eventually work well once the family has bonded together. Other ways of relating, however, will always be different, requiring flexible handling.

Stepmoms are women who do a lot of mothering, but frequently don’t get to be the mom.5

One important example is the differing role of stepmoms and stepdads. Imagine a biological mother who has three children. Together they have survived the loss of their first family and made it successfully through a few single-parent years. Mom’s role is one of emotional caretaker, disciplinarian, authority, encourager, and teacher; she is also the emotional hub of the family—connected to everyone, their schedules, and their inner thoughts and experiences. But what she may discover upon becoming a stepmom is that her stepchildren don’t want or need her to be those things for them. To them she is an outsider, not the insider emotional hub of their family or personal life. So what is her role? She is still Mom to her children (insider), but she’s confused about her role with her stepchildren (outsider). If she doesn’t learn flexibility she will try to force a mom-like role with her stepchildren, which will likely lead to less cooperation and acceptance from them. We’ll talk more about stepparenting in a later chapter, but for a deeper dive into the roles of stepmoms and stepdads in particular, read my books The Smart Stepmom (with Laura Petherbridge) and The Smart Stepdad.

Humor

In the midst of a chaotic moment, humor is definitely the best medicine for stepfamilies. Humor brings a perspective that helps you to step back from the crisis or circumstance and see it in a whole new light. In fact, you might even enjoy a good laugh.

I often reference two cartoons that make this point clear. The first pictures a man reading a piece of mail to his wife. “It’s bad news, Anne,” he says. “The traffic judge assigned to our case is my first wife.” Clearly, unless he has an incredibly grace-filled relationship with his ex-wife, this couple is in trouble. Is it funny? Not really. But finding the ability to chuckle just a little might relieve their hearts from excessive worry and anxiety. The second cartoon pictures two young children standing in the front yard. The little girl is pointing at the boy, reminding him, “No, your dad cannot beat up my dad because your dad is now my dad, remember?”

Incidentally, that cartoon took on new meaning when I applied it to Jesus—the most famous stepchild who ever lived. Think about it: He wasn’t raised by his natural father. Was Joseph his stepdad? Yes, it is a unique circumstance, but you still can’t avoid the fact that the Creator of the universe entrusted his Son to be raised by a man who was not his biological father. Picture Jesus as an eight-year-old talking to his stepsiblings: “Oh no, believe me, your dad cannot beat up my Dad!”

Learning to laugh at yourself and your circumstances is not about denying problems or responsibilities. It is about not taking yourself or life too seriously so you can gain perspective on your circumstances.

Share Your Travelogue: A Tool for Developing Compassion and Understanding

How many of the key stepping-stones does your family possess now? Just where is your stepfamily in this journey to the Promised Land? Are you just beginning, toward the end, or somewhere in the middle? I’m sure you have definite ideas, but your children may view it differently. As I mentioned earlier, there are similarities in how persons experience their family life, but the differences in stepfamilies can be profound because each person in the stepfamily has traveled a different path to where they are now.

Patricia Papernow has developed the travelogue as an effective tool that helps stepfamilies listen and understand one another.6 The technique is based on the notion that if people in your family went to a foreign country for a month, upon their return you would probably ask them for a travelogue, that is, the story of their journey. You’d ask where they ate, what food they liked, what famous sites they saw, what was most exciting or disappointing, and so on. You’d want to know what the journey was like for them. Showing interest in each family member’s biological, single-parent, and stepfamily journey affirms the person’s experience and can teach you what it is like to be him or her.

At a family meeting, ask each person to share his or her travelogue, a personal account of their stepfamily journey. Remember, the task is to maintain enough curiosity (“tell me more”) and empathy (“that must be tough”) in the face of differences and disappointments so that each person is able to share joys, pains, heartaches, and experiences without fear of retaliation or rejection. As people share, everyone must maintain a non-defensive attitude. Focus on listening, not defending yourself. If one or more family members cannot listen openly, you might consider breaking into smaller groups, perhaps even one-on-one, to walk through the exercise with more emotional safety. The purpose of the travelogue is to listen and understand one another better, and to invite family members to hear the desires of each other’s hearts. This also facilitates bonding and compassion for one another. When done with respect and openness, family members move toward one another.

To begin, say something like, “You know, everyone in our family has traveled a long way to get to where we are. And even though we’re in the same family, we’ve probably traveled different paths to get here. Maybe we could share what it’s been like so far. Starting with your first family and the single-parent years, let’s all take turns and talk about what this journey has been like until now. The rest of us will listen just as if we’re listening to someone who’s been to a foreign land. We’ll ask questions and try to imagine what it must have been like for whoever is talking.”7

Once you’ve opened the door to honesty and understanding by sharing your travelogue, keep the conversation going by giving the children a chance to share. Once someone starts telling their travelogue, don’t stop or interrupt them. Follow their lead. Here are some questions that might help:

After death: What is one really good memory of your deceased parent? Share one way your life changed after they died.

After divorce: What was the good and bad of your parents’ divorce (our divorce) for you? How did your life change after that?

What have you lost that hasn’t been regained?

What do you think has changed for others?

During the single-parent years, what was good or okay for you? What was painful? How was life different for you?

As much as you can remember, what were your daily schedule and responsibilities when we were a single-parent family?

Share a first impression of your future stepparent/stepchildren.

When we were dating, what did you grow to look forward to? What concerned you?

How did life with your mom/dad/children change once the remarriage occurred?

What hopes or dreams did you have for this stepfamily that have already been fulfilled? Which ones haven’t come about yet?

What painful emotions have you been feeling lately?

What fears do you have about this stepfamily or yourself?

With older children and teens, describe insider and outsider positions in the family. First, ask everyone to share with whom they are an insider or outsider and how it feels in that position. Then discuss what it would be like to be in the other’s (insider/outsider) shoes.

Discuss the common myth of instant love (see chapter 4) and share how you envision love developing between stepfamily members.

End your travelogue meeting in prayer.

Managing the Emotion

Sharing your travelogue includes talking about the loss of the first family; this will undoubtedly bring some sadness to the experience. Don’t skip over this to prevent tears, but given the group setting, let each person share as much or as little as they choose. Also, if divorced, parents should share very little about their emotional pain and avoid casting blame toward the ex-spouse in front of the children.

The travelogue exercise can be repeated in your home over time. Family meetings are the perfect time to ask questions and be updated on everyone’s travels. Biological parents might also find one-on-one time with each child to discuss their current travelogue.

Keep Stepping

The journey to the Promised Land is not always an easy one, but then again, few significant endeavors in life are easy. In this chapter I’ve suggested that maintaining key attitudes and qualities—stepping-stones—will advance your journey in the Lord.

Spiritual integrity demands that you allow Jesus to be Lord over your heart and home.

