Blended Families

FamilyLife Today® Radio TranscriptReferences to conferences, resources, or other special promotions may be obsolete. Are You Ready to Remarry? Guest:                         Ron DealFrom the series:         The Smart Stepdad (day 1 of 3) Bob:  Ron Deal says he has talked with a lot of people who have been through a difficult first marriage that came to an end, and have been in too big a hurry to find someone else and marry again. Ron:  “You know, we met on eHarmony, and we‟ve met face-to-face once.  We live on opposite sides of the universe, but that‟s not going to be a problem for us.  We‟re in love!  eHarmony says we‟re a match.” Wait a minute, wait a minute.  Slow down.  That hurried, desperate need to be together with somebody is telling you something about yourself.  You need to come to terms with that, and get objective about it so that it‟s not driving you into a decision that wouldn‟t be a wise one. Bob:  This is FamilyLife Today for W ednesday, June 1st.  Our host is the President of FamilyLife, Dennis Rainey, and I‟m Bob Lepine.  Marrying a second time, becoming a stepdad, is a huge challenge.  Today, Ron Deal helps you think through whether you‟re up to the challenge, or whether you need to press pause for a little bit. And welcome to FamilyLife Today.  Thanks for joining us. I‟m wondering why Ron Deal put Doc Martins on the front of his book?  A pair of loafers, but I think they‟re Doc Martins.  Isn‟t that yellow stitching around the top characteristic of the Doc Martins? Dennis:  Ron? Ron:  I don‟t have a clue! (laughter) Dennis:  You‟ve got to be careful around Bob.  I‟m telling you, he‟s tough on you. Bob:  Did you pick the shoes for the cover of the book? Ron:  I did not pick the shoes.  I influenced.  I know which ones I did not p ick.Dennis:  Every author knows about that!  All the covers you reject. Bob:  Is the idea here that if you‟re going to be a smart stepdad, you‟ve got some bigshoes to step into?  Is that the idea here? Ron:  That, yes.  And, in a way, you‟re also stepping into someone else‟s shoes, but that person‟s already in their shoes.  It gets a little confusing. Dennis:  You challenge a step-dad with “Steps to Help You Succeed.”  You really havea heart for stepdads. By the way, welcome to the broadcast. Ron:  Thank you.  It‟s great to be back. Dennis:  Sorry we critiqued your cover right off the start. Ron:  That‟s alright. Bob:  It wasn‟t a critique.  I was just curious. Dennis:  You were critiquing it, Bob. Bob:  The shoes do look a little scuffed up, too, I think. Dennis:  Ron Deal is the founder of Successful Stepparents.  He is an author and a speaker.  He and his wife Nan and their sons live in Amarillo, Texas.  He has written the book The Smart Stepdad.  I didn‟t realize this, Bob, but 16.5 million men are stepdads today. Bob:  That‟s a big chunk of the population. Dennis:  Sixteen percent of all men will bear this title. So you‟re talking to millions of men who step into these shoes.  They‟re going to find this much more difficult to do this thing of being a stepfather than they ever imagined. Ron:  Many of them have the biggest hearts in the world.  They come in and they want to be the hero, you know?  They want to do a good job.  God bless them for having the heart for that. Sometimes what they experience when they get there is like the first day on a new job, and people didn‟t know you were showing up.  They really would rather have the other guy there instead of you.  His name is still on the door, and you‟re moving into his office. You‟re really unclear what performing well on the job would look like.How do I hit the bull‟s-eye in my new job?  It‟s really unclear.  Some people are telling you it looks like this, and other people are telling you it looks like this, and you‟re thinking, “W ho‟s on my team and who‟s not on my team?”  All of that confusion hits stepdads pretty quickly. Bob:  And you add to that, maybe in your last job things didn‟t go so well and there were challenges, and there‟s still some anger and bitterness from the previous place you used to work, that left you feeling a little insecure about your role in the first place. Now, here you are stepping into the new assignment.  You‟ve got to acknowledge when you step into a role as either a stepmom or a stepdad that ther e‟s some stuff in this pot of stew that you‟ve been cooking up here that is going to have be dealt with. Ron:  Yes, and an application of what you just said about the former job:  many stepdads are biological dads.  They have their own children and they m ay live with them or they may not.  They may be with them on a part-time basis. So, really, you kind of have two jobs.  One of those jobs is very clear.  It‟s very clear what it is to be the dad.  But it‟s just not so clear what it is to be the stepdad.  That‟s what we want to do with this book is offer them direction. Dennis:  As human beings, we tend to be idealistic.  W e enter into this new relationship– there‟s a honeymoon.  Maybe we did go through something where we experienced divorce in the past and we‟ve got that set of bags that we bring into the marriage relationship like we‟re talking about here, but don‟t you find that as couples formblended families, that they have some unreal expectations about how it‟s going to work? Ron:  Absolutely!  Absolutely.  The expectations are built on the fantasy.  Really, we need the fantasy.  W e need the dream.  There are a lot of risks in life that we wouldn‟t take if we didn‟t have a dream wrapped around it.  I think that‟s often true about remarriage, about becoming a stepparent. The dream isn‟t necessarily bad or wrong.  I want stepdads and stepparents to holdonto that dream.  But, at the same time, it needs to be tempered with reality; it needs to be tempered with truth about their circumstances.  Then, as they step this out, they‟re going to make better choices. Bob:  W ell, if you grew up in the generation that watched The Brady Bunch, is that not the quintessential, definable stepfamily? Ron:  Absolutely. Bob:  Or you rented the movie Yours, Mine, and Ours, and you thought, “So, they make it work.”  You forget that someone had to write lines for them, and someone had to create scenarios for them, and that it‟s fiction.  Real life can be a little more complicated and a little more confusing. Dennis:  And the storyline isn‟t over in two hours. Bob:  That‟s right. Ron:  W e believe in love in our culture.  I‟m glad that we do.  W e really do think love is going to conquer all, and that if our love is pure enough when a man and woman come together, that the children will come together as well around that.  And sometimes that‟s true, and sometimes – more often – it‟s true eventually, but not true immediately.  It‟s that period of disillusionment that really is a barrier for a lot of people. Bob:  I want to take you all the way back to the headwaters of somebody who isconsidering a remarriage situation.  I‟ll give you the scenario: This is somebody who was previously married, and for whatever reason, with their best intentions, things did not go well.  His spouse left.  He‟s spent a couple of years, and it‟s been hard, lonely, hurting.  Then he met a gal and fell head over heels, thought hecould never feel this way again.  He comes to you and says, “I‟m at the point where I‟mthinking about whether this should go further. My first question for you is, am I ready?  Have I gone through everything I need to go through so that next time I can do a better job than last time?”  How would you coach a guy like that? Ron:  W ell, one of the things I would say to him is, “I love your heart.  I love your caution.  I love the fact that you want to learn and grow and understand and get perspective before you make decisions, and not make them rashly.” The other thing I would say to him is on the other side of that is a truth that I have cometo believe and that is that “nothing really gets you ready for marriage.  Marriage gets you ready for marriage.”  And, unfortunately, what that means is that we make our commitments and then life teaches us what we committed ourselves to.  So, on some level, we‟ll never know exactly what is going to be required of us. There is a step of faith.  There is a point of saying, “There‟s a risk here and I‟m willing to meet that risk.  Therefore, I choose to step in.” That choice, as it turns out, is incredibly powerful.  It‟s kind of like the choice of following Christ?  Do we really know what‟s going to be required of us?  No, we don‟t know.  But we step in with faith, and then we say, “God, teach me.  Take me where I need to be.” Dennis:  That‟s what I was thinking about as you were kind of unpacking that.  I was thinking, “You know, it seems like Jesus‟ words about Him saying, „What man that wants to be my disciple does not first count the cost and think about whether he‟s able to take on this weight, this responsibility?”I think to that person Bob is describing here, who is still on the front end of this, another thing I would encourage him to do is to ask God for wisdom as he moves into this relationship with this woman. Secondly, as he moves into these multiple relationships with children, some of whom are already his, some of whom aren‟t his, and some of whom in the future may be theirs.  I mean, the dynamics of this thing! Bob:  You stop and pull it all apart.  Statistically, he‟s stepping into something that‟s more fraught with danger than his first marriage was.  Statistically, there‟s more chance that he‟ll be divorced from the second wife than there was that he get a divorce from the first wife.  Not only that, but the degree of difficulty has just been increased by virtue of all of these relationships that Dennis is talking about. So, I‟m going to do something harder, that is fraught with more difficulty, and it didn‟t go so well my first time out.  You can see how a guy would say, “I need to think this through pretty clearly.” Ron:  Right.  Absolutely.  Slow down.  Slow the pace of the courtship phase.  That‟sone of the words that I would like to give to any couple.  You may be ready as a couple, but it‟s a much more difficult thing to be a family than it is to be a couple.  So, you have to say, “This is a package deal.  Let‟s pause.  Let‟s prolong our courtship.  Let‟s really get to know each other well.  Let‟s also get some perspective and information about the blended family and what this might look like.” I think it‟s hard for couples to hear this, but there‟s wisdom in this – if you don‟t think that you are cut out for the stepparent journey, it ought to be a deal -breaker for a couples‟ relationship.  That‟s hard to hear.  “W e‟re in love.  W e took our online couple check-up profile and it says we‟re compatible.  There‟s so much going for us in our relationship.” Dennis:  Yes, but let me stop you right there.  I can almost picture a guy who‟s about tobecome a stepdad saying, “I just like her.  I like the way she makes me feel.” I wouldn‟t say he would lie to her, but love does tend to make us a bit dishonest.  W e tend to put our best foot forward.  So, what would you say to that guy who has a gnawing feeling in the back of his mind thinking, “I don‟t know if I can do this thing or not.”? Ron:  Yes, those are just kind of some of the realities that I would want him to really own with himself.  To have the courage to take that to her. Dennis:  To discuss it as a couple. Ron:  And say, “This is where I‟m at; be patient with me as we try to move forward.”Dennis:  W hat about the distance between when the divorce has occurred and whenthis dating relationship started?  Any cautions or red lights that you‟d want to . . . ? Ron:  Absolutely.  Men marry quickly after divorce or after being widowed. Bob:  “It is not good for man to be alone.” (Laughter) Ron:  Men tend to marry more quickly than women do.  I do think that‟s a caution.  A man listening to us right now should stop and think, “OK.  W hat is driving me to push this relationship forward?  In my thoughts, I‟m obsessed with this woman.  She‟s great. She‟s wonderful.  I‟m kind of saying this stuff with the kids will be fine, and I‟m minimizing that stuff as if it‟s nothing, when really Ron‟s telling me it‟s something.  W hat is that about within me?” And if a woman is listening right now and she‟s dating a guy, or she knows someone who‟s dating a guy, who says, “W e met on eHarmony, and we‟ve met face-to-face once. W e live on opposite sides of the universe, which, by the way, I‟m hearing from these couples all the time, but that‟s not going to be a problem for us.  W e‟re in love!eHarmony says we‟re a match.” W ait a minute, wait a minute.  Slow down.  Slow down.  That hurried, desperate need to be together with somebody is telling you something about yourself.  You really need to take that to heart, and get objective about it so that it‟s not driving you into a decision that wouldn‟t be a wise one. Dennis:  A number of years ago, Bob and I interviewed Gary Richmond who had a very vibrant ministry to remarrieds and blendeds at First Evangelical Free Church inFullerton, California.  I remember that he used to say for every five years you have been married, you should allow one year to recover after a divorce.  So, in other words, if you‟ve been married for twenty, you should take four years to recover before really considering remarrying. Bob:  I want to dive in there, because it seems to me that there‟s some significant spiritual work that needs to go on in a person‟s life in that period from the end of a first marriage to the point where they‟re thinking about a second marriage.  Some issues that need to get unearthed spiritually, and be dealt with spiritually, but I‟m not sure I could put my finger on exactly what those were. W hat would you point somebody to in the midst of that? Ron:  W ell, in general, let me just say I do recommend that people really have a period of grieving and of coming to some resolution about a previous relationship, especially if it comes to an end through divorce.  This is also true for somebody who loses a spouse through death.You do need to grieve.  You do need to give yourself time and space to do that.  And new relationships short-circuit that grieving process. How much time?  That‟s so difficult to say.  A rule of thumb for every so many years. . . Early in my career, I gave people time limits.  I said, “You need to wait this long.”  And now I‟ve learned that life‟s more complex than that.  It‟s difficult to know. For example, David Olson and I did a research study on remarriage relationships.  W e wrote a book called The Remarriage Checkup all about this, and one of the things we found was that the couples‟ relationship can actually be just as strong six months into dating as it can be three years into dating.  Now, that does not take into consideration the children, or the ex-spouses, or how that‟s going to create stress on the couple once they get married.  So, there are a whole lot of other factors here, but amount of time in courtship doesn‟t seem to be a real big factor in terms of quality of couple relationship. Having said that, though, I still think the more time people spend coming out of a relationship, especially a divorce, and allowing themselves to grieve and work through and resolve and ask those tough spiritual questions and get their heart right with God; if there‟s a sin issue that led to the divorce, they need to deal with that and not just skip over it and try to move onto the next relationship.  They need to deal with that. And then, once they enter into a new relationship, they ought to spend a couple of yearsat a pace that allows them not only to develop “coupleness,” but, if you will, “familyness.”  And then there‟s confidence when you move into the next relationship. You see, confidence is huge, because people who go into blended family marriages most of them have been through something that was pretty devastating. They‟ve been through hurt.  They‟ve been through hearing the pastor say, “Marriage is forever.”  But life has taught them that it‟s not.  So, how do they gain confidence about this new marriage instead of living in fear?  That‟s what that courtship – that extended courtship – time helps to build. Bob:  Let me take you back, though, kind of to the spiritual unearthing that needs to happen in somebody‟s life.  How do you do an inventory to figure out whether your walk with God is at the right point where you can begin to do marriage right? As we tell people all the time, if you don‟t have your relationship with God right, your relationships with one another aren‟t going to work out.  W hat kind of spiritual process does somebody go through just to say, “OK, I just want to make sure that having gone through something that I never expected or hoped for, that I know, “God hates divorce,” and I‟ve been through one. . . how do I deal with all of this and make sure I‟m good with God before I go forward?” Ron:  I think it‟s a multi-faceted thing.  By the way, since we‟re talking about stepdads today and you‟re wanting to have that spiritual integrity coming out of the divorce to be able to go in and be a leader in the new marriage and family – this makes your questioneven more critical.  So, multi-faceted.  I think he needs to get one or two accountability buddies that he can really talk turkey with and they‟ll speak into his life about what they have seen in him, and how he‟s lived, and his choices.  Even now, how he‟s co- parenting with his ex-wife and whether that‟s showing integrity or not. I think going through some kind of structured program such as Divorce Care or a divorce recovery ministry in his church that allows him to listen to other people and see some experts talk about things; to study and really give time and energy to resolving, reflecting, looking in the mirror.  And, then, certainly that personal walk and talk with the Lord – listening to the Spirit‟s leading in his life. I think all of those things together would help bring somebody to a place where they feellike, “OK, I‟ve learned what I need to learn and I think I‟m ready to carry that into the next season of my life.  If that happens to be a new relationship, great.  And if it‟s not, then that‟s OK, too.” Dennis:  OK, Ron, I want to make sure I‟ve really gotten your advice down here, because I think this decision is of the utmost importance, alright?  Number one – first of all – seek God and ask Him for wisdom.  You‟ve just been through something really tough, and it must begin in your own relationship with God.  That means also a ruthless examination of your own life; of what wasn‟t right, perhaps, in the previous relationship if that‟s how you ended up at this point. Secondly, seek wise counsel.  As you‟ve mentioned, accountability partners that will tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear.  And then listen carefully.  It‟s interesting:  when the love bug bites, it just completely short-circuits our brains. Ron:  It does. Dennis:  W e just filter everything through it and we think, “It‟ll be different.  It‟ll be different next time.  I‟m going to learn the lessons and. . . .” Bob:  W e just think, “This feels so good.” Dennis:  It does, it does! Third, discuss expectations together.  I hear you saying that is extremely important, as a stepdad coming into a new relationship - talk about what that means, what that‟s goingto look like, how you relate and all the variables that surround that relationship. And, finally, fourth – you didn‟t mention this word, but you talked all the way around it. You talked about moving forward what‟s going to create safety and security, and that is the word “covenant” and “commitment.”  Marriage is a covenant between three:  a man, a woman, and their God.I talk about when it gets tough, what are we going to do?  Is the “D” word ever going to be used in this relationship?  Because I promise you, however tough the previous relationship was (and this goes back to Bob mentioning that it‟s more difficult to make the stepfamily work and go the distance than it is the first marriage) – I promise you, there will be challenges - and you‟re going to need to stick by the promises you make to one another and your God. Bob:  Yes, and I think there‟s a tendency that all of us have to locat e our problems outside of ourselves instead of inside of ourselves.  To see whatever the challenge we‟re facing as a problem with how someone else has reacted and minimize our own part in the issue.  That‟s why as you step into a stepfathering assignment, the wise manreally pulls back and says, “OK, what are the things I did or didn‟t do in my first marriage that may have been a factor here?” Your spouse may have done a ton.  I‟m not discounting that.  But it‟s likely that there was some part you played as well, and if you don‟t address that, that can come back to bite you.  I think to have a guidebook like the one that Ron has put together in The Smart Stepdad is just a part of that process to help you look first at your own life, your own heart, before you ever start to dig into some of the challenges that stepdads face. I want to encourage you, if you‟ve taken on the assignment of being a stepdad, or if it‟s something you‟re thinking about, get a copy of Ron Deal‟s book The Smart Stepdad. Go to FamilyLifeToday.com.   W e‟ve got copies in our FamilyLifeToday ResourceCenter.  FamilyLifeToday.com  is our website.  You can also call to request a copy of the book, 1-800-FLTODAY is the number.  1-800-F as in “family,” L as in “life,” and then the word “today.”  W hen you get in touch with us, we‟ll let you know how you can get a copy of Ron Deal‟s book The Smart Stepdad. And, then, let me encourage you whether you‟re a stepdad, thinking about being a stepdad, or whether you‟re just parenting your own children, one of the most important, significant things you can be doing as a dad is praying for your children.  Our friend and colleague John Yates has written a very helpful book called How a Man Prays for His Family. Here, during the month of June, we want to make this book available to FamilyLifeToday listeners, along with a couple of audio CDs that feature conversations we‟ve had with John on this subject, and a couple of FamilyLife prayer cards that you can keep tucked in your Bible or alongside your computer monitor so that you can be praying for your children. You can request a copy of the book and the CDs and the prayer cards when you make a donation this month to help support the ministry of FamilyLifeToday.  W e are listener- supported; we depend on those donations to keep FamilyLifeToday  on the air.  So, this month, when you make a donation, just ask for the resources on praying for your family.If you make your donation online at FamilyLifeToday.com,  just type the word “PRAY” in the key code box on the online donation form.  Again, we‟ll send you the book How a Man Prays for His Family, a CD that features a conversation we had with John Yates on that same subject, and two of our prayer cards for parents on lifting up your children in prayer. Let me just say thanks in advance for your financial support of FamilyLifeToday.  W e do appreciate it and it is greatly needed, especially here during the summer months, so thanks for getting in touch with us. W e want to encourage you to join us back tomorrow, when we‟re going to talk about some of the very specific challenges stepparents face as they step into that new assignment.  I hope you can join us. Bob:  I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, and our ent ire broadcast production team.  On behalf of our host, Dennis Rainey, I'm Bob Lepine.  W e will see you back here tomorrow for another edition of FamilyLife Today. FamilyLife Today is a production of FamilyLife of Little Rock, Arkansas. Help for today.  Hope for tomorrow.   W e are so happy to provide these transcripts to you.  However, there is a cost to produce them for our website.  If you‟ve benefited from the broadcast transcripts, would you consider  donating today to help defray the costs? Copyright © FamilyLife.  All rights reserved.www.FamilyLife.com

FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript  References to conferences, resources, or other special promotions may be obsolete. The Myth of the Ideal Stepfamily Guest:                         Ron Deal                   From the series:       Your Stepfamily:  Standing Strong Bob:   Regardless of the circumstances, you may find yourself in a Brady Bunch of your own today, one that looks different than the TV family looked.  Here is Ron Deal. Ron:   "Blended family" is the most popular term, but the point we like to make about that is that most stepfamilies don't blend.  If they do, somebody usually gets creamed in the process.  It's really a misnomer to use the term "blended family".  To me, it doesn't matter so much what families call themselves.  What they need to do is recognize that they have a different kind of family.  Learning how it operates, and how it works, and how they can make their family successful—that's what's really important.Bob:  This is FamilyLife Today for Monday, April 23rd.  Our host is the President of FamilyLife®, Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine.   If your special family is facing some special challenges, we've got some help for you today. Stay tuned. And welcome to FamilyLife Today.  Thanks for joining us on the Monday edition.  A few years ago, I took my three boys—Mary Ann and I—took the boys.  We went to LEGOLAND®.  Now, you haven't been to LEGOLAND—Dennis:  No, but I remember when you went.  You were really impressed.Bob:  We were excited to go to LEGOLAND because our boys really are into—they love Legos®.  Well, the most exciting ride at LEGOLAND, which, by the way, when we were there, it was all geared for kids 12 and under.  Dennis:  People are wondering where LEGOLAND is, Bob.Bob:  Oh, LEGOLAND is in—it's just north of San Diego.  It's geared for kids who are 12 and under.  There aren't a whole lot of scary thrill rides.  There is one rollercoaster, and it's moderately exciting as rollercoasters go.  My son, John, wasn't sure he wanted to ride on the rollercoaster.  We coaxed him and said, "Come on!  You'll have fun.  You'll like it.  It's not that scary."  We all got on the rollercoaster.  We got all done; and Jimmy, who is a little older than John, said, "That was cool!  Let's do it again."  John said, "I am not doing that again."  He didn't ride the rollercoaster the rest of the day.Now, I tell that story because, for a lot of couples, Dennis, who have gone on a marriage rollercoaster and have wound up apart—there's been a divorce—they look at the marital rollercoaster a second time; and they go, "That's scary.  Can we really make this thing work better the second time than we did the first time?"  A lot of them aren't sure they want to head on that ride again.  Then, those who get on it wonder, "How are we going to fix the problems when they come up this time?"Dennis:  That's right.  Not everybody, Bob, who ends up on that stepfamily rollercoaster ends up there because of divorce.  Some end up there because of the death of a spouse.  They now find themselves strapped into a seat with all the turns, and ups, and downs, and they're wondering, "How do you build a successful stepfamily?"  I want you to know, as a listener, we listen to you, too.  We listen to you on the internet, when you go to FamilyLife.com, and you tell us what you'd like to hear us talk about, here on the broadcast.  We also listen to you when you call into our 800 number.  We take notes.  One of the areas you've been asking us to do some work in is in the area of stepfamilies.I want you to know that we have searched across the country; and in our own backyard in Jonesboro, Arkansas—which, yes, it is in the United States—but in Jonesboro, Arkansas, we uncovered a great resource that we want to share with you over the next few days, here on the broadcast.  His name is Ron Deal.  Ron, I want to welcome you to LEGOLAND and the rollercoaster ride of stepfamilies.  Welcome to FamilyLife Today.Ron:  Thank you.  It is a great honor to be here.Dennis:  He is on the Advisory Council of the Stepfamily Association of America, and he does seminars all across the country called "Building a Successful Stepfamily".  I've got to tell this story on Ron, as I introduce him.  I am in the Dallas-Fort Worth airport.  Ron comes up to me, and introduces himself, and gives me his card.  I ask him to send me some of his stuff because he told me he was working in the area of blended families or stepfamilies.  I said, "Man!  There is a tremendous need there.  Send it on."  He sent it.  We've been in dialog, over the past few years, talking about this material and how we can bring it to our listeners.  I'm excited to feature Ron this week and talk about how we can equip stepfamilies, not only in helping them make their marriage go the distance, but also be successful as parents.Now, when we come to the subject of stepfamilies, Ron, I think maybe the majority of us, who are married, underestimate the number of people who presently are in stepfamily relationships.  