Listening and understanding help family members develop compassion and empathy for one another.

Perseverance will help you stay the course when the going gets tough.

Commitment expresses itself in dedication to fulfilling your marital vows.

Patience means enjoying your stepfamily as it is, instead of pushing everyone to arrive at the Promised Land on your schedule.

Flexibility includes changing your assumptions of how things should be and opening yourself to creative solutions to common problems.

Humor—the gift that focuses on the lighter side of dark moments.

I have sought in this chapter to give you hope on your journey. In the next section we will examine seven smart steps that nearly all stepfamilies must take to reach the Promised Land. The dynamics of stepfamily life can be challenging, but they are not impossible. Keep stepping.

Questions for Discussion

FOR PARENT-CHILD DISCUSSION (Discretion based on the age of the child and the quality of adult-child relationships is advised.)

Let the travelogue section at the end of the chapter serve as your parent-child discussion guide for this chapter.

FOR ALL COUPLES

Have you had any informal travelogue talks? What did you learn?

Discuss the pros and cons of having everyone present for the travelogue discussion versus only biological parents and children.

What is one of your chief frustrations or complaints about your stepfamily right now?

On a scale of 1 to 10 (with 10 being the highest), rate your personal level of spiritual integrity. How are you doing trusting God with things that you will never understand in this life? What spiritual challenges stand in front of you and how are you addressing them?

Describe a time when you tried to force your will on God. What was the outcome?

Choose one of the Scripture passages in the spiritual integrity section in the chapter and share how applying that verse will help your stepfamily’s growth.

If you were to ask your children and your spouse whether they felt you were a good listener, what would they say? In what ways does defensiveness keep you from listening well?

Identify the person you have the most conflict with or the child to whom you are the least bonded. Share what you think it would be like to be that member of your stepfamily. Consider his or her losses, sense of belonging, fears, responsibilities, and hurts.

Read James 1:2–4. If the testing of our faith produces perseverance (which in turn helps us mature), how has the testing of your stepfamily helped you grow as an individual?

List three things you could do this week to express your dedication (commitment) to your spouse.

In what ways have you been impatient with the status of your stepfamily bonds? How have you tried to force or pressure people to love one another?

In what ways is your stepfamily different than a biological family? Share some of the flexible solutions you’ve already discovered that have helped.

Share a humorous occasion or story from your stepfamily’s life. If you can’t think of one immediately, try to step back from your circumstances in order to see the humorous side.

FOR PRE-STEPFAMILY COUPLES

Feel free to begin having travelogue discussions as a couple and with your children. Keep in mind that before the wedding most children cannot adequately anticipate all they will feel. Be sure to ask them again later. How might you go about having travelogue discussions now?

Which of the stepping-stones characterize your relationships now?

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

Hebrews 12:1–2

Chapter 3 Smart Step One: STEP Up!

Discover a redemptive God who loves, forgives, and provides strength and direction for the journey

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

Romans 5:6–11

Another translation of the above verses suggests that being reconciled to God is to be made friends with God. Can you imagine God calling you his friend? Given his holiness and our, well, ungodliness, it’s a tough concept to grasp, especially if guilt or shame feelings from your past choices and behavior make you feel unworthy of his grace and mercy, let alone his friendship. So, how do you embrace his grace? And what should you do if attending church makes you feel unworthy or second-class because your family isn’t the ideal the pastor talks about? What if you fear God’s judgment for your past?

The Rally Cry Response

I believe God has called me to educate and equip stepfamilies for healthy living. Furthermore, I consider it part of this calling to shout a rally cry to church leaders, inviting them to better minister to stepfamilies in their communities (see SmartStepfamilies.com/view/educate). However, the rally cry response has been met with some opposition by those who are concerned that stepfamily ministry somehow condones or encourages divorce and a merry-go-round attitude about marriage. In addition, there is hesitation from a few who wonder if ministering to the remarried is the equivalent of abandoning God’s design for marriage. Let me clearly state that I want to uphold and teach God’s ideal that one man and one woman be married till death do them part (and in my experience every mature divorced and remarried person agrees that God’s ideal is best). In no way should we compromise God’s plan for the foundation of our homes. My desire to educate and equip stepfamilies, then, is not about condoning a past. It is, rather, an effort to help stepfamilies walk hand in hand with their Lord in the present.

When a Spouse Is Deceased

If divorce is not part of your past, this chapter still pertains to you. Read and be reminded of God’s redeeming work in the lives of countless reorganized families.

You see, the problems and pressures of stepfamily life are a distraction from what really matters—making Jesus the Lord of your life and sharing your faith with the children under your care. Satan knows that one of the greatest influences on your life is your family, and if he can mess it up, he will likely get you as well (and the next four generations to come!). But if you dedicate your family to God, you’re well on your way to finding the strength and answers you need to make your family successful. Satan would much rather see you distracted, discouraged, and defeated!

And that’s exactly where many stepfamilies end up—feeling that they don’t belong in church and believing they aren’t good enough for God’s grace. What contributes to that? First, let’s examine a stepfamily’s relationship to the church.

Spiritually Marginalized From God’s “Hospital” Church

“Thanks for recognizing that we’re not the church’s dirty little problem.”

“I never thought I could go back to church again.”

“Once the divorce happened, the majority of the church members had nothing to do with any of us, including my children. I was working at a bank, and one of the deacons refused to stand in my line because I was a divorced person. . . . When you go through a divorce, you need your family and [church] friends’ support. I received no support from the church; instead, I was treated like a second-class citizen.”

Second-class citizens. That well sums up how many stepfamilies are made to feel. They don’t reflect God’s ideal family constellation, so they just aren’t quite good enough. One friend of mine shared how their small group at church taught her to fear judgment from others. She and her husband were newly married and had recently joined a new Bible study. One day after the study, a group member’s child ran up to them and asked if they had any kids. Because they were a newly married stepcouple they hadn’t come across that question yet. “We didn’t know what to say at that point,” she shared with me, “so I answered yes just as my husband answered no. Everyone looked at us oddly, so we had to share our family story with the group. They weren’t sure what to say. We felt uncomfortable and weird.” What an awkward moment that must have been for them.

She continued the story. “A few months later, I was having lunch with the wives in the Bible study group. I brought my stepdaughter with me to play with the other kids. The next week my friend told me that her daughter asked why my stepdaughter called me by my first name. My friend told me she side-stepped the question because she didn’t want to ‘expose her daughter to divorce.’ She acted like I would understand. Shame, embarrassment, and guilt washed over me immediately; I suddenly felt so much pressure to try to be a ‘normal family’ and hide our brokenness. Words like ex-wife, stepkids, stepfamily, stepmom, custody, divorce . . . all freaked out my friends. I quickly learned that there are few people who don’t judge us. I kept my struggles to myself and didn’t share my feelings with my new group of friends. It has taken about eight years to find other stepmom friends with whom I could find support and comfort.” Notice how isolated this stepmom became and how quickly she and her husband learned to hide their past. Now they walk the tightrope of engaging the church for fellowship, but not engaging to the point of being vulnerable and open about their past.