How prevalent is it?Ron:  The numbers are really pretty staggering, especially to people that are unfamiliar with how many stepfamilies are out there.  Currently, every day in America, there are 1,300 new stepfamilies.  By the way, these statistics that I'm about to give you are anywhere from five to ten years old.  We don't have any real recent statistics.  So, we've got to keep that in mind.  In other words, there are probably more than even what we're saying now.  One out of three Americans right now, in the United States, is either a stepparent, a stepchild, a step-sibling, or somehow related to a stepfamily—one out of three.  With the life projections as they seem to be, it looks like one out of two of us will have a step-relationship at some point in our lifetime.Dennis:  You know, we've done a good bit of research at our FamilyLife Marriage Conferences.  Bob, you know, you speak at the conferences.  Up to 30 percent of those who attend our conferences are in stepfamilies.  I think we assume that stepfamilies have the same life expectancy as a regular family.  That's not so; is it, Ron?Ron:  No, it's not.  In fact, the divorce rate for remarriage is 60 percent.  There are some numbers that indicate that it's more than that.  By the way, I need to kind of qualify that statistic.  We don't have a statistic that tells us what the divorce rate is for stepfamily couples.  We only have a rate for remarriage.  Now, some remarriages don't involve children.  Obviously, the bulk of remarriages do involve children and qualify as stepfamilies, but the numbers are really high.Dennis:  Let me just add—although these statistics are not stepfamily statistics, they are those involving second, third, and fourth marriages from Gary Richman's book, The Divorce Decision.  He says that second marriages—now, get this—second marriages have a 24 percent success rate within five years.  Third marriages only succeed          13 percent of the time, and fourth marriages succeed just seven percent of the time.Bob:  If you thought the rollercoaster ride was thrilling and exciting the first time around, the danger increases the second, and the third, and the fourth.  It's like it gets to be a wilder ride.Ron:   And the thing is this—people have a set of expectations when they come into that remarriage.  What they don't anticipate are the stepfamily dynamics that are going to play a role in their marriage.  They just don't know about them on the frontend, at least not until now.  Because they're uninformed, and they go in, and they assume things are going to be better, and, “I've learned a few lessons from the last time.  We're going to make this marriage better.”  What they don't understand is the complexity of their home and how that's going to impact their marriage.  Then, when it blindsides them, they're at six months, two years, or three years down the road.  Most of those divorces, by the way, occur within the first three years.  They never get beyond the tough work to any of the rewards.Dennis:  Ron, I want to talk about the needs of stepfamilies, here in just a moment; but I want to ask you to do something pretty tough.  You travel.  You speak all across the country, in your seminars, in churches.  How would you grade the church in terms of addressing the needs of stepfamilies?  On an A, B, C, D, F, how would you grade the church?Ron:  I'll be benevolent and say a D minus.  We're really doing very poorly.  Think about where we were with divorce recovery programs 25, 30 years ago.  We kind of had this feeling there were a lot of people that were finding themselves in divorce situations for one reason or another.  The church needed to respond; but we were bashful, at the frontend.  We weren't sure what to do and how to help these people, but we knew we kind of needed to do something.  Well, that's where we are with stepfamilies.  They are so prevalent in our society, and yet the church is doing little or nothing.Bob:  Well, and you know why?  As we try to uphold God's standard for marriage—Ron:  Right, it kind of feels like we're abandoning, somehow, God's ideal.  That's why I say right on the frontend, “My ministry has nothing to do with God's ideal.”  The church has got to continue to preach and to teach one man, one woman, for life.  That's got to be—we've got to uphold God's ideal. But what we're trying to do in stepfamily ministry is—we're trying to keep the peculiar stepfamily dynamics and complexities from holding people back from serving their Lord.  You just can't be actively involved in a local church—you can't be serving God the way you need to be if you're constantly fighting in your marriage.  You just can't be influencing your kids towards Christ if you're not sure what your role is supposed to be as an adult in the household with stepchildren.  It just ties you up.  The way I like to say it is, “Satan gets us distracted, discouraged, and defeated.  Then, we can't be for God what we need to be.”Dennis:  You know, Ron, one of the things that you've written about is wilderness wanderings.  I so enjoyed a piece that you wrote called "Guiding Stepfamilies Through Wilderness Wanderings"—that—Bob, we've decided to make it available on our website.  People can go there and download it or just go and read it.Bob:  Our web address is FamilyLife.com.  If you'll click where it says, "Today's Broadcast", there will be a link to the article.Dennis:  What do you mean, Ron, by wilderness wanderings?Ron:  Let me tell you a story.  It's about Moses and the Israelites.  They had been in bondage for over 400 years.  They desperately wanted to be released from that.  They prayed, and they prayed, and they asked God to deliver them.  One day, He decides, in His timing, to act.  Ten plagues later, Pharaoh says, "You can go."  They embark on this journey.  If you just stop and think about it for a minute, can you imagine their excitement?  They have finally been released.  "Honey, grab the kids!  Grab everything that we own!  Let's jump in line.  We're out of here."  "Where are we going?"  "We're going to the Promised Land."  "How long is it going to take to get there?"  "I have no idea, but let's go."So, they embark on this journey.  They set out.  A little while down the road, somebody says, "Hey, you got the map?"  "No, I don't have the map.  I was kind of hoping you had the map."  "Well, Moses seems to be leading.  God's leading him.  So, we'll just keep going." Well, they come to this point in time where they take a break by the Red Sea.  They turn around and look behind them.  Lo and behold, who's there?  Pharaoh has sent his army.  He wants them back.  In fact, he wants them dead.  The people, at that point in time, turn.  They look at Moses; and they say, "Were there not enough graves in Egypt that you brought us out here to die?"  Now, Dennis, the story I hear from stepfamilies goes a little something like this, “God, you know, being a single parent is really tough.  My kids need a father.”  “My kids need a mother.”  “They need somebody else in the household to kind of bring a sense of wholeness to their life.  I'm doing it all by myself.  Would you please deliver me from the bondage of being a single parent?"  Somebody comes into your life.  They make you smile again, and you feel good, and you begin to have a hope for the future.  All of a sudden, you get this wild idea that there is a Promised Land, just around the corner, of a happy family.  So, “Let's go!  Let's grab the kids!  I'm sure there will be some adjustment issues, but it's going to be okay.”They embark on this journey, only to discover that just a little ways down the road, is this sea of opposition.  There are all these issues they really don't know how to face, they really don't know how to confront, and they just keep butting their head over and over again up against this sea of opposition.  Then, they turn around and look behind them.  They're being pursued by a past that they thought they'd left behind.  It's pursuing them in the form of very difficult emotions, like anger and jealousy and loss—that they thought they'd gotten rid of—but, lo and behold, it's come with them.  Their children's loss issues are staying with them, as well.The other thing that's pursuing them is the old relationships.  They're still dealing with an ex-spouse as the children move back and forth between homes.  They're still arguing and fighting with that person.  All of a sudden, the children look to this adult and they say, "Mom, we really were doing a whole lot better back there when it was just you and us.  Why did you bring us out into this stepfamily to die?"Then parents begin to feel guilty.  They begin to feel that there is no hope for the future.  The message that I have for stepfamilies is, “There is a wilderness wandering.  It is almost a universal experience that stepfamilies get to a point where they say, ‘Maybe we should go back.'”  Sixty percent of couples will go back to that bondage of divorce.  What I say is, "No, you've got to trust God.  Hold His hand."—just like Moses called the Israelites to trust God.  He led them through that Red Sea.  God can lead stepfamilies through their seas of opposition, but they've got to do the tough work.  They've got to stick it out.  There is a Promised Land on the other side; but if they quit and go back to Egypt, they never get the rewards.Dennis:  Ron, what I have experienced with stepfamilies is that when they finally realize that a stepfamily, which has been caused either by death or by divorce, and have two different family units coming together to forge a new, different unit—when they realize that that new family is not going to be the ideal—this perfect ideal of a Christian family—I've found that many times their shoulders, all of a sudden, are relaxed.  It is like, "Oh, that's what we've been struggling with.  We've been trying to achieve what we know to be the ideal; and yet, we're living in this stepfamily, which isn't ideal."Ron:  That's right.  It's a different kind of family.  They're trying to be The Brady Bunch.  The Brady Bunch taught us that you can take a stepfamily and make it just like a biological family.  It doesn't work that way.  Anybody, with any Christian maturity to them, in a second, third, or fourth marriage will tell you that remarriage is not God's ideal.  They have a different kind of family, and they can make it a good and great family.Bob:  And, you know, the passage from Philippians 3, that I come back to all the time here, is where Paul, after he recounts his own sinful background as it relates to his involvement with the church, says, "I used to stone Christians.  I don't deserve to be here, even, writing this letter to you." Then he says, "But this one thing I do."  He said, "Forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal of the prize of the upward call of God in Jesus Christ."  Wherever you find yourself in a marriage relationship today, first time, second time—you can look back; and you can say, "I have blown it."Ron:  "And from this day forward, I dedicate my life, my marriage, my children, my stepchildren, to the service of God and His Kingdom."  There is absolutely a message of redemption and hope.Dennis:  And that hope can be realized no matter how dire the circumstances may be.  I mean, God has always worked His plan and purpose out through broken, dysfunctional people.Ron:  Back to the Israelites—think about them, in the middle of their journey.  They come to a place where they have no water.  They're grumbling; and they're complaining, “Are we ever going to get to the Promised Land?”  They come across some water, and it's bitter.  They can't drink it.  God tells Moses, "Throw a stick in there."  He turns the bitter water sweet.  At that point, God, in Exodus 15, defines Himself—says, "I have a name.  One of my names is I AM The God Who Heals You.  I AM Jehovah Rapha.  I AM the God who turns the bitter waters of life sweet again."  That's exactly what God wants to do for stepfamilies—for people in situations that seem less than ideal.Dennis:  Ron, is what we've been talking about here the greatest need of stepfamilies?Ron:  It is because they feel so unworthy.  It's amazing to me.  It's difficult to get people to turn out for seminars.  It's difficult to get stepfamilies to acknowledge their presence in churches.  I call them "closet stepfamilies”.  They're there, but they don't want anybody to know they're there because they're afraid of the social judgment.  They're afraid of isolation.  They're afraid of somebody looking at them saying, "Oh, you're one of those kinds of families," or, "You're less than ideal."There is not a person in any church in America who is an ideal.  There's no such thing as a second-rate family or a second-rate Christian because there's no such thing as a first-rate Christian.  We're just all people in need of a cross.Dennis:  You know, it occurs to me, that stepfamilies, who are listening to our broadcast today, just need to know this, “We love you.”  These broadcasts, over the next few days, are because we want to equip you, encourage you, and bring hope to you—that you might run the race.  The verse that has just been echoing in my heart is 1 Peter, Chapter 4, verse 8.  It says, "Above all else, keep fervent in your love for one another because love covers a multitude of sins."  The word "fervent" there means "stretched out".  Certainly, those who are in stepfamilies know what it means to be stretched out.Ron:  When you feel trapped between that sea of opposition and a past you can't shake, that's the time you trust God because God will provide a way through that sea of opposition that you cannot see.  He will do it.  He will be there, and He will lead, and He will guide.  He will help equip you with tools through people, through FamilyLife, through organizations that can help you get to the Promised Land.Bob:   Most of us begin the assignment of marriage with no skill development for relationships.  It's just what we picked up in our family of origin, which may have been dysfunctional.  It may have had its own set of challenges.  We've had no formal training.  We are now yoked together with somebody who brought in their informal background of skill development.  Oftentimes, in those situations, when we reach an impasse, we go, "I don't know how to fix this."  If you just would pull back and learn some basic skills, it can orient you in a new direction. Now, ultimately, those skills have got to be worked out through the power of the Holy Spirit because, in your flesh, you'll never be able to maintain God's perspective on what a marriage ought to be.  But even a godly Christian needs to understand what communication looks like and what conflict resolution looks like—what the Bible teaches about those kinds of things.Ron:  When I'm talking to couples who are thinking about entering into a stepfamily situation or I'm doing pre-remarriage counseling training for ministers—what I tell them is, “All of those things you taught couples the first time they got married you have to teach remarried couples, plus you have to teach them how to deal with the parenting and step-parenting issues, how to deal with their ex-spouses, how they're going to handle their ghosts from the marriage past.  You have to do everything plus more to get them equipped.”Dennis:  And all this week we are going to—well, we're going to turn this into a classroom of skill building for stepfamilies.  I'd like to encourage you to call a friend and encourage them because I've got to tell you something—some of the most hopeless people are those that you think are The Brady Bunch.  They are struggling at the very core of their marriage and family.  It's all around what Bob was talking about.  They do not possess the biblical skills to know how to go about creating a godly stepfamily, and that can be done.Bob:  Ron has produced a number of resources to help families who are in stepfamily situations, starting with The Smart Stepfamily, which is available both as a book or as a small group resource.  There is a DVD so that if a small group wants to get together and go through this material they can do that.In fact, getting together with other folks who are in a stepfamily and going through this material may be the best way to go through it, if you can, because it just helps to hear the experience of other families—“What's worked for them?  What are the challenges they are facing?”  There's the book; there's the small group study.  Then, Ron has written a book called The Smart Stepdad—co-wrote a book called The Smart Stepmom.  There are additional resources that he's written and produced over the years.We have all of these resources in our FamilyLife Today Resource Center.  In fact, we haven't really mentioned this; but Ron has recently joined us here at FamilyLife, as a member of our team.  His ministry, The Smart Stepfamily, is something that we are making a part of what we're doing, here at FamilyLife.  We want to help families.  We want to help couples, in whatever situation you find yourself in today, for whatever reason.  We want to help your marriage and your family be the strongest it can be.  To have Ron, here as a part of the team, we're talking now about the new resources we can be developing and new strategies we can employ to help strengthen folks who are in blended or stepfamily situations.If you'd like more information on the resources that Ron has produced and that are available, go to our website. FamilyLifeToday.com is the website—FamilyLifeToday.com, or call us toll-free at 1-800-FL-TODAY.  Again, there is more information online; or if you have any questions, call us and we'll see if we can answer them for you.  The web is FamilyLifeToday.com, and our toll-free number is 1-800-“F” as in family, “L” as in life, and then the word, “TODAY”. Let me say a quick word of thanks to those of you who have, in the past, helped support the ministry of FamilyLife Today.  Because we are listener-supported, we depend on donations from folks like you to be able to continue the ministry, here at FamilyLife.  In fact, more than 65 percent of our annual revenue comes from donations from folks like you.  You make it possible for this program to be produced, and syndicated, and distributed through radio and on the web worldwide.  We appreciate that partnership.   This week, if you can make a donation to help support us, we'd like to send you a brand-new resource by Dennis Rainey.  In fact, we talked about this last week.  It's a book called Aggressive Girls, Clueless Boys.  It deals with the challenges facing a lot of teenage boys today, who have young ladies who are becoming romantically-aggressive with them. In addition to the brand-new book from Dennis, we'd also like to send you a copy of Dennis' book, Interviewing Your Daughter's Date.  Those two resources are our thank-you gift to you, this week, when you help support the ministry of FamilyLife Today with a donation.  You can do that online at FamilyLifeToday.com; or you can call 1-800 “F” as in family, “L” as in life, and then the word, “TODAY”, and make a donation over the phone. If you do that, just ask for the books we were talking about on the radio.  We'll know what you're talking about and be happy to send those to you.  Again, the website is FamilyLifeToday.com.  Click the button that says, “I Care”, to make a donation online; or call 1-800 “F” as in family, “L” as in life, and then the word, “TODAY”. Now, tomorrow, we're going to continue our conversation about stepfamilies.  Ron Deal is going to be back with us, and we're going to talk about children and how they can actually keep a family from blending well.  We'll talk about that tomorrow.  Hope you can be here for that.I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, and our entire broadcast production team.  On behalf of our host, Dennis Rainey, I'm Bob Lepine.  We will see you back tomorrow for another edition of FamilyLife Today.   FamilyLife Today is a production of FamilyLife of Little Rock, Arkansas.  Help for today.  Hope for tomorrow. We are so happy to provide these transcripts to you.  However, there is a cost to produce them for our website.  If you've benefited from the broadcast transcripts, would you consider donating today to help defray the costs?  Copyright © FamilyLife.  All rights reserved.www.FamilyLife.com

FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript  References to conferences, resources, or other special promotions may be obsolete. Finding Realistic ExpectationsGuest:                         Ron DealFrom the series:       Your Stepfamily:  Standing Strong (Day 2 of 5)  Bob:  One of the big issues for children in a stepfamily is trying to figure out where their loyalties lie.  Here's Ron Deal.Ron:   The child, after remarriage, now says, "Okay, wait a minute. This guy, I guess, is now my dad; or he's my stepdad or something."  They almost feel some obligation to have a relationship with him; but, at the same time—in the back of his mind—his biological dad is in another home, saying, "Now, don't enjoy him too much." This 11-year-old is getting the idea that, “I can't be loyal to my stepdad because it would be disloyal to my biological dad.”Bob:  This is FamilyLife Today for Tuesday, April 24th.  Our host is the President of FamilyLife®, Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine.  There are a lot of tangled relationships that happen when families get blended.  It can be tough to try to untangle some of those.  We'll talk more about that today.  Stay tuned.And welcome to FamilyLife Today.  Thanks for joining us on the Tuesday edition.  We're going to do a little cooking today on the broadcast.  We've got a recipe we're going to bring out and just see what we can whip up, here in Mr. Rainey's kitchen.  (Laughter)  How's that?  Mr. Rainey's kitchen!Dennis:  We're going to talk about stepfamilies.Bob:  You're going to give that guy—what's his name on the Food Network™?—give him a run for his money.Dennis:  I have some recipes, Bob.  You underestimate me.Bob:  No, I have tasted your cooking.  It's very good.Dennis:  I like to cook.  Unfortunately, I like to eat, too.Bob:   That's right. (Laughter)Dennis:  We're not going to talk about cooking on the broadcast—except, in just a moment, we are going to give you a recipe for how to cook a stepfamily; alright?  We have with us the master chef, Ron Deal.  Ron, welcome to FamilyLife Today.Ron:   Thank you.  It's great to be back.Dennis:  Ron does seminars, all across the country, called "Building a Successful Stepfamily".  You've, I guess, talked to thousands of folks in churches, and small groups, and retreats, all across the country, over the past ten years?Ron:   Yes.Dennis:  Ron and his wife live in Jonesboro, Arkansas, with their three sons.  He's a minister.  He's a counselor—I think, has got a lot to say that's very, very helpful.  He has a recipe.  It's “How to Cook a Stepfamily”.  Now, did you come up with this recipe yourself, Ron?Ron:   Actually, I did.  You know, I was thinking, one day, about the blended family and that metaphor.  We said on yesterday's program that most stepfamilies don't blend, and somebody usually gets creamed if they do.  I started thinking, “Well, if they don't blend, how do you cook a stepfamily?”  I mean, the notion of a blender is—you put a bunch of ingredients in something and, all of a sudden, they become one fluid mixture.  That's just not quite what stepfamilies end up to become.  So, “How do you do this?”  Well, I thought about the food processor.  That just chops somebody up, and somebody gets chopped up in the process.  For example, a parent who says to their child, "Okay, you need to call your stepfather, 'Daddy'.  We're not calling him 'Frank'.  We're not calling him 'Stepdad'.   You need to call him, 'Daddy.'"  In effect, Mom has just chopped up real dad.  He lives somewhere else, but he no longer exists.  We've chopped him up; now, “This is now your new real dad.”  That kind of pressure—that kind of message—really backfires within stepfamilies.  It doesn't work.  Food processor doesn't help.I began to think some about the microwave. These are families who want to be a nuke-lear family.  (Laughter)Dennis:  Did you catch that, Bob?Ron:  It took you a minute; didn't it?Dennis:  Oh, no, I read it first.  I'd already caught it!Bob:  Yes.Ron:   They're working really hard to not be any different than anybody else.  They refused—I had a guy call in to a radio program I was on one time and argue with me.  "We're not a stepfamily.  We're not a stepfamily.  We're just like everybody else."  Well, it's not a bad thing to be a stepfamily.  It's just a different kind of family; but, yes, you are one.  As long as you refuse to acknowledge that, you're not going to be able to find any creative solutions.Dennis:  I would think this would be more prevalent because of the fast-paced culture we live in and people going, “You know, we've made a new family.  We've got to make this happen quickly."Ron:  Yes, and microwave it.  “Let's just make it happen instantly.”Dennis:  Yes, push the button.Ron:   It doesn't work.  That's the same thing with a pressure cooker.  You know, “We're just going to add a lot of pressure.  We're going to force each other to love one another. If the kids don't do it, we're going to be really upset with them because they've been unwilling to do that.”  All of those things backfire.The one other approach that really doesn't work is called the tossed salad.  That's where we just kind of throw one another up in the air.  I think about the family—for example—that when one of their children, who has part-time residence in another home; but then, there are some children that remain in the home over the weekend.  “While you're gone, your possessions are ours.”You know, let's stop and think about that for a minute.  If my possessions, when I'm at dad's house—all of a sudden—anybody can play with my stuff, and mess up my room, and get into my drawers, or play with my toys—then, I don't have a place, really, in that home.  The tossed salad is, “We'll just toss you up in the air.  Wherever you come down, you're supposed to be okay with that.”It's really disrespectful for parents to do that.  You need to set up a rule that says, "Can we use your stuff?  Can Johnny ride your bike while you're over at your dad's house?"  "Oh, sure, that's fine."  Okay, well, now we've at least been respectful to this child and given him a place, even when he's not there.So how do you cook a stepfamily if all of those don't work?  Well, it's the crock pot.  You know, when my wife works with a crock pot—she just throws everything in it, and turns it on, and walks away.  That's exactly the two key elements here we're talking about—time and low heat.  Stepfamilies need to understand it takes time to cook a family.  There is nothing instant about it.  In fact, the more you try to make it instant, the more it backfires.Dennis:  But it can happen.Ron:   But it can happen.  Low heat is the other one.  You see a pressure cooker and a microwave—they're all using high heat.  They're all trying to work with high pressure to create love and bondedness.  When that doesn't happen, people get frustrated with each other.  A crock pot—it takes six hours—you've got something good to eat.  Well, the average stepfamily takes six or seven years; and then you've got something good to eat.  Being patient and letting the process work for you—a crock pot brings the juices together slowly, over time.Dennis:  I think, as many were listening to your illustration of the different types of processing food there—some in a stepfamily were thinking, "I'm in none of those.  I'm in a frying pan.  We're in enormous pain today.  The heat is up. I want out!"Ron:   Yes.Dennis:  You have seven steps to keep people in a stepfamily from stepping out; but instead, you call them to step up.  Share with our listeners what those seven steps to a successful stepfamily are.Ron:   Well, the first one is, as you said, to step up.  What I'm talking about here is experiencing and discovering a God Who loves and forgives.  We said on yesterday's program—the wilderness wanderings can be really, really, difficult.  That Promised Land can seem so far away, but God is still leading.  It's up to us to trust Him and to continue to follow.  So, step up to discover a God Who loves and forgives.Number two, step down your expectations—as we've been talking about.  It's not going to happen instantly.  You can't force a stepfamily.  You can't make people love one another.  Relax and let it happen over time.Two-step—that's my way of saying the couple has got to work together.  They've got to work in unison, almost like they're dancing together. You know, like two ice-skaters on ice have to work in harmony.  The couple has to work on their relationship, even in the midst of all the complexity going on around them.  Side-step is to side-step the pitfalls that are common to most stepfamilies.  There are a number of things that we could talk about there; but some of the things that hit my mind, automatically, are a stepparent who jumps in, and expects authority with stepchildren, and tries to force themselves upon the stepchildren.  That's one of the biggest and most common pitfalls.  It really slows everything down, and it really creates a lot of distress in the home.Dennis:  Okay, you've talked about stepping up to discover a God Who loves and forgives; step down your expectations; two-step—your marriage must be a priority; side-step the pitfalls common to most stepfamilies.  What are the last three?Ron:   Step in line—that has to do with all the adults who have anything to do with the children.  There are two levels there.  Step in line with your ex-spouse or the biological parent of the child that you have in common.  You're still going to have to cooperate.  These children are moving back and forth between your homes.  You've still got to find ways of working together.But, also, this deals with the parent and the stepparent role.  How do they work together, as a couple, to govern the children in their home?  Step through the wilderness wanderings with patience, with perseverance, and with dedication.  Otherwise, you won't get to that Promised Land.  It's there.  It's just much further away than maybe you anticipated.  You've got to stick with it.  Then, if you do all those things, you can step over into the Promised Land.  What I mean by that is there are some rewards to stepfamily life.  We know that couples can have good, solid relationships in stepfamilies.  We know that children can have good relationships with stepparents, and that can be a relationship that influences children towards Christ.  There can be health there, but you have to go through the wanderings in order to get to the reward.Dennis:  There is something that you teach, Ron, in your seminars where you expose the differing, unrealistic expectations that stepfamilies foster.  In fact, it's a chart that talks about the unrealistic expectations and exposes them; but then you also move to a realistic expectation.  We decided to feature that also on the website because we're not going to get to all of the expectations Ron has listed here.  Why don't you share one of the unrealistic expectations that stepfamilies can have?Ron:   The first one is that, “We will all love one another.”  Of course, there's that notion of instant love; and we've already addressed that.  This deals with, “We will all love one another.”  Really, the truth of the matter is love may or may not develop.  It will probably develop later—much later than you would like for it to.  Relaxing those expectations and saying, "We're going to learn how to get along.  We can be courteous. We can be kind, and we can be respectful, long before we love each other,”—long before there is even any deep emotional bond.Bob:   Here is where I've seen this be a challenge for couples.  During the time when Mom, who is a single parent, is beginning to cultivate a relationship with this new man—the new man and the 11-year-old son just are getting along famously.  One of the things that brings hope back to Mom's heart is that, “My son is so connecting with this new man in my life.”  Then they get married, and that connection seems to evaporate and turn to anger.Ron:   There is an incredible shift that takes place at the point of remarriage.  It's not universal; but it's one of those things where I always advise people, "Look, do all your work on the frontend; but realize the day you get married, you may be hitting the reset button."  It may be—I think about the couple who called me the day after their wedding.  They had come to me for premarital counseling.  You know, I'm supposed to be good at this.  We did all the remarriage stuff, and we did all the planning, and we helped them work through things, and we worked for a number of months trying to help them anticipate, have conversations with her daughters, who are in their late adolescent years, before they got married.  We thought everything was, “A go.”The day of the wedding, those two girls laid into their mom.  They started berating her, both for her decision to divorce, as well as, now, her decision to remarry.  That woman spent her wedding night in tears.  It doesn't always go like that.  It's not always that dramatic, but there are a lot of shifts that take place.  You see, children, for example, will warm up to the stepfather you were talking about.  They enjoy doing stuff.  It's a light-hearted relationship.Bob:   Yes, he takes them to Chuck E. Cheese®, to the beach, whatever.Dennis:  It's a courtship.  He's courting the kids, as well as the mom.Ron:   Right.  There are two shifts that take place.   The child, after remarriage, now says, "Okay, wait a minute. This guy, I guess, is now my dad,” or, “He's my stepdad or something."   They almost feel some obligation to have a relationship with him; but, at the same time—in the back of his mind—his biological dad is in another home, saying, "Now, don't enjoy him too much." This 11-year-old is getting the idea that, “I can't be loyal to my stepdad because it would be disloyal to my biological dad.”The other shift is this stepfather who, before marriage, just kind of enjoyed being with the kid.  You know, it was just a fun thing to do.  But now that he's married, and he's actually living in the home, he feels a greater need of responsibility.  He feels like, again, he's got to step in there and do something, as a parent.  He tries to turn on the parenting authority that he hasn't earned yet.  Those two things collide and meet head- on and, all of a sudden, there's a problem in their relationship that never showed itself before marriage.Dennis:  You know, yesterday, on the broadcast, Bob confessed here to our national radio audience that he and Mary Ann didn't have an ideal marriage.  (Laughter) We kind of chuckled about that because we all identify.  No one has an ideal marriage.  Yet, I look at this unrealistic expectation—and I'm not in a stepfamily—but this unrealistic expectation reads, "We will all love one another." Well, we think, “That's going to happen in marriage.”  We think, “That's going to happen in my family, whether you're a stepfamily or not.”  Yet, I can understand how someone, coming out of either the death of a spouse or a divorce, and hoping to re-cement a family, of sorts, back together again would think, “You know, we can achieve this thing.”Yet, let me just read a passage and think about a stepfamily—or, for that matter, think about your family—as Paul exhorts us about what real, mature love looks like.  This is birthed by the Spirit of God in the heart of a man, over time, where maturity takes place between people.  Romans, Chapter 12, verse 9, "Let love be without hypocrisy.  Abhor what is evil; cling to what is good.  Be devoted to one another in brotherly love; give preference to one another in honor."  I can see how that would be needed in a stepfamily.Ron:   Absolutely.Dennis:  Big time.Ron:   And people can live for that standard.  They can pursue that.  But we're talking about—when we say, “We all love one another,” is the deep emotional bonds of fondness, and feeling comfortable hugging you, and deep affections—that's the level which only comes with time.  We only earn that kind of love in a family relationship; but if we try to force it, it works against us.Bob:   What about the expectation, Ron—that, “This time is going to be different for us”?Ron:   Well, again, it's kind of like, "I've learned some lessons from my past relationships, and we don't want to make those same mistakes again."  We go into this remarriage, assuming that we'll do it better this time around—except, that to compare this new family to a biological family is misguided from the get-go.  The premise that we're trying to say here is that, “Stepfamilies are different.”  To constantly compare a stepfamily to a biological family—you're going to end up feeling like a failure, in the end, as it is.The other thing about that is, “This is a new marriage.  It's a new relationship.”  Yes, you may have learned some lessons.  Yes, you may be a new person, a different person, and you may have learned some things; but you've still got to learn how to do life with this person.  It's not like you just take out one person, and plug in another one, and now, “This time, things are going to be better.”  We just have to build a new family, and have new relationships, and let those relationships stand on their own instead of comparing them to former families.Bob:  A part of the challenge there is, that as we look back on the first relationship, we think, “One of the big problems was that other person. Now, that the other person's not here, we won't have that liability—that baggage.”  The problem is that the other half of the equation is still there.  You bring your own problems in and you've got a new set of problems that you just married yourself to; right?Ron:  It's accepting that this is a different family.  This is a new relationship.  We don't have to live in comparison to the past.Dennis:  There's another expectation.  Ron, you list on your chart that our children will feel as happy about the remarriage as we do.  This is really interesting because it doesn't always happen with little children.  We're talking adult children who make observations about Mom or Dad—who, maybe through the loss of a spouse due to death or divorce, find themselves in a remarriage situation.  The adult children—I know of one situation I'm thinking of now.  All the children were against the remarriage, and the mom went ahead and did it anyway.  That marriage was born out of the turmoil of the entire extended family really being against that marriage.  That expectation was dashed from the beginning.Ron:  Parents need to understand this, “Marriage, for them, is a gain.  It is another loss for their children.”  For the adults, “This is somebody who makes me feel good.  I'm going to have a partner to share life with now.”  You want your kids to be okay with this; but for the children, it's another loss.  What they want is for Mom and Dad to be back together again.  Kids want their parents reconciled.  When Mom gets married to another guy—that is a loss for them.  They didn't ask for the divorce.  They didn't ask for Mom and Dad to not like each other.  They certainly didn't ask for another person to step in the way of Mom and Dad reconciling.  It is a loss for them.  Adults need to understand that because, if they don't, then they get into this situation where they're forcing relationships upon the children.Bob:   Can two adults, Ron, recognize these expectations before they even form a stepfamily?  Can they be proactive to deal with these, or do they kind of have to wait for it to come up before they can really get into the midst of it?Ron:   Well, I think it's tough for them to recognize it; but if they come to one of my seminars, or they read a good book, or find a good resource, then, all of a sudden, they stop, and they think, "Well, maybe I am doing that."  You know, fantasies are not things that we realize they're fantasies until they're not working out, unfortunately.  So, trying to catch people on the frontend and saying, "Take this really slowly because the children may not feel about this the way you do.  You need to give them some space.  You need to give them time.  You need to be incredibly respectful to the losses and the pain that they have already experienced.  Otherwise, you're going to shove more pain on them.”Dennis:  You know, it hits me, as you've talked today on the broadcast, that certainly God is in everyday life, helping people redeem broken situations, whether by death or divorce.  Remarriages take place, even remarriages that are against Scripture.  In that situation, God, in His grace and mercy, redeems and resurrects individuals, marriages, and families.  I am also struck, after listening—God designed that one man and one woman live for a lifetime together and create a marriage covenant so that a family flows from that.  That won't be perfect.  That won't be the ideal; but when that covenant is broken, and you go and establish another covenant and another family—certainly, the opportunity for that to become all that God intended is even less than the first unit.I think of our nation and the anguish that must be in the homes of America.  I mean, I really wonder how much of this is being translated into young people as they grow up through elementary school, and their teenage years, and on into their adulthood lives.  I mean, if you and I have difficulty sorting out our emotions about difficult issues of loss, and of guilt, and anger around a divorce, what must a child feel and think as they watch their mother and father divorce and then go form and forge separate, new entities?  It's just not the ideal of what God designed.Bob:   And I think a lot of couples who are in a stepfamily—one of the things they need to hear and be reminded of is that the challenges they're facing are not unique to them.  There are other families who have faced challenges like this, as well.  There are ways to apply biblical principles to help them navigate some of these challenging situations.  In fact, Ron has written a book called, The Smart Stepfamily, that we have in our FamilyLife Today Resource Center.  In addition to the book, there's a small group resource—a DVD study—on The Smart Stepfamily—eight sessions that you can go through with other couples.  I think, Ron, you would agree that to go through the material with other couples is probably the best way to do it.  That way, your shared experience can be added to the material and help you get a better handle on how you can have the most effective stepfamily situation, given your circumstances.Ron has also written a book called The Smart Stepdad.  He has co-written The Smart Stepmom.  There are other stepfamily resources that we have available at FamilyLife Today.  Go to our website FamilyLifeToday.com for more information on all of the resources that are available.  I should mention that Ron is now part of the FamilyLife team.  The Smart Stepfamily ministry that he has been doing for many years now has become a part of what we're doing here at FamilyLife.We want to help couples, in whatever circumstance—whatever situation you're in—regardless of how you ended up there.  We want to help your marriage and your family be as strong, and as healthy, and as God-focused as it can be.  Go to FamilyLifeToday.com for more information about these resources available, or call us toll-free at 1-800-FL-TODAY—1-800-358-6329; 1-800-“F” as in family, “L” as in life, and then the word, “TODAY”. Get more information on The Smart Stepfamily resources from Ron Deal when you get in touch with us.  And let me say a special word of thanks to those listeners who, from time to time, get in touch with us to donate and to support FamilyLife Today.  Your donations make this ministry possible.  When I say, “this ministry”—I mean, not just this daily radio program, but all that we're doing on our website and as we work to create resources and work in conjunction with Ron on stepfamily resources.Your donations are the fuel that make all of that possible.  We appreciate your support of this ministry.  In fact, this week, if you can make a donation to help support FamilyLife Today, we'd like to send you Dennis Rainey's brand-new book called Aggressive Girls, Clueless Boys:  7 Conversations You Must Have with Your Teenage Son.  Actually, you ought to have these conversations before he becomes a teenager.In addition to the Aggressive Girls book, we'll send you a copy of Dennis' book, Interviewing Your Daughter's Date, so that as your kids go through the teen years, you can help point them in the right direction and protect them, as well.  Again, these two books are our way of saying, “Thank you for your support of the ministry of FamilyLife Today.”  You can make a donation online at FamilyLifeToday.com.  When you go there, click the button that says, “I Care”.  Make an online donation and we'll send you these books, or call 1-800-FL-TODAY.  Make a donation over the phone and ask for the books we were talking about on the radio.  Our team will know what you're talking about, and we'll be happy to send those out to you.  Again, thanks for your support of the ministry.  We really do appreciate it!We hope you can join us back again tomorrow.  Ron Deal is going to be here again.  We're going to continue talking about challenges that stepfamilies face. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, and our entire broadcast production team.  On behalf of our host, Dennis Rainey, I'm Bob Lepine.  We will see you back next time for another edition of FamilyLife Today. FamilyLife Today is a production of FamilyLife of Little Rock, Arkansas.  Help for today.  Hope for tomorrow. We are so happy to provide these transcripts to you.  However, there is a cost to produce them for our website.  If you've benefited from the broadcast transcripts, would you consider donating today to help defray the costs?  Copyright © FamilyLife.  All rights reserved.www.FamilyLife.com 

FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript  References to conferences, resources, or other special promotions may be obsolete. Co-Parenting:  Visitation Guest:                         Ron Deal                   From the series:       Your Stepfamily: Standing Strong  Bob:  One of the unique dynamics facing a stepfamily today is the ongoing conflict that can exist between former spouses and the impact that conflict can have on children.  Here is Ron Deal. Ron:   I think parents really underestimate the ability of their children to handle the truth; but we do need to be respectful as we present that truth.  The fine line is, “Will you turn to criticism when it becomes a personal attack?”  That's when it really begins to weigh heavy on the kids.  You know, when I attack your father, living in another home—parents need to understand that kid carries that pain because, “I'm half of Dad.” Bob:  This is FamilyLife Today for Thursday, April 26th.  Our host is the President of FamilyLife®, Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine.  What can a husband and wife do to help children in a stepfamily navigate turbulent emotional waters?   Stay tuned. And welcome to FamilyLife Today.  Thanks for joining us on the Thursday edition.  I have never forgotten a friend of mine.  I will call her "Beth".   She had been married, had a son—the marriage had not lasted.  She had been a single parent for a number of years.  Then, she met a guy.  This guy was—well, he was wonderful.  I was a little suspicious, frankly, of just how wonderful he was.  I thought, "She's been pretty lonely for a long time."  Not only that, but she wanted to have another baby; and she wasn't getting younger. Well, the two of them got married.  I'll never forget—it didn't take long for her to arrive at work one day, and Beth said to me—she didn't look good.  I said, "Are you okay?"  She said, "Well, we had a pretty serious disagreement this morning."  I said, "What was it about?"   She went on to explain that her new husband had tried to tell her son a few things that he needed to do and had started shouting at him.  She said, "I got in the middle, between the two of them.  I said, ‘You're not going to talk to my son this way.'"  The whole thing just kind of crumbled into everybody going in their own direction, and nobody feeling good about the situation.  I thought, "This couple needs someone who can sit down with them and say, 'You have got to start learning some new skills if you're going to make this thing work.'" Dennis:  At our FamilyLife marriage conference, we focus in on giving people biblical skills in knowing how to build a marriage and a family.  One of the fastest-growing segments that are attending our FamilyLife marriage conference are those who are stepfamilies—those who find themselves in remarriage situations.  I'll tell you—they're eager, Bob, for those skill sets because they've been in the real-life settings where they're afraid that they may again experience the heartache of divorce.  Not all, but many who are in stepfamilies, come about it through that route—some through the death of a spouse. All this week—we've uncovered a resource that we wanted to bring to our listeners.  We're really thrilled to do so because of the specialized needs of stepfamilies.  Today, we want to focus on the subject that you brought up, Bob—the subject of step-parenting and how that works its way out in this new family formation.   Ron Deal joins us for a fourth day.  Ron, it's been a treat to have you on the broadcast this week and glad to have you on FamilyLife Today. Ron:  Thank you. Dennis:  Ron is a minister, a counselor, and a speaker on the subject of stepfamilies, all across the country—has a seminar that he does.  Ron, one of the areas that you find the most relevant, as you teach on this subject, is this one right here.  In fact, you break down parenting into three areas:  parenting, step-parenting, and co-parenting.  Now, you've got to help me, what's a co-parent? Ron:  It's complicated; isn't it? Dennis:  It is.  Ron:  Co-parents are ex-spouses or the biological parents of the children.  In other words, if there has been a divorce situation, the children are moving back and forth between two homes.  You are no longer married to your former spouse.  If you were never married, you're not in that situation with them; but you do have an ongoing parenting relationship with them.   The way we like to say it is there's no such thing as ex-parents.  There are only ex-spouses.  So, you're forever tied through the children.  You have to work together; otherwise, the children can divide and conquer as they move back and forth between homes—just like they could within your home. Bob:  Yes, and I don't know in what order we want to go through parenting—step-parenting or co-parenting—but as you've addressed the co-parenting issue right here—we get letters all the time, Dennis, from people who say, "Here is my situation.  I've come to Christ.  We're trying to raise our children in a godly, Christian environment.  We've got rules and things that our kids can't do; and then, they go visit Mom or Dad on the weekend." Dennis:  “He's living with a girlfriend”— Bob:  “They're watching R-rated movies”—  Dennis:  —“drinking, doing drugs”— Bob:  —“language”— Ron:  It's one of the most frustrating issues that I find, whether we're talking about people that are still in single-parent years or whether they're in stepfamilies.  The other household has a tremendous influence on the kids; and they ask the question, "What can we do about it?"   Here is my answer—first, and foremost, please accept and acknowledge that you do not control what goes on in that other home.  The reason I say that is because, under the guise of being concerned, there's a lot of ex-spouses that are still trying to control their ex-.  They're still trying to tell them what to do, and they've been divorced for years.  You've got to understand that divorce means you lose your right to influence the other person.  That's one of the unfortunate results of divorce. Dennis:  Yes; but I can hear a single-parent mom or a woman who is in a stepfamily, right now, going, "But you do not know what my son is walking off into with his stepdad.  You're not telling me to just let him go off into that situation.  God's given me responsibility to protect him from evil." Ron:  Well, let's assume, and let's say, first of all, we're not talking about abuse situations.  We're not talking about extreme situations, where they're walking into abuse.  In non-abuse situations—what I'm trying to say is, “It's important for the children to keep their relationships alive with the biological parents, even if—and this is so difficult—but even if there is a negative influence.”  What you've got to do is—you've got to influence your kids towards Christ when they are in your home and do everything you can to influence them while they are in your home.   Bob:  Let's say you've got an 11-year-old or a 12-year-old who is going over to Dad's.  Dad gives him a lot of freedom—no restrictions—lets him play Nintendo® all weekend long, if he wants to.  Back home, he can only play for half an hour a day; and that's after his homework is done.  All of a sudden, it's regulated.  She's thinking, "He's going to hit 13 or 14.  He's going to say, 'I want to go live with Dad.'"  How does she protect herself from that reality and keep him from wandering off to a full-time situation with Dad? Ron:  Well, first of all, she can't keep him.  I'm sorry.  I hate to say it, but you lose control of certain things when children are moving back and forth in different homes.  What she needs to try to do is—she needs to try to influence her children.   She should not come down to Dad's level.  I think that's a big mistake that people make.  "Maybe, I need to lower my standards.  Maybe, I need to be more fun.  Maybe, we need to spend more money on the kids,” so that they—in effect—we're competing for their loyalty; and, “Somehow I can keep them in the fold that way."  It doesn't work.   Kids grow to respect parents who maintain their boundaries.  Over time, kids will probably try out the values of the other home, at some point in time.  Sometimes they don't; but if they do, you know, that's a prodigal time.  It's very, very difficult; and you've got to continue to pray for your kids.  But most of the time, in the long run, they have a tendency to come back to where the stability is—back to where truth is. Dennis:  You know, in that situation, the verses I'm about to read here are very difficult to choke down; but it's the truth of God's Word.  Peter writes in 1 Peter, Chapter 3, verse 9, "...not returning evil for evil or insult for insult but giving a blessing instead."  It goes on to talk about, in the next few verses, of "refraining your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking guile."   If I were in that situation, the hardest thing for me to do would be to remain silent about the former spouse.  It would be so easy to take them on—to get so angry at the disrespect for your own belief and your faith.  Then, in addition to that, there's the context out of which the divorce occurred. Ron:  The truth is the truth; but when it comes to, "If I can shove this truth down your throat and make you choose this over your biological parent," it's a losing game.  That is just something parents need to understand.  They need to influence, they need to teach, they need to train, but they cannot force loyalties.  It just doesn't work.  It backfires every time.  So, in effect, you're giving the kids the opportunity to choose truth. Bob:  So, what do you do, then, as you talk about your ex-spouse to his son or to her daughter?  You may find yourself wanting to, at one level say, “You know, there were legitimate reasons why Mom and Dad are no longer together.”  You don't want to defame or slander the other person; but if you make it sound like, “Your Dad really is a wonderful guy,” there's going to be a child there going, “Well, so how come the two of you aren't together anymore?” Ron:  Well, I think you can talk about the truth of what happened.  As children grow, you can give them more and more information about the past and what the relationships are.  I think we can really be honest with our kids.  I think parents really underestimate the ability of their children to handle the truth; but we do need to be respectful as we present that truth.   The minute you—the fine line is, “Will you turn to criticism when it becomes a personal attack?”  That's when it really begins to weigh heavy on the kids.  Parents don't understand that either.  When I attack your father, living in another home—parents need to understand that kid carries that pain because, “I'm half of Dad.” Dennis:  You know, as you were talking, it's occurred to me that we've focused on the co-parent—who is the renegade, who is the evil co-parent, who is trying to pollute the soul of a son or a daughter.  I would think the vast majority of those who are co-parents, even coming out of a divorce, are those who are cooperating co-parents who want to do what's right by the son or the daughter.  What are some principles of working with a co-parent who really would like to see that young lad or that young lady become all that God intended? Ron:   The goal in co-parenting is to contain whatever hostility or conflict exists—to contain that—so that, “We can work together, as a team, on behalf of our children.”   Dennis:  You're speaking about the divorce at this point. Ron:  Exactly.  What we're saying is, “The marriage is over, but the parenting continues.  