If that example is troubling, this one is downright defeating. One couple was studying with a preacher who was trying to help them come back to the Lord after a number of years away. When the preacher discovered they were divorced and remarried, he closed his Bible, looked at them, and said, “I’m sorry. Your background and past might infect everyone else, so we can’t have you in our church.” He then turned and left their home.

Can you imagine? A man claiming to proclaim the grace of God told them they were so sick they needed to be quarantined from the hospital! I thought hospitals were for the sick, for those who need healing. I guess I missed the part of the Bible that says only perfect people belong in church. I should add that God wasn’t finished with this couple. After hearing this preacher’s condemnation, they visited the church where I served as family life minister. After much prayer and repentance, this couple resurrected their relationship with Christ, and we eventually put them to work leading our stepfamily support group.

But the message divorced and remarried persons sometimes receive from the church is only half the problem. Stepfamily adults can become spiritually marginalized due to their own sense of guilt and unworthiness.

Spiritual Shame

“I am not sure if I am accepted by God because of my remarriage. I am almost afraid to read the Bible, because I’m not sure what I may find.”

“I have tried to get my life back on track, but as a divorcée, that stigma and my own guilt combined to make me feel like an outsider. That outsider feeling made me not want to give up my sinful life. Satan would step in and say, ‘Why should you commit to this church? They look at you weird; they know you are divorced. If they do not care about you, why should you care about them or be committed to their God?’ So before I could develop any ties to a local church, I would lose interest in getting my life straight. I would quickly return to my life of sin—lost, frustrated, and now even more embarrassed.”

Sometimes feeling unworthy of God’s love is self-imposed. Yes, sometimes it’s an excuse to avoid responsibility, and sometimes it flows from a legalistic theology that believes we have to earn our salvation. But no matter its origin, the impact is the same: People keep their distance from God and his church.

“Okay, Ron,” people have interjected before, “just how does God feel about me and my stepfamily situation? I mean, if we could ask him, what would he say?” My guess is he feels about you the same way he felt about the imperfect families of the Bible. Let me illustrate.

The Family of Promise

Nan and I waited a number of years before having children. Once we began making plans to conceive a child, I began praying for God’s insight and wisdom into how I should be as a father. Furthermore, I began searching the Scriptures to find a healthy, faithful family that could serve as a model for me. My training in marriage and family therapy had primarily focused on the dynamics of change with dysfunctional families, so I needed to see more of what a functional family looked like. Besides, I wanted to see how faith and family dynamics would integrate to make a “perfect combination.” So I began to survey the families of the Old Testament.

Murder is not new to us in America. Besides the violence in the streets, murder is not uncommon in our schools, suburban neighborhoods, and even within homes. Yet the first incident of family homicide came from Adam and Eve’s family. Cain was so jealous of his brother’s favor in God’s eyes that with premeditation he lured him to an isolated place and killed him (Genesis 4:1–8). Not a good start for the first family, huh?

And then there’s Noah and his sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth (Genesis 9:20–27). We’re all aware of their incredible faithful journey on the ark, but are you aware of what happened later? Noah got drunk one night, leaving himself naked and exposed to his son Ham. His brothers respectfully covered their father’s nakedness, but the damage had already been done. Noah cursed Ham for the shame he experienced (wasn’t Noah partly responsible?); he later blessed the other two brothers. In effect, Noah set the brothers against each other, and a pattern of jealousy and competition was handed to the next generation.

My search then led me to the “family of promise.” Abraham is well known for his faithful walk with God and for God’s promise to make him into a great nation. Eventually the seed of Abraham would bring the Messiah, the Savior, Jesus Christ himself. As I surveyed biblical families I remember thinking, Adam and Noah’s families were disappointments, but surely I’ll find a good model family here.

In Genesis 12:13–20 Abram coerced his wife, Sarai, to lie to the Egyptians in order to save his life. “Say you are my sister,” he told her. Because Sarai was a beautiful woman, Abram feared that Pharaoh would have him killed in order to have Sarai for himself. Wives, if your husband refused to own you in public and was willing to put you in jeopardy in order to save his own skin, how would you feel? Furthermore, what if he gave you to another man, knowing he would take you to be his wife and have intercourse with you—now how would you feel? What if he did it twice?!

Believe it or not, Abraham (God had changed his and his wife’s names) again said—this time to Abimelech—that Sarah was his sister. (See Genesis 20.) He feared Abimelech, the king of Gerar, would have him killed, so he handed her over to become Abimelech’s wife. In case you’re wondering, this is not what men’s ministries have in mind for husbands! Abraham was a man of great faith. But he was far from the perfect husband.

But the pattern of selfish husbandry doesn’t stop there. Isaac, Abraham’s son, who probably wasn’t even born when his father disowned his mother, told the same lie about his wife, Rebekah. He too feared for his life, so he told the king of the Philistines that Rebekah was his sister (Genesis 26:1–11). Abraham and Isaac’s lies were eventually found out, but not before a great many people were hurt by the deception.

In chapter 5 we’ll examine further the expanded family dynamics of Abraham’s home. For now let’s remember that while Sarah was barren, she suggested Abraham take her maidservant, Hagar, to be a second wife so they could conceive a child through her (Genesis 16). Once Hagar conceived, jealousy and competition become the name of the game between Sarah and Hagar. Anger, bitterness, and favoritism are the result. (I called this home an “expanded family” because there were multiple wives and competition for how the children would be treated by the biological father, Abraham. Some are calling the stepfamily of modern America an “expanded family.”) Even though the family composition is different, the dynamics of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar’s home mirror some of the dynamics of today’s stepfamily. We’ll examine those dynamics more in the chapter on marriage. Suffice it to say for now that Abraham’s expanded home was full of anger, jealousy, competition, bitterness, and loyalty conflicts—all of which were handed down to the next generation.

In Genesis 27 we read how Abraham’s daughter-in-law Rebekah conspired with her favored son, Jacob, to deceive her husband, Isaac. If it worked, Jacob would receive a critically important blessing meant for his older brother, Esau. Jacob had already cheated his brother out of his birthright, but he wanted more. He wanted a special position; whoever received the blessing would be served by the other brother and his descendants. Rebekah and Jacob’s plan worked, and a divided house became even more divided as Esau set out to avenge his loss and kill Jacob. Talk about sibling rivalry! But that’s not the whole story for the “family of promise.”

Jacob then passed on the family pattern of favoritism to his son Joseph, who was his favorite. Jacob even gave him a special robe to signify his love. Joseph’s brothers, however, didn’t appreciate Joseph’s favored status, so they devised a plan to kill him. Only at the last minute did they stop short of murder and decide instead to sell him into slavery (which would have ultimately led to his being killed, since slaves were used until they had nothing left to give and then killed). Can you imagine? And you thought the kids in your house were unruly.

My attempt to find the model biblical family was not successful. Indeed, within a few generations of Abraham there were family power struggles, failures to become properly individuated from parents, family secrets, exploitive and coercive relationships, marital game-playing that led to triangulation, parent-child alliances, vindictiveness, anger, and sibling rivalries. But that’s not all.

The family pathology within the family of promise continued to mushroom through the family of David. Even though the Bible does refer to him as a “man after God’s own heart,” David’s behavior included premeditated murder to cover an affair, an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, and a son who replicates his father’s disgrace by raping his half-sister. Later another of David’s sons would avenge his sister’s humiliation by hunting down and murdering the brother who raped her.

Are you feeling any better about your stepfamily situation?

So much for the family of promise being a family to emulate. And the other families of the Bible, in both the Old and New Testaments, are not much better. In truth, God’s ideal for the family is evident in Scripture, but an ideal family to imitate is not.

Enter God’s mercy and grace. Without it, the great faithful men of old would have been part of just another dysfunctional family—just like you and me. None of us are deserving of God’s grace, not one. And yet he offers it freely.

God’s Redemption

Entering into this fullness is not something you figure out or achieve. It’s not a matter of being circumcised or keeping a long list of laws. No, you’re already in—insiders—not through some secretive initiation rite but rather through what Christ has already gone through for you, destroying the power of sin. If it’s an initiation ritual you’re after, you’ve already been through it by submitting to baptism. Going under the water was a burial of your old life; coming up out of it was a resurrection, God raising you from the dead as he did Christ. When you were stuck in your old sin-dead life, you were incapable of responding to God. God brought you alive—right along with Christ! Think of it! All sins forgiven, the slate wiped clean, that old arrest warrant canceled and nailed to Christ’s cross.

Colossians 2:11–15 THE MESSAGE paraphrase

Did you hear that? The apostle Paul is shouting the good news—we can’t earn our worthiness. Our worth, the possibility of forgiveness, and a right relationship with God have come about because of Christ’s saving work on the cross. While we were stuck in our sin, Christ died for us, giving us the hope of redemption. Not all stepfamilies are born out of sinful behavior, but some are. And the good news is that no matter what decisions or sins you may have committed in the past that led to your current stepfamily situation, God wants you back. And he’s provided a way through Christ to make it happen.

The portrait of families in the Bible is a series of broken relationships in need of redemption. Not a single family in the entire Old or New Testament was so exemplary that God held it up as a model or pattern for us to follow. Indeed, the great faithful men of the Bible had to rely on God’s grace too. And despite their imperfections, God used them for his purposes.

The answer to the question “How does God feel about me and my less-than-perfect family situation?” is this: God loves and forgives the imperfect people in stepfamilies the same way he loves and forgives the imperfect people in biological families. Furthermore, people in stepfamilies are not “second-rate Christians,” because there is no such thing as a “first-rate Christian.” We’re all sinners and all less than perfect. All our families are less than ideal. And we all need a Savior.

You may be plagued by guilt, shame, and remorse over your past and present. You may have had an affair or abandoned your spouse, which resulted in divorce; you may have been neglecting your children since the divorce, and their faith is suffering because of you. You may be harboring anger at your ex-spouse for the hurt he or she caused you and the children. Or perhaps a mean-spirited church leader pushed you away from believing you could be forgiven, and previous friends have isolated themselves from you. You may have lost touch with God and find it hard to pray and spend time with your church family. If so, don’t look now, but you’re being pursued—pursued by a God who desperately wants you to STEP UP to meet him.

His desire for you is the same as it was for Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and David—God wants you daily to surrender your will and follow him. His desire for your family is the same as it was for any imperfect biblical family—that you make him the cornerstone upon which the house is built (Psalm 127:1).

If there is distance between you and God, decide today to humbly accept Christ’s offer of forgiveness, dedicate your life and marriage to the Lord, and make him the architect of your new home. It’s a decision you’ll never regret. If you don’t, you may be destined to repeat the past. If your walk with the Lord is solid, keep right on stepping.

I hope this chapter has either opened your eyes to God’s incredible redemption or encouraged you to continue basking in his grace. Ultimately, The Smart Stepfamily is aimed at helping all members of your family strengthen their relationship with the Creator of life. Truly, what good would it do to develop a healthy stepfamily but have no relationship with God? “What good is it,” Jesus wondered, “if someone gains the whole world but loses his soul?” (Matthew 16:26 NIRV).

The stepfamily’s journey to the Promised Land begins and ends with stepping up to a redemptive God. No other step is nearly as important. And while no other step costs as much as emptying yourself to carry a cross, no other step is as easy. For our effort to step up is successful only because of our Savior’s willingness to step down to the point of our greatest need.

Questions for Discussion

FOR PARENT-CHILD DISCUSSION (Discretion based on the age of the child and the quality of adult-child relationships is advised.)

1. If appropriate for your child(ren), read to them the following opening paragraphs from my booklet for children, Life in a Blender (available at FamilyLife.com). Then discuss the questions.

So, was Jesus a stepchild? It’s an interesting thought and one worth consideration. Think about it: Jesus was raised by a stepdad. Certainly the circumstances surrounding His birth were, well, quite extraordinary. Being conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of a virgin certainly places His “stepfamily” situation in a category of its own. Yet when you stop to reflect on it, the God of the universe allowed His one and only Son to be raised by someone who wasn’t His “biological” father.

My point: you are not alone.

As a matter of fact, most of the major characters of the Old Testament were raised in homes with parent and stepparent combinations. Some of these came about when a parent married following the death of his or her first spouse, but most occurred when their father married more than one woman. While the circumstances of your stepfamily differ, my guess is that you and the biblical characters of old share some of the same confusing emotions and dilemmas.

Consider, for example, Ishmael, who was born to Hagar, Abraham’s maidservant. I wonder what he was feeling that led him to mock his new younger half-brother, Isaac (Genesis 21:8–11). Why would he do such a thing? I wonder if he was feeling left out, now that Isaac, the “promised child,” was getting all the attention. I also wonder how it felt to have his stepmother Sarah try to cut him off from his father when she declared to Abraham, “Get rid of that slave woman and her son [Ishmael], for that woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac” (Genesis 21:10).1

• How would you have felt?

• How does it feel knowing that lots of God’s people grew up in stepfamilies?

• What are some aspects of our family that are confusing for you? What aspects do you feel both good and bad about?