So, how do we do parenting?  How are we going to do it effectively for our kids?”  A couple of ideas—one thing would be to meet on a regular basis.  Some co-parents can stand to do that once a month—some can do it every week; but I think twice a month, once a month—have a business meeting.  Sit down at the table, or do it on the phone, or do it by e-mail, if you really are not able to talk to one another in a healthy way.   There are lots of co-parents who can sit down at a table and say, "Here is what's going on with Susie.  School is going like this, and we're struggling with this subject.  The teachers are telling me that she probably ought to work a little bit more at home.  We're trying to do this in our home.  What do you think you might be able to do in your home?"  The two are cooperating on behalf of the children.  It's really a very nice situation when that occurs.  The term that we like to use is “cooperative colleagues”.  “We're still cooperating for these kids.” By the way, rules don't have to be the same.  You know, my parents have been missionaries to Kenya every year for the last 15 years.  They get on a plane, they fly to Kenya, and they get off the plane.  The customs, and rituals, and traditions are entirely different.  You drive on the left side of the road, for crying out loud!  I got to go over there 15 years ago, and it takes a little getting used to.  But then you come back to the United States, you have to switch back.  My dad came back one year and started driving on the left side of the road in Oklahoma City and couldn't figure out why the traffic was honking.  Then, he figured out, “I'm the idiot.  I have to switch back.” Well, kids are moving back and forth between homes.  Even though the rituals are different, the rules are different, the customs are different, it has a different personality to this home compared to the other home—they can make the switch.  There's always an adjustment period; but if the rules are consistent, kids can do really well. Dennis:  You know, there is something you touched on, and I want to put a double underline and an exclamation point beside.  That's where the wife is dealing with her former husband.  There is cause there for her to have been offended or the cause of the divorce left a reproach, where she needs to forgive him; and he needs to forgive her.  She's not responsible for his lack of forgiveness of her, but she is responsible for her lack of forgiveness of her former spouse.  If they're going to get together, whether by email, by phone, or in person, they're going to have to have a civil relationship where all the accounts have been settled. Ron:   And her children need her to forgive. Dennis:  Bingo!  If she hasn't forgiven, I promise you, her children and, as far as that goes, her stepchildren will know that she has bitterness or a lack of a forgiving heart.  It's very important, I think, in the process of setting up this relationship with a co-parent, to make sure, as far as it depends upon you, “to be at peace with all men.”   Now, if that person won't forgive you, refuses to forgive you, refuses to settle the account—then, that's their responsibility.  But you need to pursue that and seek to make sure that forgiveness has been requested and sought. Bob:  I have to ask you—I don't know how often this happens—but let's say you've arranged for one of these monthly business meetings—that you talked about.  About the third time you show up for one of these—and you sit down across the table from your former wife, your former husband, and you look up—and she's really looking pretty today. Ron:   Hmm, yes. Bob:  And you start to talk about some things related to your son, and you're both so proud of him.  Something happened in school and, all of a sudden, there's a stirring. Dennis:  And especially if things aren't going so well back at the ranch with— Bob:  —with your new wife. Ron:  I think that's fairly common—to have leftover feelings of fondness and love for the person that you're sitting across the table with.  The thing that people have to remember is that the marriage is over.  We do not cross into personal territory with one another anymore.  It's done.   That is so important because when your ex-spouse calls and says, "You know, the screen door on the back is kind of off.  The kids are going in and out.  Could you come over and fix it?"  I've had a lot of new wives call and say, "My husband keeps going over and taking care of her tasks at the house with his ex-spouse.  Should he be doing that?"  The answer is absolutely, “No!  That is not a parent issue.”  If it's a parent issue, then you do everything you can to cooperate with that ex-; but if it is a marital issue, a romance issue, or a help issue—no, that's personal.  You say—you quietly and politely say to your ex-, "I'm sorry.  I appreciate the invitation.  I know I've done some of those things for you in the past.  I don't think it is right for me to do that anymore." Dennis:  I've counseled people in that situation.  I think it's very important to have some clear boundaries in place.  I wouldn't want to encourage two former spouses to meet, alone together, to talk about the needs of their children. Ron:  Oftentimes this happens on the phone.  Really, that's one of the best ways of doing it because it helps to just keep that boundary where it needs to be.  You can do a lot of business on the phone.  I'm amazed at how many co-parents can do good business over e-mail, but you can get it done. Dennis:  You know, speaking of healthy relationships, let's talk about one other dimension of the co-parent—and that's the grandparents.  You know, I get into this thing—and it's like the stepfamily—it is a bowl of spaghetti! Ron:  It's complicated. Dennis:  It is incredible!  What encouragement would you give to a biological parent in dealing with the co-parent and their grandparents? Bob:  One of the six possible grandparents the child has now; right? Ron:  Yes.  I guess we should call them ex-grandparents, or ex-in-laws maybe would be the way to say it.  Bonds for children are very, very important.  Anything you can do to set aside your personal needs and wants—remember—the phrase I like to use is, "It's all about the children."  What you want doesn't matter anymore.  If it's good for them to be with your ex-spouse's parents—their grandparents—then you make the time. Dennis:  Okay.  What if it's not good for them to be with them? Ron:  Well, again, it's kind of the same situation as dealing with the ex-spouse's home.  You try to influence the kids when they're in your home.  You really don't have any control over how much time they spend with their grandparents.  They can go over to Dad's house, and Dad can just drop them off at the grandparents' house, which happens pretty frequently.  You wish they were with their father, but they're not.  They're with his parents.  You don't have any control over that. Dennis:  Well, I can hear a mom saying, “Yes, I do have control over taking them directly to the grandparents' house.” Ron:  Well, that's true.  That would be an issue that you would have to talk to your ex-spouse about.  Most of the recourse that biological parents have regarding the children and what's going on in the other homes or with grandparents, comes down to that co-parent relationship.  That's why it's so important to get to a place where you're trying to work together. You know, some of the other terms we use for ex-spouses are "angry associates" and "fiery foes".  They argue, and they're conflictual all the time.  If that's the kind of relationship you have with them, then how are you going to have any influence over what goes on in the other home?  You won't.  That's why it behooves us to set aside our personal agendas, to work on forgiveness, to resolve our personal emotional issues so that we can find a way to do the best business with that person we can. Dennis:  You know, Ron, you have done a wonderful job here, with Bob and me firing hardballs at you.  I feel like Bob and I have become a duo Chris Matthews on NBC's Hardball here.  But as you were talking—I just, in my gut—I feel like we have just finished the fourth program of a giant apologetic—a giant defense—for why you need to make your marriage work.   It's why Malachi, Chapter 2, verse16, is true, "For I hate divorce."  Now, we've said on the broadcast, on numerous occasions, “A stepfamily is not only forged by divorce; there is the death of a spouse.  There is also the birth of a child out of wedlock; but many stepfamilies today are being formed out of a divorce.” Bob:  We've also said many times that verse does not say, "I hate divorcees," or, "I hate stepfamilies." Dennis:  Right; and we have tremendous compassion—I think that's what these broadcasts are all about.  But as I listen to the complexities—if you are the person, listening to this broadcast right now, who has been thinking, even beginning to cultivate the thought of divorcing your spouse—find a way to make your marriage work!  Think about what you are going to create. And we've made it clear God visits people in their stepfamily.  I mean, He delights in broken situations—of redeeming people's lives—but you know what?  He doesn't want you to enter into those broken situations.  He wants you to take the marriage you are in today and make it work. Ron:  That's exactly right. Bob:  And I think the message that we've tried to make clear here on FamilyLife Today is that the Gospel is powerful to make whatever your situation is work.  Two people, who will go before God and humbly submit themselves to Him and to His Word—there's hope for reconciliation—whether it's a first marriage, second marriage, or third marriage.  Whatever situation you're in, God can do that kind of a redeeming work. Ron, I know your desire to help stepfamilies—writing the book, The Smart Stepfamily; the DVD series that's for small groups; the book, The Smart Stepdad; you co-wrote a book called The Smart Stepmom; and you've got other resources.  Your desire here is to help couples find the help and hope that they need so that the marriage they're in is the marriage that they'll be in for the rest of their lives. That's one of the reasons that we're excited, here at FamilyLife, that Ron is now a part of the team—that The Smart Stepfamily work that he's been doing for years is now a part of what FamilyLife is doing.  In fact, we had a meeting, not long ago, to brainstorm new resources and new strategies for how we can help strengthen folks who are in a remarriage situation—how we can apply the Gospel in those situations and those settings.  We'll have more to say about that in the months to come. In the meantime, if folks are interested in the books that you've written or some of the articles that we have on our website at FamilyLifeToday.com, go online and you can order resources from us; or look through the extensive list of articles that Ron has written—that we've got posted.  Again, our website is FamilyLifeToday.com.   You can also call if you'd like more information about the resources we have: 1-800-FL-TODAY is the number—1-800-358-6329; that's 1-800 “F” as in family, “L” as in life, and then the word, “TODAY”.  And we need to say a quick word of thanks to those of you who support the ministry of FamilyLife Today.  As we work to try to develop new resources and strategies for step-families, your donations in support of this ministry, not only go to help cover the production and syndication costs for this radio program and keeping things posted on the web, but you also help us be able to think in some new directions.  We appreciate that financial support. This week, if you can make a donation of any amount, we would love to send you a copy of Dennis Rainey's brand-new book, Aggressive Girls, Clueless Boys: 7 Conversations You Must Have With Your Son.  In addition to that, we'd like to send you a copy of Dennis' book, Interviewing Your Daughter's Date—both of these books designed to help you as your children go through their teenage years. To make a donation online, go to FamilyLifeToday.com, click the button that says, “I Care”, and fill out the online donation form.  Or if it's easier, just call 1-800-FL-TODAY.  Make a donation over the phone; and when you do, say, “I'd like those books they were talking about on the radio—the ones about teenagers.”  We'll be happy to send those out to you.  Again, we appreciate your partnership with us and your support of this ministry. And, tomorrow, we're going to continue our conversation with Ron Deal.  We're talking all this week about stepfamilies.  Hope you can tune in tomorrow. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, and our entire broadcast production team.  On behalf of our host, Dennis Rainey, I'm Bob Lepine.  We will see you back next time for another edition of FamilyLife Today.   FamilyLife Today is a production of FamilyLife of Little Rock, Arkansas.  Help for today.  Hope for tomorrow.  We are so happy to provide these transcripts to you.  However, there is a cost to produce them for our website.  If you've benefited from the broadcast transcripts, would you consider donating today to help defray the costs?   Copyright © FamilyLife.  All rights reserved. www.FamilyLife.com    

FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript  References to conferences, resources, or other special promotions may be obsolete. Finally, A Father Guest:                         Byron Yawn              From the series:       What Every Man Wishes His Father Had Told Him   Bob:  Every father leaves an indelible mark, an impression on the heart of his son, for good or for evil.  Here's pastor and author Byron Yawn. Byron:  Whenever I ask some man “What was your relationship with your father like?” there's always this moment where they're trying to figure out how to say it without being critical or dishonoring their father.  I think there are some men who have suffered greatly at the hands of their fathers, so I don't invalidate the concept that we've all made a victim of someone in our life.  We are wretched and sinful people, but the cross doesn't allow us to remain victims.  The cross allows us to overcome. Bob:  This is FamilyLife Today for Tuesday, May 29th.  Our host is the President of FamilyLife®, Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine.  Byron Yawn joins us today to talk about some of the things that all of us wish we had heard from our fathers when we were growing up. And welcome to FamilyLife Today.  Thanks for joining us.   I was going to start today by asking you a question, and then I thought, “No, it's probably not a good question to ask.” Dennis:  What was the question? Bob:  I was going to ask you, on a scale of 1 to 10, what kind of a score would you give your dad?  How did he do? – 10 being he was great, 1 he was lousy.  Then I thought, “It's not a good question” because then you'd ask me, “Well, what score would you give your dad?” and I would go through that process of trying to evaluate the score.  Then I thought, “Do we really want people starting to score their parents?”  That's probably not -- Dennis:  There's a lot of that occurring today. Bob:  There is, and I – Dennis:  It's on the low end of the scale, too. Bob:  And I don't think it's healthy for us to go there and dwell there, and muse about it and gripe about it. Dennis:  No, I don't think it is.  I think what's most important, and you're already hinting at it – we need to be talking about what is a man, what is a dad, what does he do, and how does he function under the lordship of Jesus Christ in his life.  We have a guest with us here on FamilyLife Today, Byron Yawn, who has written a brand-new book called What Every Man Wishes His Father Had Told Him.  Byron, welcome to FamilyLife Today. Byron:  Thank you, Dennis.  It's a privilege to be here. Dennis:  Byron is a writer, a speaker; he and his wife, Robin, live near my son in Nashville, Tennessee, and they live there along with their three children, and have years of ministry.  I'm just curious, why would you tackle this subject?  You have three children.  Has the learning curve for you been a steep one as a dad? Byron:  I think like every dad it has been steep.  The reason I tackled it on a personal level is that I was just compelled.  I've had many good examples in my life, and many bad examples in my life.  The truth is, I just love my sons desperately, and the world is a grinder and as a pastor I encounter a lot of failure on the male level, as husbands and young men. Dennis:  You see a lot of men who don't know how to be a dad? Byron:  I do, and I see the consequence of it in young men's lives.  So I didn't want to be the cause of two more statistics, and I just sat down and started writing essays to my sons of things that I wanted to say to them.  So on the personal level it's a father's heart to his children.  Now I don't know that I tackled it as much as it tackled me. Bob:  You said you've seen good and bad examples.  You had two very clear good and bad examples, because your dad, the man who gave you life, didn't stick around very long. Byron:  He did not, and in no way was an example for me, nor had he had any major influence in my life.  As I look back on it now, as I'm 40, God spared me, but because of my adoptive father, Dr. Yawn, which is where I got the worst name any preacher could want – Dennis:  Let's spell it, so our listeners know.  They may have missed it.  It's Y-A-W-N. Byron:  Thanks for being explicit. (Laughter) Byron:  He so exemplified what it meant to be a servant, and he embodied the unconditional love of God as it is seen in the Gospel for me.  I was young enough that I didn't have a real memory of my biological father, and I was young enough that I was forming my memories of who my father was based on the man that was in front of me.  Honestly, until the age of about 10, I didn't really realize he wasn't my own biological father, which I think is a testimony to his love. Dennis:  You know, your story is providing hope for some listeners right now, who are in a second marriage, a blended family, and they're wondering “Can redemption occur in the midst of a broken family” -- that took what was an ideal, something they had hoped for that would go the distance, and whether it was desertion, divorce, or a child out of wedlock or whatever it way, it's now a blended family.   Your stepfather – his first name was Victor, right? -- stepped into your life and provided a model and an influence and an impact that only God could use to imprint your life.  You had a conversation with him outside a courtroom that really impacted your life. Byron:  That's right.  I was around five years old, and we were in a courtroom.  It was in Mississippi, and it was a hot summer day.  I was out in the little foyer of the courtroom on a bench that looked like a pew.  I can remember it like it was yesterday.  He knelt down in front of me and he said, “Would you like to be my son?” to which I said, “I didn't know I wasn't, but of course.”   And I think whether biological or adoptive, a lot of fathers fail to make that connection clear.  So it was an enormous blessing.  I mean I got it; it clicked, and I always valued that relationship as a result of it. Bob:  He went from that question into the courthouse and formalized the adoption. Byron:  That was it.  I mean, that was the moment, and there are so many doctrines that are present in my mind as a result of my experience – adoption and inheritance and unconditional love and fatherhood.  It's just been a great context to understand my own role as a dad. Dennis:  Give me the essence of what he was asking you at that moment.  What was the essence when you became his son? Byron:  In my own mind I think that what he was asking me is, “Would you like an identity?”  Dennis:  Yes. Byron:  It made total sense to me, because at that age it's not complex.  It was very simple for me as a kid, as it is for most sons.  It's about compassion and consistency and leadership.  It was enormously formative. Dennis:  What kid doesn't want a father?  I mean, really. Byron:  No kid.  Even kids who have them want them.  Because there's a difference between being present and being a participant.  Being around and being engaged are two different things, you know. Bob:  Let me ask you about this, because you talk in your book What Every Man Wishes His Father Had Told Him, about the terminology of the father wound, which is something we hear kicked around.  I kind of alluded to it as we were starting today's program.  There's a real sense that you experienced a deficit, but you kind of shy away from too much dwelling on the idea of a father wound.  Why is that? Byron:  Well, I think the deficits are real.  I think father wounds as a label are only so helpful, but I think the reality exists.  Whenever I ask some man “What was your relationship with your father like?” there's always this moment where they're trying to figure out how to say it without being critical or dishonoring their father.   I think there are some men who have suffered greatly at the hands of their fathers, so I don't invalidate the concept, but the cross doesn't allow us to remain victims, because we've all made a victim of someone in our life.  We are wretched and sinful people.  I think for some men, when they hear ‘father wound,' or they understand the concept of the negative impact of a father, it immediately clarifies so many things in their lives, and they attach so much meaning to it, but they never get past it.   It's undeniably true, because it's Biblically true, that a father is supposed to have an impact on a child, and some of those impacts are bruises.  So my message is I understand that.  Get in line, and grow from it, and don't make the same mistakes by grace.  Don't play the part of a victim in this role. Dennis:  I've seen some victims in my lifetime.  You know, if it's always somebody else's fault, it's never your responsibility, and a person who wallows in victimization, who has been hurt and wounded, legitimately – I'm not diminishing any of that – but really what our Heavenly Father does, is He offers us the same thing your earthly stepfather offered you.   He says, “Do you want to be My son?  Would you like a new identity?  Would you like to trade the word ‘victim' “ – and I don't want to just have a trite play on words here, but “would you really like to be a man who is a victor, who has a purpose in life, who knows where he's going, what he's about, and who his Heavenly Father is?” Byron:  That's well said.  I think the cross allows, as you look through the spectacles of the cross, as you look through the cross at your own victimization in your own life, it's the only thing that will help you make sense of it, and use it for good. Dennis:  Let's talk about that in your life.  Victor, your stepfather, stepped into your life and ultimately was a part of not only introducing you to a new identity from a human perspective, but ultimately taking your hand and seeing God reach down and grab it, and you becoming a child of God. Byron:  It is fair to say, and true that my dad was my primary missionary in my life.  Through my mother's influence and the marriage itself, my dad came to Christ and was changed overnight.  He immediately began to shower my life with appeals for repentance and faith and trust in Christ and to have an awareness of my need for God and the Lord. Bob:  What did that look like?  Was he preaching at you at night when you'd come home? Byron:  There was much of that. Dennis:  How old were you? Byron:  I was in the rough years of 15. Dennis:  Oh, wow. Byron:  Yes, I was the biggest punk within a five-mile radius of anyplace I was standing at the time.  And I remember inordinate patience and love – just kind of a bizarre understanding coming from my dad.  He preached Christ to me.  In compelling ways he preached Christ. Bob:  But you ignored it. Byron:  That's what 15-year-olds do with any advice.  When my parents came to Christ I thought that they had lost it, and in fact they had, and wondered what God had done with my parents, although we had a very good kind of family life.  It just got taken to a whole another level at that point.  They threw away my Lynyrd Skynyrd CDs and they started doing all kinds of extraordinary things in my mind.  I thought they were nuts. Dennis:  Bob still hasn't thrown away his Lynyrd Skynyrd – Byron:  Well, I went back and repurchased mine. (Laughter) Byron:  But compassionately and delicately and with tears, you know, my dad was beseeching his son, and I think there was no question in my mind that – The way I describe it, Dennis, is that I could look at my dad when he was talking to me about Jesus Christ, and know that he desperately wanted me to understand what he was saying. Dennis:  So it wasn't a finger-pointing deal with him.  It was an invitation.  It was a pleading, a cry of the heart for his son to take a step toward God. Byron:  It was one sinner being the emissary of God for another sinner.  He was a broken man, and it was not a self-righteous declaration of condemnation. Dennis:  So how long did he have to preach before –? Byron:  About six months.  About six months. Bob:  And actually they were at a prayer meeting one night, right? Byron:  One Wednesday night they went to a prayer meeting at a church – at a Baptist church, which meant that there were primarily white-haired individuals in the congregation – about 20 or 25 people.  It's a prayer meeting, you know.  My only understanding of church was an aisle, and at the end of the service you walk down an aisle and there's this thing that happened. Well I was walking around my living room on a Wednesday night, confused out of my mind, and my eyes were opened to my sins.  That's the only way I can describe it – my eyes were wide open to the truth of who I was and the mercy of God in Christ.   I got down on my knees in my living room by myself, which no 15-year-old child, son, would do unless God was interceding, and pleaded for the mercy of God and sought His forgiveness.  I remember the words like it was yesterday.  “I don't want to be an object of Your wrath.  I want to be forgiven.  I want to live for you.” Bob:  And you think this was based on the conversations your dad had been having with you? Byron:  There's no question that the conversations of my dad and my mom and penetrating appeals of the Gospel, and really just the change in their life. Dennis:  Yes, I was going to say you had to see your dad's life radically changed. Byron:  Absolutely.  Overwhelmed.  Overwhelmed. Dennis:  Even though he was a good man before he came to Christ. Byron:  My dad was very successful as a medical practitioner, and we had a lot of material things.  All of his life, I think, he had seen that as the pinnacle of success, and really the pinnacle of his role as a father to provide.  And when God opened his eyes to the truth, he realized that that was not the case.  And so what I observed in him was this self-sacrifice and this love for the unseen, and really a dismissal of these possessions and material things, a willingness to burn them all if he could have his children see what he saw. Dennis:  So what happened when they came back from the prayer meeting? Byron:  Well it didn't happen that way.  I had seen the invitation system all my life because of the church I grew up in, so I literally thought I had to walk an aisle in order to be converted, to be saved.  So I prayed this prayer on my own, I get in a car which I'm not supposed to be driving because I'm grounded at the time – it's true – so my entire conversion is precipitated on a sin, breaking my parents' rules.   And I drove to the church and I sat in the back and I waited for the prayer meeting to be over.  As soon as it was over I picked whatever looked like an aisle and I walked down.  And my parents had been there with these saintly people at the church, very faithful people, praying for their son. Bob:  Oh, wow. Byron:  So I walked down the aisle, and I approached this pastor – his name was Tim – and I said, “I need to be saved.”  And he looked right back at me and he said, “No you don't.  You were, because no 15-year-old kid drives across town to come to me and confess their sin and their need for Christ unless God has opened their eyes for it.”  He helped me understand that.   I turned around, and my parents are just standing there with their mouths wide open and tears coming down.  They were just like, “Hey, this prayer thing works, you know?”  It was extraordinary.  It was extraordinary, and there was a radical change in my life, you know, towards my parents.   I saw the legitimacy and the wisdom in submitting to their direction in my life.  I wanted to obey, because I could, and asking for their forgiveness and confessing my wrongness seemed like a logical thing to do.  A teenage boy admitting that he's wrong and his dad is correct and seeking his guidance is clearly a sign of regeneration.  