2. Question for teens and young adults: What messages do you get at church about divorce and living in a stepfamily? If we asked the pastor what he thought of families like ours, what do you think he’d say?

3. Question for teens and young adults: How is our family or are you treated differently from other kids by people at church?

4. Question for teens and young adults: This chapter reminded me that there is grace for our family. How is that helpful to you as well?

FOR ALL COUPLES

How does the survey of Old Testament families make you feel about your stepfamily?

On a scale of 1 to 10 (with 10 being the strongest), how strong is your relationship with Christ? How strong is your spouse’s relationship with Christ?

To what degree have you been alienated from him in the past? What was happening at that time?

What messages that you have received from the church have discouraged your walk?

In what ways do you feel unworthy of God’s grace and forgiveness?

What parts of your life (such as self-reliance, pride, or selfish desires) do you hold on to? What is difficult to surrender?

What hurts have you had difficulty letting go of? Share about your journey toward forgiveness.

Realizing that the ground is level at the foot of the cross—that is, we’re all in need of a redeemer—what do you need to do individually and as a couple to begin living in a right relationship with Christ?

Whether your relationship to Christ is just beginning or going strong, list three habits that would deepen your knowledge of God’s Word and his will for your life.

Chapter 4 Smart Step Two: STEP Down- Adjust your expectations and learn how to cook a stepfamily

Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? . . . Therefore do not be anxious, saying, “What shall we eat?” or “What shall we drink?” or “What shall we wear?” . . . But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

Matthew 6:25–26, 31, 33–34

If the Israelites had known that they would face the Red Sea, be pursued by Pharaoh and his army, and face great tests of their faith, do you think they would have ever embarked on the journey to the Promised Land? More than once they considered going back because the costs of the trip were much more than they had expected. They always are. Perhaps that’s why God didn’t tell them what was in store. Instead, he simply called upon them to trust him with what stood directly in front of them. All the Israelites had to do was trust God’s faithfulness with each step they took. I think we would all find the journeys of life much less worrisome if we could just be faithful to God with what stands in front of us and not fret over what tomorrow may hold.

We cannot help but have expectations of what lies ahead. And because love and romance are natural blinders, expectations are often filled with unrealistic visions for how stepfamily life will proceed. Knowing the stepcouple divorce rate is considerably higher than first marriages, would you form a stepfamily if you believed you would soon join those making up that statistic? Of course not. No one assumes he or she is destined for marital failure or even distress. We assume, whether it is a first marriage or a remarriage, that love will conquer all.

Dating Couples: Knowing Yourself

One dangerous motivation for finding new love is running from the ache of pain. Feelings of guilt, rejection, loss, and sadness can have an intoxicating and blinding effect on your ability to make wise dating choices. For more, read Dating and the Single Parent.

During pre-stepfamily counseling, I consider it my job to break through the fog of “being in love” and give couples a realistic picture of the challenges, as well as the rewards, of stepfamily life. But I’m amazed at how easily the challenges are discounted and minimized. “I can see how that might impact someone else,” they say, “but we’re different. The kids are getting along just fine, and God has obviously brought us together; this must be right.” Can you hear the expectation that harmony before the wedding will immediately translate into family harmony after the wedding? Reader beware: If you allow unrealistic expectations like this to drive the way you attempt to bring your family together, you are in for a great deal of disappointment.

Whether you are not yet married or are a few years down the road, use this chapter to examine your expectations and listen to what is realistic. Learning to accept “what is” versus “what you think should be” is critical to your emotional well-being and dedication. It also sets you up to relax in the Lord’s timing rather than be overtaken by the “blended family” myth.

Hopes, Expectations, and Realities

In her intriguing memoir describing her journey from single parenthood into a remarriage, Wendy Swallow writes,

What I thought I was doing by remarrying was going home, back into the warm hearth that is the family . . . but in actuality, though, remarrying isn’t about going home. It’s about going someplace else entirely new, almost as if you’ve stepped through a looking glass. Things appear normal, but there are all sorts of strange contortions to life, things that aren’t readily apparent on the surface. In the end, remarriage turned out to be quite different than I imagined—indeed, from what most of us would imagine.1

Whether a first or fifth marriage, everyone has expectations for how life will turn out. But as the author above discovered, stepfamily life is full of “strange contortions” that don’t meet up with our expectations. I suppose you can blame hope. We all hope for the best in life and assume that love will find a way. But hope must be tempered by reality—otherwise, one can be blindsided by stepfamily realities.

Consider Carol, a widow who wondered if she and her boyfriend were ready to get married. Her story was full of hope—and unrealistic expectations. She and Mike had met over the Internet through an online dating service and had not actually met in person yet; she lived on the East Coast and he in the Midwest. Carol and Mike had been cyber-dating for six months. She had five children, ranging in age between fifteen and four, and her husband had been deceased for less than two years. Mike was divorced and had four children (ages eighteen to eleven). His first wife had an affair that ended their marriage, and she was physically abusive toward the children. Ongoing legal battles over his ex-wife’s time and impact on the children were far from resolved.

As we talked, Carol said things like, “If you ignore the children, I believe Mike and I have all the ingredients between us to be very happily married.” Well, that might be possible, but who can ignore the children? Carol even assumed that moving her children to the Midwest wouldn’t be burdensome for them because she homeschools. That’s hardly the only consideration for children, especially teenagers. She admitted that her goal was to give her children a father again, and, based on six months of online dating, she believed Mike could be the replacement father her children needed. She also believed that accepting his four children—whom she’d never met—wouldn’t be a problem for her.

Carol’s hopes were shaping her unrealistic expectations for the new marriage and family. Her attitudes were reflective of common misconceptions about stepfamily life. For example, she assumed that the roles for stepparents are the same as those for biological parents; she expected that the children would adjust to the new family and living arrangements quickly and easily; she assumed that love for her stepchildren, and undoubtedly love between the stepchildren, would develop smoothly; and she believed that a past filled with loss and heartache for all nine children would not be a barrier to their new family’s success.2

She obviously wanted to be a “blended” family.

Blending Is Not the Goal

In the U.S. a common term used to refer to the stepfamily is blended family. But many stepfamily therapists, educators, and researchers do not use the term blended family simply because most stepfamilies don’t completely blend—and if they do, someone usually gets creamed in the process!3

Blending is not the goal. When you’re in the kitchen, blending is a process by which you combine ingredients into one fluid mixture—think of a fruit smoothie or a cream soup. Rarely can it be said that a stepfamily becomes one in a relational sense. More realistic is a process by which the various parts integrate, or come into contact with one another, much like a casserole of distinct parts. For example, it’s to be expected that biological parents and children will always have a stronger bond than stepparents and stepchildren, even if all goes well. And biologically related children will always have a tighter connection than stepsiblings. This is not to say that stepfamilies can’t be close, connected, loving homes; many will develop deep emotional bonds. They just don’t “blend” in the sense of becoming one fluid family smoothie.