I mean it's a sign of the Holy Spirit's presence. Bob:  Byron, if you were sitting down with a dad today, a father of a 15-year-old, a stiff-necked punk like you described yourself, and he said, “I don't know what to do.  We've tried to talk to him, we're praying.  I don't know what to do.”  What would you tell him? Byron:  I would say, “Look at your own life.  Compare that obstinacy in your son to your obstinacy before God, and God's grace and mercy and patience in your life with this child.  That kid is supposed to be confused.  It's a confusing world.”  To love unconditionally, as hard as it is, and to show mercy, and to not only view him as a son who's struggling to receive guidance, but a sinner, who is struggling under the weight and the burden of their sin.  To become that young man's pastor, and chief example of what a broken, repentant sinner looks like, and to offer hope in that.  There are a lot of things that you can say, Bob, a lot of things that you can say, but the things that I remember my dad saying had more to do with how he said it than what he got right.  I mean, the sincerity of a father's love even in the hardest things that have to be said is an enormous gift.   That conversation did not become hard and difficult overnight.  There is typically a string of combative moments, and so I think it's important, very important that a father come in on his knees.  And whether the son understands or not, even seeking forgiveness for not communicating his love effectively, or making the child seem like a burden more than a gift, and the rest is a matter of grace and love and prayer. Dennis:  And maybe you're listening to Byron's story and you're like him as a little boy.  You're hearing God say, “Would you like to be my son?”  Maybe it's time, whether you're 15 or 50, that you get down on your knees like Byron did and say, “Lord, be merciful to me a sinner,” and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, the one who paid the price for your sins, who died on a cross, was raised on the third day and can make the offer because He's alive.  He's alive.  He is alive and He offers eternal life to all who will call upon His name. Bob:  We have a book that we love to send out to folks that is called Pursuing God, and if you're listening today and you have never considered what it is to have a relationship with God through Jesus Christ, and today as we've talked about this you've thought “I need that.  I need to have a real relationship with God,” which is available to us because of what Christ accomplished on our behalf on the cross.  Then let us send you a copy of this book, Pursuing God. Call 1-800-FLTODAY to request it.  1-800-358-6329, and ask for the book Pursuing God.  Again, we're happy to send it out free to anyone who wants to understand what it means to have a relationship with God through Jesus Christ.   Or go to our website, FamilyLifeToday.com.  There's a link you can click on there called TWO WAYS TO LIVE, and it explains the same idea – what it is to have a relationship with God and how that relationship can happen.  Go to FamilyLifeToday.com; click the link that says TWO WAYS TO LIVE. And while you're there, look for information on Byron Yawn's book, What Every Man Wishes His Father Had Told Him.  We have the book in our FamilyLifeToday Resource Center.  You can order it from us online, or you can call 1-800-FLTODAY when you get in touch with us.   And then keep in mind:  we have an event that‘s coming up on August 4th that we want to make sure you know about – a national men's event.  It's a simulcast, originating in Chicago and being hosted in churches all around the country.  It's the Stepping Up®National Men's Conference.  Dennis Rainey, James McDonald, Crawford Loritts, Robert Lewis are all speaking at the event.   Your church can be a host church for this event and you can find out more when you go to FamilyLifeToday.com and click on the Stepping Up link.  There's also information there about the Stepping Up video series that's being released in August – 10 sessions that you can go through with a small group of other guys, or you can use it with your men's group at church.   Again, get all the information you need online at FamilyLifeToday.com.  Click on the link that says Stepping Up, or call for more information at 1-800-FLTODAY, 1-800-358-6329. Now, we are down to the wire here at FamilyLife Today.  During the month of May we had some friends of the ministry who came to us and said, “We want to encourage listeners to help support the ministry, help cover the cost of producing and syndicating this radio program, and help with the Stepping Up event and the video series that you're putting together.”  They offered to match every donation we receive this month on a dollar-for-dollar basis, up to a total of $650,000.   We are just days away from the end of May, and if we're going to take full advantage of this matching gift opportunity, we need to hear from listeners today or tomorrow or Thursday at the latest.  So would you consider today going online at FamilyLifeToday.com, click the button that says I CARE, and make an online donation?  Or call 1-800-FLTODAY and make a donation over the phone.   Again, your donation is going to be doubled, dollar for dollar, until we hit that $650,000 matching gift threshold, and even beyond that your gift is important.  So thanks for whatever you can do in helping to support the ministry of FamilyLife Today.  We appreciate you and look forward to hearing from you.   And we want to encourage you to join us again tomorrow.  Byron Yawn is going to be here and we're going to continue talking about dads pouring into the lives of their sons as they raise their boys to be men.  I hope you can be with us for that. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, and our entire broadcast production team.  On behalf of our host, Dennis Rainey, I'm Bob Lepine.  We will see you back next time for another edition of FamilyLife Today.   FamilyLife Today is a production of FamilyLife of Little Rock, Arkansas.  Help for today.  Hope for tomorrow. We are so happy to provide these transcripts to you.  However, there is a cost to produce them for our website.  If you've benefited from the broadcast transcripts, would you consider donating today to help defray the costs?  Copyright © FamilyLife.  All rights reserved.www.FamilyLife.com    

FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript  References to conferences, resources, or other special promotions may be obsolete. Defining Manhood for Your Son Guest:                         Byron Yawn             From the series:       What Every Man Wishes His Father Had Told Him  Bob:  As a dad, how much time do you spend correcting your boys versus the time you spend affirming and encouraging them?  Here's pastor and author Byron Yawn: Byron:  I tell my sons all of the time – I observe these things in them – I'll tell them, “Son, you're so gifted in this area.”  I will dialog with them about it and I'll help them see it.  It encourages them along.  In doing that, I'm helping him to have self-awareness:  where he's deficient, where he's good, where he needs to grow, where there are struggles in his soul that he's going to deal with for the rest of his life, just to have an awareness of these things. Bob:  This is FamilyLife Today for Wednesday, May 30th.  Our host is the President of FamilyLife®, Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine.    Every son is longing to hear words of affirmation from his father.  Are you generous with that or stingy?  We're going to talk more about it today.   Welcome to FamilyLife Today.  Thank you for joining us.  If I were to scan your iPod – do you have any music on your iPod? Dennis:  What's it to you? Bob:  I just want to know what you would have been listening to.   Dennis:  It's personal.  What? Bob:  What might you have been listening to in recent days?  Here's my real question . . .  Dennis:  Andrew – Andrew Peterson. Bob:  OK.  Alright.  That's good.  You get a high five from me for that. Dennis:  It might not be on my iPad, but it is – what's it on?   Bob:  It's on a cassette!  Do you have a cassette? Dennis:  No, no, it's not on a cassette! OK, if you want to do that - would you share with our listeners what you did; what you tweeted?  You want to tell them what you tweeted? Bob:  What?   Dennis:  If you want to play this game, you know what?  I know the Bible says not to give insult for insult, but this is just having some good times and fun.  We've got a pretty good crowd out in the outer area of our studio.  This is a good eye-witness. Bob:  This actually involves our guest.  Did you know that? Dennis:  Does it really? Bob:  Yes, I was on my way to Nashville, and I was going to try to hook up with our guest who is a pastor in Nashville.  Can I introduce him? Dennis:  You can. Bob:  Byron Yawn joins us on FamilyLife Today.  Byron, welcome. Byron:  Huge privilege to be here, guys!  Thank you. Bob:  Byron is the pastor of Community Bible Church in Nashville.  He's an author and a speaker.  I was trying to send a direct message to Byron.  I was trying to send him a direct message to say, “Hey, give me a call on my cell phone so we can figure out where we're going to have lunch!”  (Laughter) But it didn't go as a direct message.  It went to the whole twittersphere.  It was my phone number. Dennis:  He tweeted his cell phone number. Bob:  Have we had enough of this? Dennis:  We have, we have! Byron Yawn has written a book called What Every Man Wishes His Father Had Told Him. Bob:  The reason I was asking you about your iPod was because he's got a list in here of what he calls Man Laws, right? Byron:  Man Laws, right.  You may never refer to clothing as an “outfit.” Bob:  On you!  You can call your wife's clothing an outfit, right?  Can't you say, “That's a nice outfit” for her? Byron:  Technically, yes, but you could also use other terms if you just wanted to be safe. You can't ever say “outfit.” If you have something on your shoe . . . Bob:  On the heel. Byron:  On the heel, and somebody says, “Hey, you've got something on your shoe back there,” you can't do the pirouette thing and look back.  There's no way to look masculine doing that. Bob:  Where you look over your shoulder? Byron:  No.  See, that's just – it gives me the willies. Bob:  That I even pretended like I was doing it.  (Laughter) Byron:  You've got to pick your heel up in front of you.  (Bob demonstrates) There you go, that's how you do it! Dennis:  The one before it was good, too:  “You must be able to locate at all times the duct tape in your house when asked.” Bob:  You have to know exactly where it is and be able to lay your hands on it in about five seconds. Dennis:  That's a man-tool; that's a man-tool. Well, your book is about manhood and real identity of manhood.  If you were asked to really give us the essence of what true manhood is all about, what real masculinity is all about, how would you answer the question? Byron:  The question really isn't what is manhood as much as what does manhood look like when Christ is in it?  I think that one of the observations that I've made in my own life is that when I come across books on Biblical manhood or being a man, you know as a Christian – being a Christian father and Christian husband – that we point to all kinds of examples.  Some are biblical - Moses and otherwise, and some are historic, but rarely do I find a chapter on Jesus.  I think, without a doubt, that Jesus is the definition of what it means to be a Christian man, a biblical man. Bob:  Okay, but you know that there are women who are listening who are saying, “So is He not the model of what it means for me to be a follower of Christ?  Is He just a picture of a man?” Byron:  I think Jesus Christ and the Gospel are also the perfect example for femininity as well as masculinity.  Ephesians chapter five, when it describes the wife's role within marriage, points to Jesus.  When it describes the man's role within marriage, it points to Jesus.  The virtues of Christ and the person of Christ, in the male, affect him in particular ways. Bob:  So how do we tease that apart?  How do we find what it means for a guy to be a godly man; what it means for a woman to be a godly woman if we're both looking at the same person? Byron:  When I sit down with couples in premarital and I ask the bride, “Tell me what it is you're looking for in this man,” when she gets to the end of her description, what she has described is a really good girlfriend, not a leader. If wives, many of whom pray for their husbands to become the spiritual leaders, if they ever really got that prayer answered, they might not want what they get.   A biblical man - a Christ-centered man – will love Christ more than he loves his wife so that he can love his wife as he should.  Sometimes that requires self-sacrifice; the lowering of your living standard to do what you should do with your resources.   So, masculinity under the Christian banner is not William Wallace.  It's Christ.  It's humble.  It's self-sacrificing.  It's quiet.  It can be ordinary.  It can be invisible.  It fits all kinds of contexts. Dennis:  All kinds of personalities. Byron:  Absolutely!  It's not a guy that likes to swing from one rock to the other or who likes to hike the Blue Ridge Trail and tie knots, you know?  It's not exclusive to one type of personality.  It's Christ embodying a man through the Spirit; affecting him in a way that looks like Christ coming out as he serves his wife and his children. I mean, Jesus dispelled the notion of over-the-top masculinity with His own disciples as they approached Jerusalem and said, “Hey, which role in the Cabinet am I going to get?” Jesus turned His disciples – well, He pulled them over onto the side of the road – and said, “Now you've been taught your whole life to view leadership like the Gentiles view leadership, with authority and power.  But I tell you it's not that way with you nor shall it be.  When you get authority, he who wants to be the greatest of all will be the servant of all.”  Jesus preached lowly, humble, broken servanthood. I think it takes more strength of character to serve and to use your power and authority for the good of others than it does to use it for yourself.  That's Christ, in a nutshell, Who had all the power of divinity but didn't use an ounce of it to relieve His own suffering but to serve others.  That's biblical masculinity. Bob:  You were adopted by your dad when you were five years old.  Did he model authentic, biblical manhood?  Did you see these qualities in him? Byron:  The most consistent man I ever knew.  I mean, you could set your watch by his life.  Just that alone taught me volumes of what it meant to be a man just about life in general; about success, about accomplishing things.  I mean, it was all kind of resident in this aura of who he was.  I don't mean to marbleize him.  He was a sinner saved by grace, but was a very consistent, trustworthy feature – a mooring in my life. Bob:  You've written a book called What Every Man Wishes His Father Had Told Him.What were the things that your father not only modeled for you but told you?  How did he help shape you to become the man you are? Byron:  One of his main emphases, particularly throughout my life, was on that message of consistency and plodding – being diligent in the small things over a long time is what produces real results in life.   Don't aim for the get-rich-quick scheme.  Don't take the shortcut but discover what you're supposed to be doing in life and do that.  Do it consistently.  Do it well and when the time is right, you'll reap the rewards for that, but it will come at a time where you're responsible and capable with those greater rewards.  So he preached consistency and required it. Bob:  What did that look like in your life?  I mean, consistency can sometimes sound to guys like “boring.”  You do the same thing; you put your pants on the same way everyday . . . Dennis:  Or being “boxy.” Bob:  Yes. Byron:  But he made consistency exciting.  It wasn't as if he forced me to become something I wasn't.  It was in the things I wanted to do.  It could have been in athletics; regardless of how successful I might have been.  I will tell you, Bob, in football I was quite successful.  (Laughter) Regardless of how successful I might be . . . Bob:  Pretty small high school? Byron:  It was the commitment to the team.  Exactly -- big fish in a small pond.  It was the commitment to the team.  It was the commitment to practice.  It was the discipline of it.  It was, you know, the study of the game.  It was being a good teammate.  But the consistency of all that kind of stuff – not a starter only, but a finisher.  Those were the kind of lessons. . . What was great about them was that he took the time to pull me aside to give me these little lessons when I was eight and nine that I remembered when I was 29 and 39 years old. Dennis:  What I hear you saying is he enabled you to feel comfortable in your own skin. Byron:  Very much. Dennis:  That's something that you write about in your book.  That's something that every man needs to somehow embrace and be the man God made him to be. Byron:  That's a main thrust within the heart of this book is that a father's role is not, particularly with a son, to groom his son to become the thing that the father always wanted to be or to fulfill the dreams of the father, but to help his son discover what he should be doing with who he is.   I think this a major failure on the part of many fathers:  they don't help their sons discover who they are, where they're gifted, where they're not gifted, what they should be doing. I tell my sons all of the time – I observe these things in them – I'll tell them, “Son” -- Wade, for instance – “You're so gifted in this area.”  I will dialog with them about it and I'll help them see it.  It encourages him along.  In doing that, I'm helping him to have self-awareness:  where he's deficient, where he's good, where he needs to grow, where there are struggles in his soul that he's going to deal with for the rest of his life, just to have an awareness of those things. Dennis:  Yes, if all you talk about is what he's good at and all of the positives, it can become flattery at that point and begin to lose its edge in terms of really helping him grasp what God's imbued him with – what kind of gifts and talents he has, right? Byron:  Even when it comes to his struggles - my sons struggle with sin and it's kind of the bends in their frames as human beings.  This one struggles with materialism and this one struggles with discipline, which is true of all of us. I can graciously and gently point those things out and then show him how the Gospel in Christ helps him sanctify those things.  Because what ends up happening with most men is that no one ever points those things out and grooms their character.  They get into marriage and two or three years into marriage, those things come out – they're discovered – but they've been there all along. Dennis:  Right, right. Byron:  So to help a man get comfortable in his own skin and who he is – that's a part of it.  I think many men suffer from substantial insecurity. Bob:  How did your doctor-father respond when you told him that you thought you wanted to go to seminary? Byron:  I think he struggled.  I think he struggled at first because he knew the cost of it.  But who I was made sense. Bob:  What do you mean by that? Byron:  Well, after coming to Christ, he observed me in the church.  He saw the gifts that God had given me; he's seen the congregation's response to me, the elders' ordination of my ministry roles.  He had observed my life and been a part of my life, so when I came to that point, it just made sense.  What he feared was the cost of ministry to his son. Many years later after my first full-time ministry, my dad took me aside.  He was visiting and he took me aside.  He took me around behind a vehicle right before he shut the door and drove off.  He just said something very simple:  “Son, this makes sense.  This is what you're supposed to be doing.  I see it and I'm so proud of you.” There are so many men deep into life who've never heard that. Dennis:  Yes. Byron:  The father never provided that kind of clarity but it's been hiding in the wide open ever since.  I mean, that is a liberating thing to men.   Dennis:  And I would want dads to not miss the simplicity of that nor the power.  I see a lot of grown men today who have needed an authority figure – a father, first of all – to step into their lives and say, “Byron, you're gifted.  You are really good in this area.  I think God's hand is upon you.  I believe in you and I think He's got great things in store for you.” To express the power of an older man reaching to a younger man and calling him up – I think every younger man needs not just one conversation.  He needs multiple conversations.  Your dad wrote you a note at one point? Byron:  He did.  I was going to get married and I needed to change jobs to build a little nest egg.  I had one of these small, little crises in my life.  So I went to my dad, which in and of itself is an awesome thing.  You have no idea how many times I've wanted to pick up the phone in the past fifteen years and call this man with absolute trust and faith. But he was there; I was still living in his home at the time and I went downstairs and just sat down and talked to him and asked him some advice.  We talked and he prayed.  I went to bed and the next morning I woke up and on the kitchen counter was this note on one of these prescription pads that my dad had.  It said, “Son, I'll support you in whatever decision you make.  I'm proud of you.  Love, Dad.” I had the state of mind to just absorb what that meant - the gesture of love that was there.  I took that note and buried it in a book that I knew that I would never lose and I have kept it with me.  There are just a lot of men, sons, who don't have that type of fixture in their life. It was so impactful to me that I've reciprocated that in my own sons' lives; observing their lives where they're good and leaving them notes of sorts – but speaking into their lives, helping them see themselves.  I mean, they're supposed to be short-sighted.  There is no way they can observe their lives.  I don't want them discovering who they are late in life or what their challenges are late in life.  I don't want their wives to have to finish my role in raising them.  I want to love them, and I do love my sons. So, that note, just that palpable moment of my father's love encouraging me in a particular direction, particularly in marriage, was so impactful and so influential. Dennis:  It was a statement of belief in you as a man. Byron:  Very much. Dennis:  An affirmation of “You can do this thing.  I'm for you.  I'm going to cheer you on.” Byron:  Yes, it was really one of those moments where he goes from my caregiver to my coach and my friend.  There was a sense in which we were operating on an equal plane at that moment.  Just to have that respect from him to me was rocket fuel for my soul as a young man. Bob:  How did your father die? Byron:  He died in a car accident.  He was at one of his granddaughters' performances – a play.  It was crossing a street, driving back to the hospital, that he had crossed hundreds of times.  My sister was driving.  As they crossed – there's this little dip in the road and a car was coming; it wasn't speeding – they pulled out in front of the car.  He suffered severe internal damage and passed away. Dennis:  After your dad's passing, you had to reflect back on your last encounter with him.   Byron:  That's a treasure.  One of the things I can say about my relationship with my father after he passed away is that there were absolutely no regrets.  Our relationship was so strong and so transparent and so encouraging that we had said everything that needed to be said.  There was a lot of love between us, a lot of love in our family, a lot of affection, proactively. He was there visiting me and had the state of mind to pull me aside, having seen me in the context for which I was designed, and just say, “I love you.  I am so proud of you.  This makes total sense.  God is going to use you in great ways, and I just thought you might need to know that.”  We hugged and he was gone. I just had this exchange with my father that every man has yearned for in their life and few have received.                                                                                                                         Dennis:  I would say to most men who are listening right now, they need to reflect not merely on what was said to them by their fathers or what wasn't said -- because it would be really easy to fall into that -- but to reflect on what the conversations are that they're having with their sons and their daughters and their wives and how they are expressing love, affection, belief, affirmation, encouragement.   I mean, life has a way of knocking the stuffing out of people.  It's tough!  This is a tough time to be alive and attempt to follow Christ.  I think if there's ever been a time when we needed strong men, courageous men, men who are reaching into the lives of those around them, it's today. Byron, I want to express my appreciation for you telling your story, and for this book.  I think it's going to encourage a lot of men to have some talks and some conversations with their sons, their daughters, their wives, and maybe some friends, that otherwise they wouldn't have and would probably regret.  Thanks for being on the broadcast. Byron:  It's my privilege.  Thank you, Dennis. Bob:  I think the issue for a lot of guys, Dennis, is that they want to have those conversations, they just need the coaching.  They need somebody to help them with what that looks like.  That's what Byron has done in the book.  We've got copies of the book What Every Man Wishes His Father Had Told Him in our FamilyLife Today Resource Center. If you go online at FamilyLifeToday.com, there's information about the book.  You can order it from us online if you'd like.  Again, the website is FamilyLifeToday.com or call toll-free 1-800-FLTODAY and ask for information on how you can get a copy of Byron's book What Every Man Wishes His Father Had Told Him. And when you get in touch with us, get information as well about the upcoming FamilyLife Stepping Up National Men's Conference.  This is taking place in Chicago on Saturday, August 4th, but it's also being simulcast in churches all across the country.  Hundreds of churches are going to be host sites for this event.   If you'd like your church to be one of those sites hosting this national men's conference featuring Dennis Rainey, Crawford Loritts, James MacDonald, and Robert Lewis, go to FamilyLifeToday.com; click on the link that says, STEPPING UP. It will take you to an area of our web where there's more information about the national men's conference – the Stepping Up National Men's Conference, and about the Stepping Up©video series that is being released in August as well.  There are ten sessions that you can go through with a small group of guys or you can go through it with your men's ministry at your church. Again, get more information about the event and the video series when you go to FamilyLifeToday.com and click on the link that says, “STEPPING UP.”  Or give us a call if you have any questions at 1-800-FLTODAY. Now, we are near the end of the month of May and we're also near the end of the time period that was set aside for the matching gift fund that FamilyLife has had in place during the month of May.  Back at the beginning of the month, we had some friends who came to us and said, “We'd like to match every donation you receive this month dollar-for-dollar.”   They put aside $650,000 – put that in a matching gift fund – and said, “As soon as you raise funds, we'll release some of those matching funds.”  So we're hoping to take full advantage of that matching gift fund.  We've got today and tomorrow still left to do that.  If you've not made a donation to FamilyLife Today during the month of May, can we ask you to do that today or tomorrow so that we can take full advantage of this matching gift fund? Go online at FamilyLifeToday.com and make a gift or call 1-800-FLTODAY and make a donation over the phone.  Again, your donation is going to be effectively doubled because of this matching gift fund.  We look forward to hearing from you.  1-800-FLTODAY is the number, or make a donation online at FamilyLifeToday.com. Be sure to be back with us again tomorrow.  We're going to continue talking about dads raising sons.  Dr. Randy Stinson from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky is going to be here with us.  Hope you can be back with us as well. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, and our entire broadcast production team.  On behalf of our host, Dennis Rainey, I'm Bob Lepine.  We will see you back tomorrow for another edition of FamilyLife Today.   FamilyLife Today is a production of FamilyLife of Little Rock, Arkansas.  Help for today.  Hope for tomorrow. We are so happy to provide these transcripts to you.  However, there is a cost to produce them for our website.  If you've benefited from the broadcast transcripts, would you consider donating today to help defray the costs?  Copyright © FamilyLife.  All rights reserved.www.FamilyLife.com  

FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript  References to conferences, resources, or other special promotions may be obsolete. “Coupleness” Doesn't Equal “Familyness” Guests:                      Ron Deal, Rob & Rhonda Bugh, Sabrina Beasley                     From the series:       Dating and the Single Parent  Bob:  Rhonda Williams lost her husband, Tom, to cancer after more than two decades of marriage.  Her pastor, Rob Bugh, lost his wife to cancer, as well.  Months later, Rob and Rhonda got married. Rhonda:  We really thought we were prepared for remarriage, but we still—  Rob:  We were naïve.  We were much more focused on the chemistry between us than the chemistry of that dynamic with our kids. Rhonda:  It was difficult for our children to understand, especially how you could love somebody else. Bob:  This is FamilyLife Today for Monday, October 15th.  Our host is the President of FamilyLife®, Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine.  It's possible for two spiritually-mature, committed believers in Christ to walk into a second marriage unprepared and to be surprised at what they find.  We'll hear about that today.  Stay tuned.   Bob:  And welcome to FamilyLife Today.  Thanks for joining us.  Have you ever been at an amusement park where you've gone on a ride and you thought, “That was a fun, exciting ride; and I never want to go on that ride again.” Dennis:  Absolutely! Bob:  Have you ever had that happen? Dennis:  I have, yes. Bob:  That's how Mary Ann and I have talked about dating.  It was a fun and exciting thing, and we hope we never have to go on that ride again; you know? Dennis:  Right.  It is an experience that is meant to be once in a lifetime; but for a number of people, they have to date more than once.  Now, I'm not talking about dating your spouse after you get married.  We're talking about what happens after a divorce, after the death of a spouse. We've got some guests who, not only have solutions, but have some fascinating stories around the whole concept of being single again and dating.  Our friend, Ron Deal, joins us on FamilyLife Today.  Ron is brand-new to the staff of FamilyLife.  He's not new to our listeners.  They've heard him on FamilyLife Today on multiple occasions.  Ron is married to his wife, Nan, since 1986.  They have three sons.  He is heading up a new ministry, here, at FamilyLife, targeting blended families. Ron, first of all, welcome to the broadcast.  I'll introduce our other guests in just a moment.  Share with our listeners a little bit about what you hope to do through FamilyLife's blended family outreach. Ron:  Well, thank you, Dennis.  It's always a pleasure to be on FamilyLife Today with you and Bob.  We endeavor to try to equip blended family couples to go the distance.  We want the marriage that they're in to be their last.  The couples that are listening right now, who are in stepfamilies, know exactly what I'm talking about.   By death or by divorce—some script that they did not choose to write—they now find themselves in a different family situation.  We want to try to help them understand their family, make sense of what's going on, and create it into a home that is a redemptive home.  I really believe, very strongly, that stepfamilies can be homes of redemption—stop the cycle of divorce with this generation—make a difference in the emotional, spiritual, and psychological lives of their children so that they have the ability to grow, trust the Lord, and live vibrant lives of their own.    Dennis:  And out of that heart, you've written a brand-new book called Dating and the Single Parent.  We're going to be talking about that in a few moments.  Also joining us is Sabrina Beasley.  She used to work, here, at FamilyLife.  She gave birth to her first child and went home to be a stay-at-home mom and had a second child.  Then, in 2010, her husband was killed in a car wreck; and she became a single parent.  She has agreed to come in and share a little of her story and kind of how that whole process is going currently.  Sabrina, welcome to the broadcast. Sabrina:  Thank you, Dennis.  Thank you for having me today. Dennis:  And then we have Rob and Rhonda Bugh from Wheaton, Illinois.  Rob, Rhonda, welcome to the broadcast. Rhonda:  Thank you. Rob:  Thanks, Dennis.  It's great to be here. Dennis:  Rhonda is a pediatrician and has been for 28 years.  Rob has been a pastor—pastor of Wheaton Bible Church for—how many years? Rob:  Eighteen. Dennis:  Eighteen years.  Together, they have six children—six adult children—and one teenager.  The unique side of their story is Rhonda's husband, Tom, was Rob's best friend.  He died of cancer in 2005.  Then, in 2005 and 2006, Rob's wife fell prey to cancer, as well, and died.  Interestingly, they started dating and remarried.  We've got their story that we're going to be illustrating what Ron is talking about—from his book.  Ron, in America this year, there should be a million—approximately a million—marriages.  How many of those will be remarrieds? Ron:  Right.  About 45 percent of them will be remarrieds.  Now, the majority of those remarriages will also include children from previous relationships.  So, about 40 percent of all weddings will give birth to a stepfamily.   Bob:  Interestingly, one of the things you talk about, in your book on Dating and the Single Parent, is that, in a first-time marriage, the marriage forms the foundation on which the family is built. Ron:  Right. Bob:  But when there are already kids present and then there's a remarriage, it's a different kind of home; isn't it? Ron:  It's a different kind of home, and it has a different sort of foundation.  For that couple to put their relationship into a place of being the foundation of the new step-family home is one of those long-term agendas that they need to have to bring stability.  During the dating season, the challenges are many. I say it this way, Bob:  Dating, as a single—never-married, no kids—dating another person, who is a single—never-married, no kids—is a very, very different process than dating somebody who has children from a previous relationship.  When you both bring children from previous relationships, there is a tremendous amount of complexity that comes into that dating experience—that just doesn't exist in a first-dating situation.  Really, the heart of the message of this book, Dating and the Single Parent, is “coupleness” does not equal “familyness”.  There is a process of falling in love with a person; and that creates coupleness, if you will.  I like to make up words, by the way.  [Laughter]  There's a different process of becoming a family.  Sometimes, coupleness fosters in and ushers in the familyness.  Sometimes, people find that they're just two totally different experiences; and one doesn't necessarily follow the other. We want to help single parents, or somebody who is dating a single-parent, understand the difference in dating—what difference it makes to have children involved with it, and how to date smart.  Bob:  When Mary Ann and I were dating, about the only issues we had to resolve, as we started thinking, “Might God be leading us toward marriage?” —about the only thing we had to figure out was our compatibility— “What are our likes and dislikes?  How do we fit together?” Ron:  Yes. Bob:  You bring existing family structure and kids into that.  Now, all of a sudden, you are not just thinking, “Do I like this person?” but you are thinking, “How does it fit into the whole of the rest of my life and the other relationships that are already a part of my life?” Dennis:  Yes, and to that point—kind of going out to the end of the matter—you get a lot of emails from remarrieds. Ron:  Yes. Dennis:  What's the most frequently-mentioned thing when you get those emails? Ron:  Well, one of the issues that they're often facing is parenting:  “How do we parent together as a team?  What if how I parent is very different than their parenting style and what they value, and how they want to approach discipline, and those sorts of things?”  It's no big surprise to hear that most dating single parents will never have a conversation—or won't have a series of conversations—like I would want them to have about what parenting will look like after they marry. They're so focused—like you said, Bob—on finding their fit with another person—the coupleness matters—that they really don't attend to the familyness matters very much.  It's amazing, to me, that two thirds to 75 percent of single parents, who are dating, really don't have any conversations about the most important thing in their life—and that is raising their kids.  You do have to attend to the fit, as a couple; but you also have to attend to the fit, as a family.    Dennis:  Let's talk to Rob and Rhonda about that.  Did you guys talk about it; or, because you know Ron Deal, did he put you on the spot and force you to talk about it? Rob:  We read Ron's book, in the dating process.  I don't remember exactly, but Rhonda and I talked about this from the get-go because our kids had grown up together because our families were such good friends.  Truth be told, we were much more focused on the chemistry between us, which, I think, is sort of the default you go to when you're dating or re-dating than the chemistry of that dynamic with our kids.  It was there, but it wasn't the focal point.  The focal point was Rob and Rhonda.    Bob:  What do you remember about those days, Rhonda?  Do you remember thinking— Rhonda:  No!  [Laughter] Ron:  That's well-said   Rhonda:  That was the problem!  [Laughter] Bob:  I think the thing is, at some level, you've got to be asking the question, “Okay, we get along.  How is this going to work for everybody else?”  Did you have that conversation at all? Rhonda:  We had many conversations about that.  It was difficult for our children to understand, especially how you could love somebody else, when I had been married 25 years; Rob had been married 27 years.  If we loved each other, where did that leave our previous spouses? Bob:  There was a betrayal issue going on? Rhonda:  Exactly.  Certainly, I don't even think they were thinking of their place, at that point, other than Rob's younger child—maybe was wondering what was going to happen.  In spite of both of us being very knowledgeable, raising our families, and being married for as long as we were, we really focused on the coupleness.  We had counseling with other people to help address stepfamily issues.  We had read Ron's book, The Smart Stepfamily. Rob:  —which was awesome.   Rhonda:  We really thought we were prepared for remarriage; but we still— Rob:  But we were naïve. Dennis:  Now, wait a second, Rob.  You are a pastor—a senior pastor of a large church in Chicago.  You've done how many years of marriage preparation?  How many hundreds of couples, undoubtedly? Rob:  Are you rubbing this in, Dennis?  [Laughter] Dennis:  You knew there were going to be stars in the eyes; but when they came, they overwhelmed all of the logic and all of the experience of past history; right? Rob:  Exactly.  And, with my kids—three of them were in their 20s when Rhonda and I were starting to consider dating.  I was very upfront with them, from the beginning, and their initial response was really, really positive.  That set us in a certain trajectory; but all of that—as sort of outsiders—looking down the road and thinking, “Yes, this makes sense.  You sort of add two and two and get four.”  But when Rhonda and I got married and we began to live together, you begin to figure out, “How are we going to do Christmas?”     Bob:  Yes. Rob:  “You mean we're not going to have that traditional Christmas Eve meal?”  All sorts of reality settle in—it's a whole different animal.  Rhonda and I would both say we were really surprised about—we were not prepared for—in hindsight, it would have been better for everybody if we had gone more slowly. Rhonda:  Yes. Dennis:  Ron, is it safe to say that maybe a couple, who are in a remarried situation, should not only go through marriage preparation for them but, also, perhaps, their children should go through some kind of marriage preparation? Ron:  Yes; ideally, that's exactly the case.  I talk about pre-stepfamily counseling—not just premarital counseling—where the kids are involved and they are engaged in conversation and a counselor does get to invite them to talk about their different thoughts and feelings.    By the way, let me just comment on something that Rob and Rhonda said—the hot/cold is a very common response from the kids.  They got an initial hot, “Hey, yes.  Go for it, Dad!  This seems to make sense.”  That's a very common feeling for some kids to have and yet, when reality begins to set in, even during the dating season—it usually hits really hard after the wedding, but even during that dating—there can be a “Hey, wait a minute!  This means a lot of change for me.  This means Dad is not as available.  Mom is not as available to me as she was when it was just about us.  Now, she's giving time and energies to somebody else.”  Those are all very hard realities, and that's usually when kids pull back and go cold on this whole idea of you dating.  Just because you hear, “Hey, whatever makes you happy, Mom (or Dad),” doesn't necessarily mean you really have their permission or that you really have their blessing.  Pre-stepfamily counseling allows everybody to process those things slowly—in a way that helps the family—as the entire family date—the entire family move forward in assessing whether there is a familyness fit—not just a coupleness fit. Bob:  Well, I heard Rob say it would have been better if they had gone slower.   Rob:  Yes. Bob:  But I'm wondering if, in this pre-stepfamily counseling, this man and woman who are now very drawn to one another and very much in love with one another—they find out that there are things in the family dynamic that are going to be problematic.  Is it right— “We love each other, but we're not going to get married because the kids aren't going to buy-in?”  Ron:  Let's cut to the chase, here—in my opinion, “Yes.”  I think familyness ought to be as much a factor in a decision about marriage as is coupleness.  One of the mantras I tell couples, all of the time, is that, “Time is your friend.  Time is you friend.  Time is helping you to assess the fit—not only as a couple—but as a family.  Time is helping you heal from whatever brought you to this place in your life.  Time is going to help you get out of your infatuation and get to some reasonable assessment of your relationship and how well you'll do together.”   But if you rush it—if you ignore fears from a child and just move forward anyway—then, oftentimes, that's the death.  A quick illustration of that:  I can't tell you how many families I've counseled where one of the children—oftentimes, even an adult child in their 30s—it could be a 12-year-old, but it could also be a 35-year-old—who is watching a parent date rapidly.  During that rapid dating period, the child makes a judgment.  They say to themselves, “There's no way this is right.  Mom (or Dad) is just moving on too fast.  They're ignoring the warning signs.  They're out of their head.  They wouldn't let me date anybody that way.  So, this can't be right.”   When they make that judgment, let me tell you, that has detrimental effects because when that kid says, “This is not good,” then, they tend to hold onto that judgment, even years into the marriage.  They tend to say, “Nope, this is not good;” and they don't give it a chance.  So, slowing down and letting time be your friend—pacing the dating in a way that is sensitive to where the children are is very important to the longevity of the marriage.   Dennis:  I can understand when there is a child old enough to be able to articulate the fear and maybe some question about the relationship; but I'm looking across the table here, at Sabrina, who has a four-year-old and a two-year-old—who can't begin to articulate at that level.  In fact, the way they may deal with it is—they may spin off into an emotional fit—they may act out their fear in a number of ways. Sabrina, you've now been a single parent and—obviously, not since the very beginning of the death of your husband—but in the past few months, have thought about dating.  Have you noticed your son and your daughter doing anything kind of irregular when a guy shows up, who is kind of interested in you?     Sabrina:  Well, you know, Dennis, from the very beginning, I was most concerned about the fact that there was a hole in their life—that they didn't have a father.  Whenever I would have grief for them and grief they didn't have a father in their life, I would hear the Lord saying to me, “I am their Father.  I am their Father.”  I don't have to be fearful that they're somehow going to miss out on something; but at first, it was scary to me.    Bob:  You were thinking, “I've got to get down to the hardware store and get a replacement part for the one that's gone missing.” Sabrina:  Absolutely. Bob:  It may sound crass, but— Dennis:  Well, there was a reason for that.  Your husband's dad died when he was a little boy. Sabrina:  When he was two-and-a-half—the same age as my son.  He wanted him to have a father.  He wanted him to have a father.  He felt like he wanted a dad, his whole life, and didn't have one.  He said, “If anything ever happens to me, I want you to get married again because I want my children to have a father.”  I felt I needed to honor that. Dennis:  So, you looked for the hardware store. Sabrina:  So, I went down and started looking, “Who do I have?  What are my choices?”  Dennis:  Yes. Sabrina:  I met a man, who—and we just got into a conversation.  He said, “Well, my mother was widowed when I was a little boy.  My earliest memories of her were her going off on dates.”  I said, “Well, how did that make you feel?”  He said, “I didn't feel badly about it.  It was just part of life.”  Right then, I determined that, just because my children were small, didn't mean they didn't know what was going on.  They knew what was going on, and I had to be very sensitive to what they saw during that time.  Even then, I decided that I wouldn't meet dates at my house—that the men that I let be in their lives would have to be good people.  I had to make sure that they were good people.  They had to come through that filter another way—other than dating.    So, to answer your question, “Yes; when they are around men, they do act differently.”  What's amazing to me—at two- and four-years-old, they know they don't have a dad.  They know.  They recognize it.  When they see other men, they call them “Daddy.”  I'll say, “Yes, that's so and so's daddy” or, “That's a daddy in the home.”  They realize that they don't have that, but they're not missing something.  It doesn't hurt them emotionally in the way that I think it might.   In other words, I don't have to hurry to fill that hole because God is their Father, and they do have father-figures in their lives, and they love being around men.  It's amazing to see that when the men come, they do have fun with them—they throw them up in the air—they do the things I can't do. Dennis:  Yes. Sabrina:  They need that! But they are getting it.  They are getting men in their lives—godly men—men that I know through friendships—who can be a father-figure to them without, “Mommy dating all of the time.” The other thing I've done, too, is I've restricted myself to one or two nights a week to be away from them.  I try not to spend too much time going out and letting babysitters watch them because I want them to know they're important to me and that the dating part of it is secondary, not primary in my life. Dennis:  Sabrina, as you were talking, I couldn't help but think about a quote by Martin Lloyd Jones that I usually share with single women, all the time; but it would relate to a single man or a single woman, especially in a remarriage situation.  I'm thinking about Ron's advice here—that time is your friend.  “Faith is the refusal to panic.”  Faith is the refusal to panic.  The reason he could say that is there is a God who is sovereignly in control of this world.  He knows our dilemma, He knows our needs, and He knows each person by name.  He's got a plan.  You don't have to panic and run to the hardware store to go get a guy. Bob:  I think it's good to realize, too, that you don't want to be driven in this process by your loneliness, by your losses, or by the emptiness you may be feeling.  You want to be prayerful, be thoughtful, be wise, and get some counsel.  Get a copy of Ron Deal's book, Dating and the Single Parent—that has just come out.  Ron offers good, solid, wise, practical counsel about things like:  “How to determine if you're ready to date?” “How do you talk with your kids about dating?” “How do you avoid making big mistakes?”  I think it helps to have that kind of input as you start to consider this process.  You know, there may be a lot of our listeners who aren't in this situation themselves; but they know a single parent who is thinking about dating or already there.  Get a copy of Ron's book, and give it to them as a gift.  In fact, this would be a great way to begin a conversation with them, and to serve them, and maybe open the door to a conversation about where they are spiritually. Go to FamilyLifeToday.com.  Look for information on Ron Deal's book, Dating and the Single Parent.  It's one of the many resources that we have in our FamilyLife Today Resource Center that Ron has written.  Ron is, as Dennis mentioned, the blended and stepfamily expert for us, here, at FamilyLife Today.  You can find out more about the resources he has available for blended and stepfamilies, along with this new book, Dating and the Single Parent.  Again, the website is FamilyLifeToday.com; or you can call, toll-free, at 1-800-FL-TODAY to get more information about the resources that we have available. I should also mention that, this month, we are making some of Ron's resources available for those of you who help support the ministry of FamilyLife Today.  We are listener-supported.  Your donations make this program possible.  They help cover both the production and the syndication costs to keep FamilyLife Today on the air on our network of stations, all across the country.  This month, if you can make a donation to help support FamilyLife Today, we'll give you your choice of Ron Deal's book, The Remarriage Checkup, or you can get a couple of CDs, where we talk with Ron about stepdads and stepmoms and what they need to think about—how they can be the most effective stepdads and stepmoms they can possibly be. Go to FamilyLifeToday.com and click on the “I CARE” button to make an online donation.  You can take your pick of resources that are listed there as our thank-you gift to you, or call 1-800-FL-TODAY.  Make a donation over the phone, and be sure to ask about the blended family resources we have available.  We'll let you know what's available and make arrangements to send one of those resources out to you.  Again, it's as a way of saying, “Thank you for your support of the ministry.”  We do appreciate your partnership with us. We want to encourage you to be back with us again tomorrow when we're going to talk again with Rob and Rhonda Bugh, and Sabrina Beasley, and Ron Deal about dating again, as a single-parent.  We'll talk about that tomorrow.  Hope you can join us. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, and our entire broadcast production team.  On behalf of our host, Dennis Rainey, I'm Bob Lepine.  We will see you back tomorrow for another edition of FamilyLife Today.   FamilyLife Today is a production of FamilyLife of Little Rock, Arkansas.  Help for today.  Hope for tomorrow. We are so happy to provide these transcripts to you.  However, there is a cost to produce them for our website.  If you've benefited from the broadcast transcripts, would you consider donating today to help defray the costs?  Copyright © FamilyLife.  All rights reserved.www.FamilyLife.com  

FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript  References to conferences, resources, or other special promotions may be obsolete. Blending Your Family Traditions Guests:                      Ron Deal and Bob and Vicki Maday                     From the series:       Stepfamilies and Holidays  Bob:  Bob and Vicki Maday married late in life.  Both had lost a spouse; and Bob says neither of them were prepared for the impact the holidays would have on their attempt to blend a new family.   Bob M:  We had taken some lead, as we were getting counseled in our remarriage, that we would try to start some new traditions.  We made every effort to make new things sort of happen in our new family.  The interesting thing that happened was—when it came to Christmas—that tradition sort of superseded anything else that we had expected.  We were put under pressure to hold the tradition in place, and it was quite interesting.   Bob:  This is FamilyLife Today for Monday, December 17th.  Our host is the President of FamilyLife®, Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine.  If you are in a blended family and you're headed into the holidays for the first time, get ready.           And welcome to FamilyLife Today.  Thanks for joining us on the Monday edition.  I'm just curious.  You've had a number of pictures taken of your family over the years; right?   Dennis:  Right.   Bob:  To your knowledge, any airbrushing ever done?   Dennis:  Oh, absolutely.  [Laughter]  Photoshop, airbrushing—you can't get a family perfect—I mean, in real life or in photography.   Bob:  So, those Christmas pictures I've been getting through the years bear only a marginal resemblance to the real thing—— is what you're saying.   Dennis:  When I introduce my family and I show a picture, I say, “You know how we got that picture?  We photo-shopped in two children”— Bob:  Right.   Dennis:  —“who weren't even in the picture at the time.  We opened the eyes of two or three kids who never can seem to keep their eyes open during a picture.”  And I say, “You know what?  There is a reason for that because all families have their blemishes.”   Bob:  Well, you had to take a couple hundred shots to get one where everybody was looking at the camera; right?   Dennis:  Well, this was back in the days when you used to take, like, ten rolls.   Bob:  I remember rolls.   Dennis:  Hundreds— Bob:  Yes, I remember rolls.   Dennis:  —hundreds of pictures to get a good one.  I won't tell you which one of our kids, but we had one—this child was called “The Many Faces of Blank”.  I mean, if there was a way to make a strange-looking face,— Bob:  This child could do it.   Dennis:  —this child did it.  I've done a good job of protecting the identity, at this point.   Bob:  The reason I ask you if you've ever had anything airbrushed is because this is going to be one of those non-airbrushed days— Dennis:  Oh, yes.   Bob:  —as we talk about the holidays, and families, and challenges, and tensions, and, particularly, how those can emerge during the holiday season if you're in a remarriage or a blended family situation.   Dennis:  That's exactly right, Bob.  We're sitting here about to have a conversation about blended families because listeners came alongside FamilyLife and said, “We're going to donate, and we're going to make this ministry possible.  We want this outreach to reach all families.”  That's really what I want to talk to you about, here, at the beginning of the broadcast.  FamilyLife is facing a serious shortfall in donations.  I just need to ask you, as a listener, “If you've benefited personally from our broadcast, here on FamilyLife Today, would you stand with us with a donation, here at yearend?”   We've had a group of families that have come along side us and said, “We believe in what you are doing.  You've helped us, and we want to help other families.”  They've helped establish a $3.6 million match—here in December—that will match every dollar you give, up to $3.6 million.  You can go online at FamilyLifeToday.com; or you can call 1-800-FL-TODAY and make a donation.  You can help us take advantage—take full advantage of the $3.6 million match, here in December.   Your dollar can become two.  Help us so we can help you—and we can help your friends.   Bob:  Well, again, go online to make a donation at FamilyLifeToday.com.  Click the button that says, “I CARE”; or call us at 1-800-FL-TODAY.  We just want to say, “Thanks,” in advance, for whatever you are able to do in support of the ministry of FamilyLife Today.    