John was a very conscientious stepfather. He impressed me with his commitment to the Lord and desire to be a positive influence on his stepfamily. Yet he was longing for something deeper. “Why doesn’t my stepson show as much desire for a relationship with me as he does with his dad?” John asked. “His dad is a jerk—he breaks promises to spend time with David, he forgets his birthday, and when they are together he drops David off at his grandmother’s house. I’ve been with David since he was four, and even now, ten years later, David prefers spending time with his father. Why does that hurt so much?”

I had spent a fair amount of time with David and knew that he greatly respected and loved his stepfather. Yet the pull to know his dad was tremendous (as is frequently the case with an unavailable noncustodial parent). A blood relationship, for David, was thicker than his mom’s marriage. The reason John hurt so much was that he still carried the hope that he and his stepson would be one fluid mixture. They had not and probably would not “blend,” but they had already integrated quite well. John was simply placing the bar too high. Stepping down his expectations would have resulted in less hurt and a greater awareness of his current connection with his stepson.

So if blending is not the goal, then how do you cook a stepfamily?

How to Cook a Stepfamily: What Not to Do

Whether you realize it or not, you likely have an assumed integration style. By that I mean a set of assumptions about how your family ought to come together. Let’s use cooking as an analogy to identify some integration styles that generally don’t work.

Blender

We’ve already noted that this mentality assumes all ingredients can be whipped together into one smooth mixture. This assumes each ingredient will relate to the others in the same uniform fashion. There is no uniqueness granted to the different ingredients and little space for diversity.

“Why can’t I build a relationship with my stepdaughter? She was sixteen when I married her mother. The other kids were ten and eight, and I haven’t had any trouble building a bond with them.” Keeping in mind that time is essential to relationship development, building a bond with teenagers is slow-going because they are gradually moving away from the family. It is quite normal for a stepparent to have close bonds with one stepchild and be working on bonds with another, while experiencing a distant relationship with a third. Relationships will be different within the same stepfamily, not one fluid mixture.

Another blender example is assuming that with the passage of time the losses that children experienced before the new stepfamily will have no lingering effects on their lives.

This blender assumption could be seen as self-serving on the part of adults, but isn’t necessarily a selfish assumption; seeing our children’s grief is heavy on us. For years after their brother’s death, I’ve watched my two other children struggle to function at school, to sleep, to connect with people who have relatively problem-free lives, to attend churches that are “churchy” and put on airs, to make new friendships with people who never knew Connor—the list goes on and on. I don’t like watching them struggle, and I do what I can to help them cope. The truth is, loss has changed us forever, and we can’t go back—and I can’t expect them to no longer feel the effects. Neither can you.

Food Processor

These stepfamilies chop up one another’s history and attempt to instantly combine all ingredients with rapid speed. When love doesn’t occur right away, persons are left feeling torn to pieces; no one remains whole.

A classic example of this mentality is the adult who demands that the stepchildren call their stepparent “Daddy” or “Mommy.” It is as if the child is told, “We’ve chopped up your real dad and thrown him to the side. This is your new dad.” Some parents actually think their children will buy that!

Another example is stepfamilies that assume they can’t honor traditions that were established in the first family or single-parent family, because it would leave someone out. What they fail to realize is that chopping up the tradition also chops up the people who honored it. It results in another loss and invites resentment toward the new family.

Microwave

These families refuse to be defined as a stepfamily and seek to heat the ingredients in rapid fashion so as to become a nuke-lear family (pun intended). They avoid labels like stepfamily and the implication that they are different than biological families. Some people tell me they resent being called a stepfamily because it makes them feel second rate. There is nothing inherently wrong with being a stepfamily. It is a family formed after loss; someone who is not a biological parent to at least one child has married into the role of being a stepparent. Really, what I think people who resent the stepfamily label are afraid of is not being accepted. They fear that if the children see them as a stepparent, they won’t ever be embraced as a full-fledged family member. I understand and sympathize with that fear, but denying the reality of your life only hurts you.

For example, one barrier to healthy stepfamily adjustment is a parenting team that denies in the beginning the limitations of the stepparent’s role (see chapter 7). One stepmother demonstrated her microwave mentality in an email, questioning an article I had published: “I was disturbed after reading your article,” she began. “I am a stepmother of two wonderful girls. I became their stepmother when they were four and two. Shortly afterward, their biological mother abandoned them, and we have not seen or heard from her in almost four years. Don’t get me wrong,” she continued, “I consider this a blessing.” (For whom, I wondered.) “My point is, I am the girls’ mother. No step or halves or any other modifier. . . . Our family can and does function like any other family.”

Right now this stepmother obviously feels good about her role and stepfamily. For that I am grateful. But I wonder how she will feel when the school tells her she can’t get a copy of the girls’ report cards since she isn’t their mom, or what if her husband dies and the court gives custody of the children to their maternal grandparents since they are “next of kin”? (See chapter 8 for more on legal matters and stepfamilies.) What if their biological mother reappears after a number of years hoping to resurrect her relationship with her two daughters? Or perhaps the girls are secretly keeping their mother present through fantasies about her. Perhaps they will someday seek her out, trying to discover more about their genetic and cultural heritage (as do many adopted children). Don’t get me wrong—I’m pleased that this stepmother feels so close to her stepdaughters. But whether she wants to accept it or not, she lives in a stepfamily, not a biological family.

Coming to accept your unique challenges and opportunities as a stepfamily is a tremendous first step to finding creative solutions to your dilemmas. If you refuse to admit a difference, you inadvertently shut off your ability to learn new, more effective ways of relating.

Pressure Cooker

This family cooking style results in ingredients and spices (that is, rituals, values, and preferences) being put under pressure to meld together completely. The family is under great duress, and since expectations are so high, the lid often blows off the pot.

I’ve watched dating parents, for example, plead with their kids to like, accept, and love their dating partner (because it would make the parent happy). The message is “What’s good for me should be good for you, now take care of me by liking him.” The parent’s selfishness is channeled into pressuring the children.

Another example of the pressure cooker mentality is stepfamilies that assume the answer to every conflict in holiday ritual is to combine the traditions. Paul and his children developed a meaningful Christmas tradition in which each person opened one gift on Christmas Eve and the remaining gifts the following morning. However, his new wife, Sharon, and her children held the tradition of opening all the gifts Christmas morning after a special breakfast. In a panic, Paul called a few weeks before their second Christmas together. “I’m dreading Christmas this year. Last year Sharon and I combined our holiday traditions and it was disastrous. To honor my family we had all the children open a gift Christmas Eve, and to honor Sharon’s family we had breakfast and opened the remaining gifts. But no one liked the outcome. Everyone acted as if we were at a funeral instead of a celebration, and eventually Sharon and I ended up in a fight that lasted through New Year’s Day. What are we supposed to do this year—go to our separate corners and pray no one throws a punch?” I’ll discuss surviving holidays in chapter 9, but for now understand that combining rituals works sometimes, but sometimes it doesn’t; pressuring or criticizing people who are struggling with the adjustment usually ensures that it doesn’t.