Now, you want to introduce our guests who are going to be joining us today?   Dennis:  I do.  First of all, is Ron Deal.  He is the Director of Blended Family Ministries, here at FamilyLife—is a prolific author, has written a brand-new book.  In fact, Ron, explain to our listeners what Life in a Blender is all about.  It's subtitled Living in a Stepfamily, a guide for kids.   Ron:  Well, first of all, it's great to be back on the broadcast with both of you.  As you know, our blended family ministry endeavors to equip blended families—stepfamilies—to go the distance, to build families of grace that honor God and create a climate where children can grow to know the Lord and to be loved.   We've written a number of materials, books.  We have DVD's for adults.  We've never done anything for kids until now.  Life in a Blender: Living in a Stepfamily is a booklet designed for children—easy-to-read booklet for kids, ages 10 and up.  It comes with a free parent discussion guide.  The idea is to get your kid thinking about a few things that they're probably feeling—put some words on it—then, give parents an opportunity to interact with their child around that— Dennis:  Yes.   Ron:  —and create dialogue that let's both of them understand each other better and move forward, as a family.   Dennis:  You've got more than 25 years' experience in this area.  Marriages and families that are blended really do have some challenges around the holiday season.  We decided to get up close and personal and bring into the studio Bob and Vicki Maday, all the way from Jonesboro, Georgia, down near Atlanta.  Bob and Vicki, welcome to FamilyLife Today.   Vicki:  Thank you.  We're happy to be here.   Bob M:  Our pleasure, thank you.   Dennis:  We also brought Bob and Vicki's daughters into the studio.  Now, I have to mention, at this point, Bob and Vicki have been in a blended marriage, now, for five years.  Have I got that right?   Bob M:  That's correct.   Dennis:  And they brought Bob's daughter, Katie, and Vicki's daughter, Jonell, into the studio.   Bob:  This is where all of the airbrushing goes away because we want— Dennis:  We want the truth.  [Laughter] Bob:  That's right—the truth—the whole truth—and nothing but the truth about some of the challenges that go along with blendeds, especially during the holidays.   Ron, you've talked to a lot of blended couples— Ron:  Yes.   Bob:  —over the years.    Ron:  Right.   Bob:  Holiday seasons are stressful; aren't they?   Ron:  They are.  I mean, they are stressful for all families, in some form or fashion.  Right there, along with joys of the season, are the stresses of making it all happen and work.  We all know that and understand that; but anybody, who is listening right now, who has ever had any sort of significant loss—I'm not just talking about divorce, but death of a parent, a friend—any sort of significant loss—you know that the holidays come with mixed emotions.  It just does that.   You can't experience a happy moment without also feeling the sadness of somebody who's not there with you.  When you sit down and engage in traditions that you may have done for years, as a family, it also brings up the fact that somebody is not there or life is not as you would want it to be.  That's one of the common experiences for adults and children in blended families.   You may be able to fake it the rest of the year; but when the holidays roll around and you're sitting down and engaging in a tradition you've done for years, as a family, but your dad's not there—it's hard to fake it.  If you're engaging in a tradition that other people have brought to the table—your stepsiblings, your stepparent has brought to the table—and you don't get that tradition—doesn't make any sense to you—then, you really can't fake it.  So, oftentimes, for blended families, the holidays kind of resurges stress.    Dennis:  Well, Bob and Vicki, I need to mention, at this point, because I failed to earlier—both of your spouses died.  Then, you remarried, not long after your spouses died; correct?    Bob M:  Yes.  It was not long for me, but it was a little longer for her.  [Laughter] Dennis:  So, take us to your first Christmas—your first holiday season:  “Was it all smooth sailing?”, “ Was it just as you expected,” or, “Were you guys really prepared for that first Christmas together?”    Vicki:  Oh, we were totally unprepared for the challenges that we were going to be facing that first Christmas.  The first thing we did was we had our children address us and say, “We do not want to be one big, combined family.”  We want to keep our Christmases separate, which we also felt was important.  So, we planned a Christmas with my children; and then, planned a separate time with Bob's children.   Bob:  Now, the two of you were the common element in both of those, but you didn't make the siblings kind of learn how to mash it up together; right?   Vicki:  Absolutely.   Bob:  Jonell—let me ask you.  As one of the kids in this situation—that first Christmas, when here's your mom and here's her new husband, and the years of growing up and doing Christmas with your mom and your dad, and your dad's not here anymore, and here's this new guy, and you're still not sure what you think about him, and it's Christmas—how did that feel?     Jonell:  Well, it was a little different for me than the other siblings because I lived out of state.  So, naturally, I was thinking I would be coming home for Christmas; but instead, I was coming to a new house, a new environment.  I mean, it wasn't even our same Christmas tree that was put up—that I was used to.  So, there was a lot that was different for me when I came home for Christmas that first year.   Ron:  So, Jonell, you thought you might be going home for Christmas; but really quickly discovered that it didn't feel like home at all—is that what you are saying?   Jonell:  That's correct.    Ron:  Yes.  So, where does that take you?  I mean, how do you begin to try to get your mind and your heart around that because, obviously, you care deeply about your mother—and for her wellbeing and for her sake—for your siblings—you kind of want to be there and experience Christmas together—but yet, the climate doesn't feel like home.    Jonell:  Well, you know—Bob and I had only met a few times before that Christmas.  So, I wanted—I didn't want him to think that my reservations were what I was feeling toward him.  That Christmas, I know I spent a lot of time trying to engage with him, make him feel like I loved him, and just sort of fought my battle—behind-closed-doors kind of thing.   Ron:  I so appreciate Jonell sharing that, Dennis, because, essentially, what she's pointing out is that there is a mixed bag of emotions.  On the one hand, she's wanting to engage the family—she's wanting to engage her new stepdad, Bob.  Mom's married this guy—she wants to get to know him and experience a relationship with him.  Then, at the same time, there's this inner turmoil going on; and she is pulling away and feeling like she's got to deal with it on her own.    That just kind of brings to the surface how complicated the holidays can be for families.  Essentially, the commentary here is that they are trying to become family.  That's really what's happening—those early years of the blended family experience.  They're trying to figure out how to be family with one another.  There's newness on every corner.  So, getting to that place where it does feel comfortable is really a journey that takes many years—I would think.    Dennis:  I want to ask you, Bob, did you have some high expectations about that first Christmas with Vicki's family?   Bob M:  You know—I really did.  It's pretty interesting we'd taken some lead, as we were getting counseled in our remarriage, that we would try to start some new traditions.  We made every effort to make new things sort of happen in our new family.  The interesting thing that happened is—when it came to Christmas—that tradition sort of superseded anything else that we had expected.  It's not like Valentine's Day, where you can just change the location, and change the type of cookie, or candy, or cake that you use.   We were put under pressure, by my children, to hold the tradition in place; and it was quite interesting.   Katie:  Yes.  Well, when they came to us and said that they wanted to maybe change things up a little bit—do things a little bit differently—I just said, “No!”  For 30 years of my life, I've had Christmas Eve at my dad's house.  I will be there, Christmas Eve, with my family every year until—until [Laughter] — I just felt like—for my children—I wanted them to see the traditions that I grew up with and how lucky for them to have Gigi, here, to make this wonderful Christmas Eve happen.  It's magical, and they've added some new things.  We have started some new traditions, but our old tradition of Christmas Eve is still intact.    Bob:  You know, Ron, as Katie is talking about this, I'm thinking back to when Mary Ann and I first got married.  We tried to figure out how we blended her traditions of growing up the way her family did it with my tradition—how our family did it.  It took a little adjusting.   Ron:  Yes.   Bob:  There is a degree of difficulty that's added here— Ron:  That's right.  That's right.  There were two of you. Bob:  —that's significant.  Yes.   Ron:  There were two of you when you and Mary Ann were trying to do it.   Bob:  And we were a little more flexible.   Ron:  Yes, and highly-motivated— Bob:  Right.   Ron:  —towards finding what will make one another happy.  That's part of what's happening with some stepfamilies—is the adults are more motivated than sometimes the kids are.  So, the adults kind of assume that the kids will join them in the motivation.  Bob and Vicki had wonderful intentions, “Let's do some new things.  Let's...”—and in their minds, that's part of becoming family.  “Let's find ‘the us'.”   Vicki:  Let me interrupt just a minute, Ron, because—  Ron:  Please do.   Vicki:  —our issue, which, I think, we didn't face was—we had a fracture within the children.  We had some who no longer wanted to have Christmas on Christmas Eve.  So, the fracture there was among Bob's children.    Ron:  Okay.   Vicki:  And we were just agreeable to make any changes to Christmas we needed to make.  I stepped back and said, “Bob, you need to make those decisions with your kids if you're going to change Christmas completely—what it used to look like, getting together on Christmas Eve.”  That's when Katie came to me and said, “We're going to keep this tradition.  We've always been with Dad on Christmas Eve, and we want to continue to be with Dad on Christmas Eve.  And that, now, is going to include you; and I want my children with big Daddy and Gigi on Christmas Eve.”   So, the fracture there wasn't between the parents and the kids, as much as it was a fracture between the kids.  Some wanted to maintain the family tradition that the Madays had always had, and another family member wanted to do away with everything.   Dennis:  And Ron, just listening to Vicki talk about this, I can see how a blended family, coming together with all the expectations, the excitement— Ron:  Yes.   Dennis:  —you know “We're beginning our lives together,” could really get ambushed by these differing opinions and expectations of their own children.   Bob:  Well, I'm just sitting here thinking, “What if Jonell had stepped in the mix and said, ‘No!  We get Christmas Eve.  Katie gets something else.  We get Christmas.'”  What do you do if you've got your family and his family—and they both want the same things?   Ron:  So, let's talk about a couple of principles because there is no one answer— “What do you do?” —alright?  One of the principles is: flexibility.   First of all, you know, as is evident in Bob and Vicki's hearts, their intention was to find the win-win—something that works for the kids.  They're willing to be adaptable and, “Let's just do whatever we need to do so that this holiday can be a season of joy for them.”  Yet, even then, with that attitude, it got complex because they had differences of opinion about what that would look like, even among the children.   So, flexibility says, “Boy, we may not be able to figure this one out so that everybody wins.  We do have to talk to all the parties involved.”  In this case, all the kids are adults.  So, it's easier to have that conversation than with families that have younger kids—and a five-year-old and a seven-year-old sometimes don't even know how to verbalize what they want—but we're going to try to talk to as many people as we can and get out in front of this.   That's one of my other principles—is be proactive about the holidays.  You can't wait until the last minute, and then throw it together, and expect good things, necessarily.   Bob:  So, if you haven't had a conversation yet for this Christmas, you're probably a little behind the eight ball on this one.   Ron:  Yes, it might be a little late; but start now.  You know?   Bob:  Yes.   Ron:  So, we've talked about two principles so far.  Be proactive—plan, plan, plan—and number two, be flexible.  Even with a plan, you still might have to go with the flow. But here's another principle I would give those who are listening today.  That is— compartmentalize.  This is not a fix-all.  Again, when people say, “What do we do in this case when there are differences of opinions between siblings, between stepparents, stepkids, or different sides of the family?”  What they are really asking is, “How do we make this perfect for everyone?”   Okay, I just want to be frank, and honest, and candid, and say, “You can't.”  You can't do that every time.  That's a function of your family growing together over time and finding the fit.  Many times it takes years.  Okay?  In the meantime, while you're trying to find what that answer looks like, compartmentalize.   That's the idea that it's okay for some family members to get together the week before Christmas and open gifts because the kids are going to be with you that weekend and not the weekend of Christmas; or you get together after Christmas and do something special; or a parent spends time with their biological children and the stepparent says, “You know what?  You guys have got the afternoon.  I'm staying out of that so you can honor your tradition that you've had for 30 years together, as a family.”   All of those kinds of examples are compartmentalizing the different relationships within the home.  That feels weird to adults because they feel like that's a failure sometimes.  They feel like— Dennis:  Yes.   Ron:  —“Wow, because we're not all together—we're not all blended—that, somehow, we've failed.”  I say, “No, no, no; that's not true.”  What we're doing is we're just acknowledging that today you're not blended; and we're not going to force everybody into a love relationship on our time.  We're going to allow them to find a love relationship on their own time.   Bob:  Bob, I'm curious, as you look back on that first blended Christmas together, did you get through the season and think, “What used to be a season of joy, is now a season of kind of depressing”—[Laughter] —you know, I'm just imagining that you get to the end of Christmas and just go, “That was miserable.  I don't want to do that again.”   Bob M:  Yes, we did get through it; but there was a high-level of stress.  Even right now, as we're approaching this Christmas, we can begin to feel the stress begin to grow.   Bob:  Wait, wait, wait.  This is five years later— Bob M:  Yes, it is.   Bob:  —and it's still there?   Dennis:  You guys aren't blended yet?  [Laughter] Bob:  You don't have the— Bob M:  No, we're not.  [Laughter]  We're struggling along.  Dennis had mentioned earlier about kind of an ambush at Christmas.  Let me just tell you an interesting thing that happened to us on our first Christmas.   I had retained some gifts that I was going to give to Vicki—special gifts.  I had retained those to open when we had Christmas with Jonell and Stacy.  She had retained a couple precious gifts that she was giving to me because we were in love with each other—are in love with each other.  She was retaining those gifts to be opened in front of my children.   So, when we had Christmas with my children, out came these gifts.  Vicki gave them to me.  They were precious, and they were really meaningful for me.  It was a wonderful gift—got no reaction from my children—zero.  The air just got let out of the room.   Likewise—the next morning—when we were sharing Christmas with Vicki's children, same thing.  I brought a couple of wonderful gifts out, presented them to Vicki, had lots of enthusiasm about it, and looked up.  The air had been let out of the room again.  Jonell was blank.  Stacy was blank.  We got sort of ambushed, right there.   Actually, as a result of that, we now share our Christmas privately—even do a getaway, sometimes a week or so before—kind of keep our coupleness out of our familyness.   Ron:  One of the things that I love about this family and what they are sharing with us today is that they are being real.  They are sharing that it's a process to become family to one another.   In the beginning, Bob and Vicki's expectations about how the kids would react to their special time were not satisfied.  They found a different way to get through that, at this point in their lives.  That's what I love about them—is they are still finding their way—not only them, but the kids and the grandkids.  That's what healthy stepfamilies do.  They don't quit on the process.  They stay after it.   Dennis:  And they need coaching because—  Vicki:  Amen.  [Laughter] Dennis:  —it's very—it's a very complex family structure.  It takes coaching to plan, plan, plan and to kind of take the urgency out of it—say, “We will be a family!  We're going to have a family this year, this first Christmas.  It has to happen now!”  What I hear them saying and you saying, Ron, is it takes time, time, time.  It takes a long time for these two families to, perhaps, come together—and maybe, they'll never come together, as we imagined it in our minds.   Bob:  But it does help to go through this—to have a mentor—to have maybe another couple that—like the Madays, are a few years down the road here who can say, “Boy, we've made some mistakes,” or, “Here are some things we learned along the way.”  It helps to have some coaching, like Ron Deal has been providing for us today.   Ron's written a book called The Smart Stepfamily—that really is a classic book when it comes to how you make a blended family relationship work as well as it can possibly work.  You can go to FamilyLifeToday.com for more information about that book.    Ron has a brand-new booklet that he's put together for children called Life in a Blender.  It's written for kids, elementary through high school, to help them understand a lot of what they're feeling—put words to it—and help them understand the adjustments that they can make to make life work better for everybody in a blended family.   So, look for information about Life in a Blender—brand-new booklet from Ron Deal—and the book, The Smart Stepfamily, when you go to FamilyLifeToday.com.  That's our website, FamilyLifeToday.com; or call toll-free, 1-800-358-6329.  That's 1-800- “F” as in family, “L” as in life, and then, the word, “TODAY”.     Again, a quick reminder—Dennis mentioned this at the beginning of today's program—but we are hoping to hear from many of our listeners during the last month of the year, the last few weeks of December—hoping that you'll consider making a yearend contribution to support FamilyLife Today so that we can take full advantage our matching gift.   In case you missed the news, that matching-gift total has been increased to $3.6 million.  We're pretty excited about that.  There's some indication that that number may even grow in the next few days.  So, help us take full advantage of this matching-gift opportunity.  Go online at FamilyLifeToday.com and make a yearend contribution; or call 1-800-FL-TODAY to make a donation over the phone.   Then, be sure to join us back here again tomorrow when we're going to continue talking about the holidays, and blended families, and how you work to make that as good as it can be.  We'll talk about that tomorrow.  Hope you can be here.   I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, and our entire broadcast production team.  On behalf of our host, Dennis Rainey, I'm Bob Lepine.  We will see you back tomorrow for another edition of FamilyLife Today.   FamilyLife Today is a production of FamilyLife of Little Rock, Arkansas.  Help for today.  Hope for tomorrow. We are so happy to provide these transcripts to you.  However, there is a cost to produce them for our website.  If you've benefited from the broadcast transcripts, would you consider donating today to help defray the costs?  Copyright © FamilyLife.  All rights reserved.www.FamilyLife.com    

FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript  References to conferences, resources, or other special promotions may be obsolete. How to Avoid Becoming a Wicked Stepmother Guests:                      Ron Deal and Laura Petherbridge                         From the series:       The Smart Stepmom  Bob:   If you're a stepmom, you may be able to relate to what Laura Petherbridge is describing here. Laura:  You'd be amazed at the number of stepmoms that have contacted me—emailed me and said, “When I pull in the driveway of my home, and I know the step-kids are there, I feel exactly the same way as I did when I would pull into my home when I was married to an abusive husband.”  That's that kind of fear that is triggered in them—it's that same feeling of: “I'm out of control. There are people, here, who are hurting me. I feel ostracized. I feel lonely. I feel like I'm being taken advantage of, and I'm going to retreat.” Bob:  This is FamilyLife Today for Tuesday, May 7th. Our host is the President of FamilyLife®, Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine. What do you do when you're a stepmom and the thought of just going home makes you tense up?  We're going to talk about that today. Stay tuned. And welcome to FamilyLife Today. Thanks for joining us. Have you ever thought about the fact that, in a lot of cartoons, the character that is the personification of evil is a stepmother?  Have you ever thought about that?  Dennis:  I haven't. Bob:  I mean, Cinderella—it's the wicked stepmother; in what was it?—Sleeping Beauty—I think, a wicked stepmother. I don't know how it got into our literature and our popular culture to be that way; but nobody thinks, “Gee, the stepmom—she's the noble person.” We've got the stereotype of the wicked stepmother. Dennis:  It causes me to wonder if those fairy tales were written by someone who grew up in a home where they had a stepmom; and maybe, that's the best word they could use to describe their stepmother. Well, we have the authors of a brand-new book called The Smart Stepmom. Bob:  Not the wicked stepmom. Dennis:  No. Bob:  The smart stepmom. Dennis:  No, but one of the authors described herself as a wicked stepmother. Laura Petherbridge—she's the one who did that. Laura:  I did! Dennis:  You described yourself. Laura:  I did. I'm very honest. Dennis:  I've never really ever introduced a guest, since we started this in 1992, Bob, as—[Laughter]  Bob:  We want to welcome our wicked stepmother to our program. [Laughter] Dennis:  Here she is on FamilyLife Today. And Ron Deal joins us. I'm not sure how to introduce you, Ron. But you both have a lot of experience in this area of step-parenting. Let's talk about that for a second. You refer to yourself—in fact, you thought you'd never become the wicked stepmother. Laura:  Yes, it really sounds bad, but the reason I put that in the book is because I want other stepmoms to understand that it's normal to feel that way. I can remember looking in the mirror, one day, thinking, “What have I become?” because I was feeling so wicked about all the issues that we were dealing with, as a family, and some of the emotions I was having towards my step-kids. Dennis:  Like what? Laura:  Well, just some days, wishing that their mother would move to another state; and I wouldn't have to see them for six months. It's a terrible thing to even say; but if I'm being totally honest—and I'm speaking for a lot of stepmoms that contact me—their desire is that the step-kids would move far, far away so you just wouldn't have to deal with it all the time. Dennis:  So you want them out of your life. Laura:  Exactly; exactly. I know that sounds very un-Christian. It doesn't sound very loving; but if we're being honest, that is often the thought that is going across the stepmom's mind: “This is so much more complicated than I thought it was going to be. Maybe, if they just weren't here, it wouldn't be so difficult.” Dennis:  I don't think I've ever admitted this on FamilyLife Today, but I think Barbara and I had some days with our kids— Bob:  I was thinking the same thing. [Laughter] Dennis:  If there had been a box to have checked—“Could there be a chance of our kids moving away—for, maybe, six hours?” Maybe, it wasn't six months. Bob:  There were times when we sent them off to summer camp and just said, “Thank you, Lord, for summer camp—just for a little breather, here!” Dennis:  I can really understand, Laura, although I've, obviously, never been a step- parent. I can understand how that would create all kinds of guilty feelings and shame that you even have the thought. Laura:  Absolutely, because, I think—as a biological parent—when you think that, there is a part of you that knows that's a little bit normal—but as a stepmom—there's a part, in particular if you're a Christian—there's a feeling inside of you that you know that you don't love these children in exactly the same way you either love your own children or you love your own family members. There's a guilt that goes along with that.  So it's different than the biological parent, you know—being glad that the kids are going off to camp—because it's just a different family dynamic. Ron:  I think part of this guilt is rooted in self-blame. Stepmoms are really hard on themselves. Laura:   Yes. Ron:  As Laura and I did the research for this book and talked with stepmoms, we developed a team of stepmoms, who advised us about different aspects of the book. That's one of the things we heard over, and over, and over again. In my counseling with stepfamilies—is this sense of blame.  Stepmoms try so very hard. If they keep kind of beating their head against a wall, and can't quite get into a child's heart, or can't quite figure out how to deal with the power issues in being a parent and so on, they really, really struggle. Oftentimes, they just feel so isolated and alone. They don't know what else to do—they kind of blame themselves. Bob:  Here's a scenario I imagine. Tell me if this is kind of a typical scenario. A woman—who either has her own children or, maybe, she's never been married—but she has met this guy. She's in love with the guy. They've started dating. She's met the kids. She likes the kids, and they seem to like her. They've done some fun stuff together. The kids have affirmed her—they've said some really sweet things to her.  As she and the guy are thinking about getting married, she goes, “You know, I know this is going to be challenging; but I really think this is going to work.” She's hopeful. She has a lot of hope for what's coming up. Ron:  And really that's rooted in the idea that dating is going to be reflective of actual married life. I think one of the cruelties of this, for many people, is that dating is inconsistent. Bob:  With stepfamilies or first-family—the dating relationship and the marriage— Ron:  That's right. Dennis:  It's not a real picture of a relationship. Ron:  Exactly. Bob:  Let me jump ahead now. The mom is married to the husband. All of a sudden, the kids are not acting the way they were acting during the courtship phase. In fact, she's seeing anger in them she's never seen before. It feels, to her, like they are starting to sabotage the marriage—trying to come between her and her husband.  