Tossed

Like a salad, this style throws each ingredient into the air with no consideration as to where it might fall. The ingredients keep some of their integrity, yet are expected to fit together with the other pieces. Examples of this style can be subtle or extreme.

When one child is spending time at their other home, the remaining children may believe they can play with the absent child’s toys or belongings. Children should be taught that even though someone has been temporarily tossed to the other home, the absentee’s stuff is not free game. If Susie wants to wear her stepsister’s sweater, she should call her at the other home and ask her permission. If Brooke wants to play with her stepbrother Cole’s video game, she needs to call and ask his permission or establish ground rules before he leaves the house. Respecting one another’s possessions is important because it teaches people to honor others; it also communicates belonging to the child who is spending time at the other home. “You may be at your dad’s house, but you still have a place here.”

More extreme examples of the tossed integration style are noncustodial parents who make frequent moves and expect their children to immediately adjust to the disruption in visitation schedules. Parents who expose their children to a revolving door of dating partners or live-in lovers and those who engage in Velcro marriage (a series of stick-and-peel marriages) are also tossing their stepfamily about. This exposes the children to a variety of unstable living environments, changes in school and social arrangements, financial insecurity, and unhealthy relationship models.

Culinary Insights for Cooking a Stepfamily

Crockpot Cooking

“So, if all of these integration styles are generally not helpful, what style should we use?” I recommend a Crockpot cooking style. Stepfamilies choosing this style understand that time and low heat make for an effective combination. Ingredients are thrown together in the same pot, but each is left intact, giving affirmation to its unique origin and characteristics. Slowly and with much intentionality, the low-level heat brings the ingredients into contact with one another. As the juices begin to flow together, imperfections are purified, and the beneficial, desirable qualities of each ingredient are added to the taste. The result is a dish of delectable flavor made up of different ingredients that give of themselves to produce a wondrous creation.

The key to Crockpot stepfamilies is time and low heat. I’ve already stressed the importance of being patient with the integration process and not trying to force love, care, or togetherness (the average stepfamily needs 5–7 years to integrate); perhaps you’ve noticed that the one common element of the food processor, microwave, pressure cooker, and blender integration styles is an attempt to quickly combine the various ingredients (people, rituals, and backgrounds). Such an effort almost always backfires, bringing a backlash of anger and resentment.

Stepfamilies need time to adjust to new living conditions, new parenting styles, rules, and responsibilities. They need time to experience one another and develop trust, commitment, and a shared history. They need time to find a sense of belonging and an identity as a family unit. None of these things can be rushed. People who are trying to prove to their parents, friends, church, minister, or themselves that their marriage decision was right for everyone, need their family to “blend” quickly. But they are often greatly disappointed and feel like failures. A slow-cooking mentality, however, brings relief from the pressure to show everyone you can get along because you assume from the beginning that it will likely take years for your stepfamily to integrate. It also invites you to relax in the moment and enjoy the small steps your stepfamily is making toward integration rather than pressuring family members to move ahead.

Cooking with low heat refers to your gradual, intentional efforts to bring the parts together. It is working smarter, not harder. To illustrate the Crockpot mentality at work, let me apply some Crockpot approaches to the previous examples of what not to do.

A Crockpot stepfather, as opposed to the blender stepfather, might also be concerned about the slow pace at which he is bonding with his stepdaughter, but he wouldn’t allow that worry to drive him to blender behavior. Rather, slow-cooker stepparents understand the cardinal rule of relationship development with stepchildren: Let the stepchild set the pace for the relationship and match their level of openness. If she is affectionate toward the stepfather, let him return her affection. If she remains distant or standoffish, he shouldn’t force himself upon her, but search for common interests that naturally bring them together without effort.

The food processor adults had a similar struggle. They hoped the children would want to refer to their new stepparent with a term of endearment. When this didn’t happen naturally, the food processor parents demanded they do so (e.g., “Call me Daddy”). But a Crockpot adult who understands (even while wishing it were otherwise) that the terms children use are indicative of their evolving relationship with the stepparent and their loyalties to the other biological parent, would relax about stepparent titles and negotiate something that works for both stepparent and child. Further, they would be flexible to understand that different children may utilize different terms based on their evolving relationship. A stepparent can be “Daddy” to his youngest stepchild, “James” to his next oldest, and “Mr. James” to the teenager. Crockpot stepfamilies recognize the emotional and psychological attachment children have to biological parents and don’t force them to change those attachments.

What Kids Need

The irony of blender and pressure cooker actions is that they sabotage the bonding process. Remember, what “ingredients” in the Crockpot need is time to soften and combine with other ingredients on their own timetable. The more pressure to soften, the less likely they are to do so.

The microwave-turned-Crockpot mother will accept that her husband will gradually bond with her children. As a Crockpot mom, the formerly frustrated pressure cooker dating mom will not respond with anger to her son for not immediately embracing the man she is dating. She will look past his oppositional behavior to see a boy who is struggling with loss, unable to connect with his biological father, and discouraged with his family circumstances. And Paul, the pressure cooker stepfather who tried to meld two Christmas traditions, would allow his stepfamily to develop an entirely new Christmas tradition. He and his wife, for example, might have a series of family meetings with the children to discuss their preferences. It may be that they decide on an entirely new tradition to honor each family’s history by alternating how gifts are opened, or they may decide to let each parent and their children keep their own tradition.

This last idea refers to “mini-family” activities. Early in a stepfamily’s integration process it can be helpful to maintain separate family traditions and rituals by giving parents permission to spend time with their children without the steprelations present. Stepparents need to give their new spouse and stepchildren time to be alone without intrusion. The biological parent can play games with her children, while the stepparent enjoys a personal hobby or goes shopping with his children. Such mini-family activity helps children get uninterrupted time with their biological parent and siblings, honoring their need for attention from the ones they love most. It also affirms to children that they have not completely lost access to their parent. As helpful as compartmentalized mini-family activities can be, however, those without a Crockpot mentality often perceive segregated time as an indication of family division.

Troy and Meredith called me with a typical integration struggle—what to do with free time on Saturday afternoons. Prior to the remarriage, Troy and his children—Josh, eleven, and Emily, nine—enjoyed spending their Saturdays doing activities together. Whether miniature golfing, playing softball with friends, or riding bikes in the park, their priority was doing something together. Meredith and her sons—Terry, thirteen, and Joe, eight—had a different preference for free time. They valued independent time away from each other so each could pursue his or her particular interests. Meredith considered it her downtime to relax and read a good book; Terry enjoyed playing with friends, while Joe mastered his latest computer game.

At the time they called, Troy and Meredith had tried everything they knew to create a “blended family.” They challenged each other and the kids to take turns spending their Saturdays doing activities together or apart. One week they would all go miniature golfing only to discover that Meredith’s kids complained they were missing out on their fun. Joe would then pester Emily when he got bored, quickly turning the outings into arguments. First the kids would whine and complain, and then Troy would suggest to Meredith that she needed to better control her son. She would feel attacked and defensive about her parenting and resent Troy’s “controlling” behavior.

The next week they would try to let everyone experience the joys of doing their own thing. But inevitably one of Troy’s children would try to join Meredith’s children in some activity, resulting in arguments and slamming doors.

“We’ve tried everything,” they insisted.

“No,” I responded, “you’ve just tried the blender cooking style, hoping to create a biological family that does everything together. What you need to do is back off and honor one another’s past by spending time with your kids doing what you like most.”

“You mean he should go golfing with his kids, while the boys and I do separate things? That wouldn’t be a family afternoon at all,” Meredith challenged.

Reducing Friction and Tension in the Home

Learn what you can do in the Smart Questions, Smart Answers bonus material, available at SmartStepfamilies.com/view/learn.

My response was sobering. “Yes it would. It would be a stepfamily afternoon.” I went on to explain that pressuring the various ingredients to blend was blowing the lid off the pot. Troy and Meredith needed to accept their family as different so they could discover a creative solution. Mini-family activities might not feel like a good solution because they were trying to steer their family as they would a biological family. Accepting their stepfamily as one in the integration process would help them to see that for now, this was the best solution. Plus, the mini-family activity would only last a couple of hours. After cooking a little longer—giving the family time to come together—spending the afternoon together might become more appropriate.

Unrealistic expectations often set couples up to overcook their stepfamily. Trying to force, pressure, or quickly cook the ingredients of your home will likely result in a spoiled dish. But stepping down your expectations and giving your stepfamily time to cook slowly will move you closer to the Promised Land. Relax.

Cooking Success

One of the advantages that a revised edition of a book gives you is success stories. Through the years this last section on developing a Crockpot mentality has resulted in significant family improvement for my clients, conference attendees, and readers of the first edition of this book. Countless stepmoms, for example, have shared with me how letting go of the high heat expectation that they become an integral member of their family has lowered their anxiety, sense of failure, and blood pressure! And best of all, it helps them to enjoy their family as it is rather than agonize over what it isn’t. The paradox, of course, is that when adults who used to be full of pressuring and blender behavior relax, the entire family relaxes a little, too. That in turn creates space for ingredients to soften on their own and the family moves forward. In The Smart Stepdad, I shared another Crockpot success story. The example is so clearly articulated and demonstrates such a clear “before and after” change in family expectations that I decided to share it with you here as well.

After reading the first edition of this book, Charles and his wife, Debra, decided to make some changes in their home:

When my kids came to visit for the weekend, they would hug some and shake hands with others, but after a while, her kids would migrate back to her and mine to me. At first we thought we had to group everyone together all the time so they would like each other. But we learned that it was okay to let them go where it was safe. We let them have their own space, do their own thing, and respected when and how they chose to come together. Things got better when we relaxed and didn’t throw on the blender switch. We let them simmer and come together with a long moderate heat.4

In the beginning, Charles and Debra thought that in order for the stepsiblings to become family their kids’ attitudes needed to change. And they did. But first, Charles and Debra had to change their mentality from a blender to a Crockpot.

Questions for Discussion

FOR PARENT-CHILD DISCUSSION (Discretion based on the age of the child and the quality of adult-child relationships is advised.)

For this chapter, instead of discussing questions, I suggest your family engage in an activity. Ask all the children to help you in the kitchen with a project. Have a recipe ready for a Crockpot dish of your choice. Let everyone add one ingredient to the pot. As they do, talk about how your family is like this dish. Note to the children that you are not stirring or blending the ingredients by hand but are relying on the Crockpot to bring everything together slowly over time. Also, talk about how long it takes to cook foods in a Crockpot and that for every hour, your stepfamily may need a year. Allow people to ask questions. Reconvene at the end of the cooking time, sit down together as a family, and enjoy the meal. As you eat, wonder with the children what the food would have tasted like at the beginning of its cooking time. Pray together at the end of the meal, asking God to give your family patience as you “cook together.”

FOR ALL COUPLES

1. In what ways has this chapter discouraged you? How has it given you hope?

2. When did you first realize that your expectations were not becoming reality?

3. In what ways have your expectations been met successfully? Celebrate your successes and share what is going well for your home.

4. Which of the following myths have you been guilty of believing? Identify each and express what you hoped would come about as a result.

• Love will happen instantly between all family members.

• We’ll do it better this time around.

• Everything will fall quickly into place.

• Our children will feel as happy about the remarriage as we do.

• Blending is the goal of this stepfamily.

5. Which of the following integration styles have you been guilty of? What have been the results? Give an example.

• Blender

• Food processor

• Microwave

• Pressure cooker

• Tossed

6. How does the Crockpot cooking mentality go against your natural desires and assumptions for how a stepfamily should integrate?

7. In what way is it a relief to know that time is important to the integration process?

8. What “low heat” approaches have you utilized already (even if you didn’t realize it was important until now)?

9. What fears do you have that force you into a high-heat mode of response?

10. In what ways do you need to implement a low-heat mentality? What would you have to change about yourself?

11. How appropriate are mini-family activities for your stepfamily at this time? In what way might you implement this idea over the next month? Make a plan and share the outcome with your support group. Evaluate its effectiveness and decide whether to try it again.

FOR PRE-STEPFAMILY COUPLES

1. How is this book opening your eyes to the challenges of stepfamily life? List your hopes for how your future stepfamily will be an exception to the rule.

2. Now list reasons why you believe your family will successfully integrate.

3. How might these hopes and reasons create blinders for you?

4. As a couple, discuss the following expectations a stepmother expressed two years into her remarriage. How do you identify with her desires? How realistic do you believe them to be?

• I thought my husband would appreciate how overwhelming and difficult it would be for me to care for his children.

• I thought that raising his children would fill my need to be a mother.

• I thought I would have more say in the children’s visitation schedules (e.g., when we watch them for their mother, when they spend the night at a friend’s house, etc.).

• I expected to fit in, to be welcomed by his children, and to be treated well.

• I expected to immediately take priority over all his other relationships, even his children.