This job of step-parenting is much harder than she ever imagined it was going to be. She's wondering: “I don't know that I'm cut out for this. I don't know that I can do this and do it well.” Is that fairly—have I described it? Laura:  It sure is; it sure is. And one of the things that you're mentioning, which is very realistic, is that the stepmom thinks that the children will just continue to embrace her and that they will want a new mother. But in reality—in particular, if there's been a divorce—when a parent remarries, after a divorce, it kills the dream for children that their parents will reconcile. Part of the reason children are so resistant to a new step-parent is that all of a sudden— Bob:  The parent trap isn't going to happen the way it did in the movie. Laura:  That's absolutely right. This is the reality, “Now, Daddy cannot go back to Mommy because he's got a new wife.” Ron:  In effect, the new marriage is another loss— Laura:  Yes. Ron:  —for the children—stacked upon the previous losses that they've had. I think one of the things that we really try to help stepmoms understand, in this book, is that if you're a stepmother, you're a grief counselor because you—and yourself—you're going to go through some losses—but the children that you're helping to raise, and if you have your own biological children—everybody goes through some transition that basically represents loss. That's tagged on top of the losses that got you into this situation—whether biological mother passed away or there was a divorce—you're a grief counselor. The losses are just going to be carried right into the new family experience, on through the years. It's not just going to dwindle down and go away. It's going to be there for the duration. Bob:  I just have to ask, at this point, given what we've just laid out, “Should anybody even try this?” You know, there's part of me that goes, “We're talking about one of the most complicated, difficult assignments that could be handed to somebody: ‘Do this at your own risk,' or should you just leave well enough alone and not try to make this happen?” Ron:  Bob, you said a key word there—risk. I truly believe that life is a risk, in a sense; and marriage is a risk. I always tell people, “You are always working on your marriage because your marriage is always working on you.” God uses it to disciple us, to train us, to refine us. The same thing is going to be true of a stepmother experience. She's going to encounter some things she didn't count on—she didn't know she was going to need grace for. It's going to transform her, and deepen her love, and her ability to walk with grace—if she will listen and learn from the experience.  But we do want people to have their eyes open. I think it's an interesting notion to tell people, who are dating, that, as a single parent, it's a legitimate option to stay single—to raise your kids and to do a good job with that. But the step-parent experience can also be incredibly rewarding for people. Oftentimes, they have to travel a bit of a journey before they get to the rewards; and that's the encouragement we want people to realize. The risk does bring reward. Bob:  If somebody is considering a blended marriage, right now—they're listening and they go, "This sounds really scary." Then, good!—I mean, we have sobered them appropriately. Laura:  Absolutely. Bob:  If somebody is on the other side of the fence—they're already in a blended marriage; and they're going: “I knew it was hard. You guys are just confirming what I've already been experiencing.” Well, good!—because there is hope, Laura, when somebody realizes: “Okay I'm not atypical. What I'm experiencing, as a step-parent, is not unusual;” right? Laura:  Yes, one of the number one things that stepmoms say to me, when they come to my workshop on this topic is, “It's just so wonderful to be around other stepmoms that think, and feel, and sharing that what I'm feeling is normal.” Sometimes, just knowing that what we're feeling is normal—there's a comfort in that. That's absolutely true.  I think, too, the mistake is that we think that we learn from our past mistakes. So often—and particularly, if you've been a divorced person and you're remarrying—you think: “Well, I learned how to do marriage from—you know, I learned what I did wrong from my first marriage.” That's really untrue. We really do not learn from our mistakes unless we learn why we made those mistakes.  So, it's not uncommon to go on and make those mistakes again. It really is taking a good look in the mirror at, “Why did I get into this marriage?” and, “Now what am I going to do? It's a complicated marriage.” For me, I had to get to a place where, even though there were times when I wanted to bail—I say that in the book—there were times I just wanted to run from all of it. I thought, “Singleness wasn't too fun, but this is worse!” Dennis:  So you're talking about bailing from the marriage? Laura:  Yes! Yes! If I'm being honest, there were moments when I thought: “You know what? I'd just as soon go back to being single than dealing with all of this.” I had to get to a point of where I said: “You know what? I made a vow before God—before my husband—that I am not going to get divorced again.”  I just prayed: “Lord, You are going to have to teach me how to love these children and how to do this. I know that You can teach me if I will look to You. You will give me the heart, and the mind, and the ability to do this if I will seek You on it.” That was where it began—the turning. Ron:  And that's the risk. You see, what Laura said was, “Lord, teach me.” She opened herself up to learning what she needed to learn in order to make the relationships work. That's one of the biggest risks.  You stop and you think about it—so many stepmothers are there. They've already been through a divorce themselves. They've already had some loss and tragedy in their life. They've shut down from risk. They have gone into self-protection mode, and they are no longer willing. I can tell you—that in a study I did with Dr. David Olson, that's given birth to another book that will be out, some point in the future—we found that one of the highest predictors of remarriages that come apart is fear. It's simply the unwillingness to endure risk, to learn, to grow, to be humbled by it, and to grow through it.  But once you get afraid, once you begin to lock-down, once you begin to say to yourself: “You know what? In a remarriage—I don't know how to do that. There's a whole lot of risk involved with that. I think I will go where I find safety and security,”—that's back into being single again or being a single-parent again. Then, all of a sudden, you've shut down; and there's no hope for the marriage.  Laura:  You'd be amazed at the number of stepmoms that have contacted me—emailed me and said, “When I pull in the driveway of my home and I know the step-kids are there, I feel exactly the same way as I did when I would pull into my home when I was married to an abusive husband.” That's that kind of fear that is triggered in them. It's that same feeling of: “I'm out of control. There are people, here, who are hurting me. I feel ostracized. I feel lonely. I feel like I am being taken advantage of.” So, she's really needing her spouse—her husband, the father—to come alongside her and help her with this process because they are his children.  If they were her children, she could set certain boundaries with them. That is a little bit easier; but because it's his children, he's going to have to partner with her in order to get rid of that fear—that abusiveness that is going on there—because, alone, she really does not have the power, without him beside her, because they are not her biological children. Dennis:  So, the first principle is—that cannot be allowed to happen. Ron:  Absolutely. The father, in that situation, has got to take charge. Now, I'm going to assume, because it's gotten to that point, that he has not taken charge—that he is not an engaged father—but he's passive. He's letting things happen, for whatever reason. I'm not thinking, here, of a stepmom—who is in a necessarily physically-abusive environment—but in an environment where she tries to implement change. She tries to follow through with her role, as a stepmother; but she gets sabotaged by her husband or what else happens in the home.  One of the things we talk about in the book is what we call politely resigning. It's a very difficult thing to throw a mother into a place where she is responsible for getting the kids to pick up their room, take care of their stuff, and do their chores; but every time she tries, they just say, “No.” They go appeal to Dad. Dad says, “Hey, it's not a big deal.” She's stuck.  One of the things she can do is say to her husband: “I think it's time for me to no longer be responsible for getting them to make their beds. Obviously, that's not something that's important to you. So, I'm going to just back out of that. If you want them to make their beds, I'll let you handle that.” We hope what that would create is a little bit of a vacuum in the home. Dad walks around and notices that nobody ever makes their bed, and clothes are all over the place. Dad decides to get motivated to create this change. Then, something can happen; but until then—until he's motivated—she's going to have a difficult time. Bob:  There is one big issue. We don't have a lot of time to talk about this; but if there is something that is keeping Dad from getting involved, it may just be his passivity. But it may also be this overwhelming sense of guilt that he carries around with him: “I put these kids in this position, through the failure of my first marriage. If I had done better—”  It's almost like he is thinking, “I've got to let them act out the way they are acting out because I bear the responsibility.” How does Dad get past that? Ron:  He has to walk straight through guilt—straight into his fear—that somehow, “Putting his wife into the front seat of his heart is going to cause his children irreparable pain, and he's going to cause them more difficulty.” He's got to walk through that and act, out of trust, that that is the right thing to do—that, eventually, that will bring stability to his children's lives—even though, initially, it may bring some instability to their lives. Dennis:  You're saying commitment to his wife is the strongest gift he can give his children. Ron:  That's exactly right. Now, initially, Dennis, and this is really important because I don't want to convey an idea that initial commitment is just going to be happiness for his children. It's probably going to create them some pain because they were the priority for many years—especially, in the single-parent years.  For him to say: “You know what? Friday nights are for my wife now. We're going to go out on a date,” and show that commitment—express that commitment—and include her in decision-making—all of those things—that will make children say, “Well, wait a minute! We came first.” But the test of time will be that that provides stability for them. During that difficult transition is where a lot of men bail. It's where they don't follow through. Laura:  We don't want to convey that we're saying that the dad is supposed to neglect his children. He brought these children into the world—so he needs to stay connected with his children. Say, for instance, that Friday night is date night. Make sure, then, Saturday morning breakfast is with your kids. Have one-on-one time with those children so that they can feel like they haven't completely lost their father to this new marriage.  It's very, very important for him to stay connected with those kids and to say: “You've had me all these years. I realize this marriage has probably caused you some fear, and some anxiety, and feeling like maybe you're losing touch with me; but I'm going to promise you that I am going to love my new wife, but I am never going to leave your side.” It's important for dads to verbally communicate that the new wife is not replacing the children. He's got to spend time with the kids to do that.  Dennis:  I'm listening to both of you here. I know Bob is thinking the same thing, at this point. There have to be those who have heard you talk about this now, and they are listening to all the costs that come with a blended family. They're in a first-time marriage right now, and they're considering divorce. Ron:  We want them to stay in that marriage. Dennis:  I want you to listen to me—you're not going to trade this one in for a better one. You may think it's a better one; but let me tell you something—there's a reason why the statistics are higher for a second-time marriage, with children. Bob:  The degree of difficulty— Dennis:  —increases! Bob:  —significantly. It doesn't matter how much emotional bonding you may feel to somebody outside your marriage. It doesn't matter— Dennis:  —how good they make you feel. Bob:  —or how bad your situation is, right now, in your first marriage. The degree of difficulty in establishing a blended family, a step-family relationship, is exponentially higher than it is to get things right in your first marriage. Ron:  I have a pastor friend who gives first-time married couples my previous book, The Smart Stepfamily, and makes them read it so that they will be even more determined to make their first marriage work. Dennis:  There you go! The point of all this is—you need to figure out a way to make your marriage work, whether you're in a stepfamily or not in one—you need the blueprints. I just want to exhort you: “If you haven't been to the Weekend to Remember®, come. And if you went to one ten years ago, trust me—it's time for a wheel alignment. It's time to change the oil. It's time to take a weekend away because you've changed; and you want to head this kind of drama off at the pass,”—Bob, and get folks equipped and trained—“because your marriage is worth it.” Bob:  We have a number of Weekend to Remember marriage getaways still happening this month and next month, as we wrap up our spring season: If folks are interested in finding out about a Weekend to Remember that's coming to a city, near where they live, that's easy. Just go to FamilyLifeToday.com and click on the link for the Weekend to Remember marriage getaway. You can get signed up for an upcoming event. Or if you want to look ahead to the fall and start to see where you can attend a Weekend to Remember this fall—I notice that we're going to be going to some nice places this fall. There's one in Yosemite, California—one in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, at the Coeur d'Alene Resort. We have some nice locations, where the Weekend to Remember is being held this fall. So again, go to FamilyLifeToday.com. Click on the link for the Weekend to Remember, and plan to join us at one of these Weekend to Remember marriage getaways. And while you're on our website, get more information about the resources we have available for stepfamilies. Ron Deal has a number of resources, including his classic book, The Smart Stepfamily. We have that in our FamilyLife Today Resource Center. Today is the last day that we're making available the book that Ron Deal and Laura Petherbridge have written together for stepmoms. We're offering it at a special discount, and today's the last day that discount is in effect.  So if you'd like to take advantage of some savings on—not only Laura's book—but a number of Mother's Day items that we're making available at a discounted rate, go to FamilyLifeToday.com. Click on the link for the Mother's Day sale. You can order The Smart Stepmom and other resources, as well. Again, go to FamilyLifeToday.com for more information about the resources we have available and about the Mother's Day sale that expires at midnight tonight. You think about summer and the things that you like about summer—maybe, it's the swimming pool or the beach—if you live near the beach. Maybe, it's the ice cream truck that starts to come through the neighborhood. When I was growing up, we had a Dairy Queen in our town; and Dairy Queen was not open in the winter. They opened up, I think, in April or May; and then, closed down in October. I was always excited about summer because Dairy Queen was going to open up. Now, Dairy Queen is open all the time; but back in the day, the only time I could get a Buster Bar was in the summertime. So, there's a lot of reason to love summer.  But if you're part of a ministry, like FamilyLife Today, summer can be a challenging time of the year because, as folks are doing other things, we often see a decline in the donations that we receive here to help cover the costs for producing and syndicating this program. Money can get a little tight during the summer.  We have some friends of the ministry, who realize that's the case. They came to us and said, “Let's see if we can build a little surplus so that, if things do get slow during the summer, you guys have some resources to tap into.” What they offered to do was put together a matching fund for the month of May. Anybody who makes a donation, this month, to FamilyLife Today—that donation is going to be matched, dollar for dollar, up to a total of $576,000.  We are grateful for their generosity. We're praying that we'll be able to take full advantage of that matching gift. To do that, we need to ask you to go to FamilyLifeToday.com and make a donation online, or call 1-800-FL-TODAY and make a donation over the phone. Again, it's easy. All you do is go to FamilyLifeToday.com. Click the button that says, “I CARE”. Make an online donation. As soon as you do, we'll have access to an equal amount of matching funds from our matching-gift fund.  You can also call 1-800-FL-TODAY and make your donation over the phone. The same thing happens so your donation is doubled. We do hope to hear from you—hope that you can help support us as we seek to take full advantage of this matching gift during the month of May. And we hope you can be back with us again tomorrow. Laura Petherbridge is going to be here again, along with Ron Deal. We're going to talk about how a stepmom should relate to her step-kids' biological mom. How do you deal with some of those challenges? We'll talk about that and other things tomorrow. I hope you can be here. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, and our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our host, Dennis Rainey, I'm Bob Lepine. See you back next time for another edition of FamilyLife Today.  FamilyLife Today is a production of FamilyLife of Little Rock, Arkansas. Help for today. Hope for tomorrow.  We are so happy to provide these transcripts to you. However, there is a cost to produce them for our website. If you've benefited from the broadcast transcripts, would you consider donating today to help defray the costs?  Copyright © FamilyLife. All rights reserved. www.FamilyLife.com    

FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript  References to conferences, resources, or other special promotions may be obsolete. How Blended Families Function Guests:                      Steve and Misty Arterburn and Ron Deal             From the series:       Blended Family Tips  Bob: When Steve and Misty Arterburn married, they brought children into the newly-formed blended family, but Steve says they wanted to make sure that the children knew what their relationship with their new mom and dad was all about. Steve: We did not want to be step-parents—step-parents get stepped on. We wanted to be a bonus into their lives, so we claim ourselves as bonus parents and kind of come at it as a benevolent aunt or uncle would, in the very beginning, and earn their respect and ask permission, really, to be in their lives. Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Thursday, April 5th. Our host is Dennis Rainey; I'm Bob Lepine. We'll hear from Steve and Misty Arterburn today about some of the things they learned as they blended a family together—some of the challenges they faced along the way. Stay with us. 1:00 And welcome to FamilyLife Today. Thanks for joining us. We're going to tackle a subject today that can be a little difficult to navigate. Our listeners know that we urge couples to keep their covenant / to stay married. Sometimes couples, for reasons that are beyond themselves, their marriages don't survive. That puts them in a position to go, “Okay; what do I do now?” We have some friends who are going to help have that conversation with us today. Dennis: We do. Steve and Misty Arterburn join us on FamilyLife Today. Misty/Steve, welcome back. Misty: Thank you so much. Steve: Thank you. It's great to be here. Dennis: You guys both experienced divorce separately; and then began to date and, ultimately, got married. The thing that really resonates with Bob and me is that you brought your church into your relationship— 2:00 Steve: Right. Dennis: —to bring a sense of biblical judgment, and sound advice, and counsel as you established this relationship. Bob: Well, and as you guys start to talk about this, we should acknowledge, as well, that our friend, Ron Deal, is joining us today. Dennis: I wasn't ignoring him. [Laughter] Bob: I know you weren't, but I wanted our listeners to know he's in the studio with us. Ron gives leadership to the blended family initiative, here, at FamilyLife. We thought this is a conversation you need to be in on with us—nice to have you here. Ron: Glad to be here. Certainly glad to be with the Arterburns. Steve: Yes; we hope we represent a smart stepfamily for you. [Laughter] Dennis: Well said—well said. Ron: I think you do. Steve: No; we really did, from the beginning, work with our pastors on overcoming some obstacles. Both of us felt like we met the biblical criteria for divorce and for remarriage, and that was kind of the foundation first. Misty: We had a lot of people speaking into our lives—we invited a lot of people into our relationship—but also each of our own individual healing paths that we were on.  3:00 When you start dating someone, you don't know if this is going to end up in a marriage. The main goal was just for me to continue being healthy, and healing, and growing, and raising my boys to be healthy, and strong, and healing as well. Steve was on a path like that. Bob: Well, here's the way I think about the kind of situation both of you were in. I follow pro sports. I know, sometimes, a guy will sustain an injury that knocks him out for the season. He has to go to the doctors; he has to get bones reset; he has a lot of work that has to happen / there's some rehab that has to happen. The doctors want to make sure that, before they even think about him being back in the game, he's not going to tear something fresh. Misty: Right; yes. Steve: Right. Bob: So, when your first marriages ended, you were where all people are in that moment—you were hurting and out of the game for a while.  4:00 Misty: Yes. Bob: What was the process of beginning rehab and realignment for you during those first few months after the divorce happened? Misty: Well, it was a bit like walking off of a cliff. I mean, I didn't know if I'd survive it either. I cried every day, for about four years, during the process and after the divorce—a lot of pain / a lot of pain.  I had a mentor—a female mentor in the church—and we met regularly. She, not only covered me in prayer, but just gave me daily practical advice and encouragement. The elders of my church were involved—they were looking out for me. I went two cycles through the divorce care recovery material, which was phenomenal and very, very healing. I just got into a community of people that are: everybody healing—and we're all looking at our wounds, and we're getting input, and we're humbling down. It was a time when, actually, spiritually, it's a really precious time in my life. 5:00 You know, going through it was horrific; but it is a treasure to me now. I lived in the Psalms, and I just prayed those prayers, and I had experienced God in a new way. I couldn't know Him as a comforter at the level that I met Him during that very, very dark season. Those were some of the things I did. Steve: Yes; and when I met Misty—I just met her one time. I didn't ever talk with her for a long time after that; but as we did get to know each other, a year or so later, I was so impressed by her connection in church, and with her pastors, and mentors. We swapped counselors before we decided we could get married. But for me, you know, I was surrounded by all these—the best Christian counselors—like Henry Cloud, John Townsend, and all these other folks—and then I went to see a counselor.  6:00 I had an assistant who said: “By the way, you need to get some help. You look really bad,”—and I did. It was the darkest time of my life—the pain.  I discovered something so strange—that my pain was fear—I just never associated fear and pain. I just thought fear was anxiety—fear—but it was so painful. I went to see this guy, Milan Yerkovich, who wrote a book called How We Love. He said to me, “I'm going to help you get your life back.” I just burst into tears, because I didn't have a life. I would say my life was absolutely, totally, completely black for six months before I could even see any ray of hope or sunshine. It's been a very, very difficult process.  I would want to just say this, as a disclaimer—that we've been married almost 13 years, but we're not a poster child for remarriage—it's hard.  7:00 I was so fortunate to meet her. She wasn't desperate—she decided to marry me—desperation didn't decide to marry me. So often, it's desperation that makes that decision. Ron: You know, I'm sitting here, listening to them talk, guys—and Dennis, I just have to say—we're hearing from them how it should be. I mean, they did it right. Misty, I wrote it down—you said you were dedicated to healing, you were walking with God, [and] you threw yourself into a community. Steve, you got counsel / multiple counsel—you know, allowed others to speak into your life. It was dark; you endured the darkness. You know, I think one of the big mistakes people make is—they run from their pain; and they run into a new relationship, because that makes you feel good—so then that sets you up for making poor decisions. But you endured the pain—you listened to God / you saw Him in it—you—and still, even then, that doesn't necessarily make you the poster child for an easy transition into a stepfamily life; right? Misty: No. 8:00 Ron: And that's the thing that I would want our listeners to catch—is that, even when we do this the right way and you seek God in it, it doesn't just necessarily turn on all the lights in your life and everything is perfect; but there is a better way to go through the process and a way that makes things even harder. Dennis: You both have five children. Steve: Right. Dennis: Misty, you brought two children in; Steve, you one; and then you had two together.  Misty: Right. Dennis: What did your children that you had prior to your marriage together—what did they think when you started dating? Misty: Well, we waited quite awhile before we introduced each other, because we don't want to introduce our children to people that they may attach to and then not stick around. Steve: Not a good thing. Misty: So we were very, very careful about that. Steve: And so often, when people get married, they're all excited about getting married; and the kids view it as a hostile takeover—they don't want any part of it. Misty: Or they may idealize that, “Oh, this is going to be great—this new person coming in,” and that doesn't happen a lot. 9:00 Dennis: And I wonder, too, if maybe the parent is hoping that the child will help make the selection of a new spouse for them. Misty: Yes; sure. Steve: Oh, it's so true; and of course, often, the child—especially the younger children—they're wanting to cling onto anything that looks like something more than what they have. You really have to avoid that. To answer your question about my daughter—what she felt about Misty was: “Hey, she comes to my soccer games,”—at that time, soccer was everything—“…not only comes, but she yells / she's engaged”; and “She plays volleyball with me outside,” and “She takes me on trips.”  Both of us came at this—we did not want to be step-parents. We wanted to be a bonus to them; so we claim ourselves as bonus parents. Step-parents get stepped on; so we wanted to be a bonus into their life and kind of come at it as a benevolent aunt or uncle would, in the very beginning, and earn their respect and ask permission, really, to be in their lives versus:  10:00 [Step-parent speaking to child] “Hey, I'm going to marry your mother,” or “…your father. You will respect me. I will be the disciplinarian.” That is the absolute worst scenario; and as you know, Ron, it's so common. Ron: Yes. Bob: I want to pull back from the parenting angle for just a second and go back to your relationship with one another. Steve: Okay. Bob: What was the gap for you, Misty, between when the divorce was final and when you started dating again?—how long? Misty: I can't remember—I think it was close to a year / somewhere in there. In fact, the moment I took my ring off I started getting requests. My mentor suggested, “Why don't you put one of those purity rings on your finger and just keep the flies away?”—she said. [Laughter]  That was really wise counsel, and I did it. I had several months just to focus on myself. I did—I made mistakes.  11:00 I don't want it to sound like, “Oh, I did it right.” Dating was kind of messy, and you do—your heart is gaping open—and it just takes time to heal. But I had so much support. Bob: And Steve, how long for you—from the time you were divorced and you started dating? Steve: It was about a year. I had this—I made commitment to John Townsend and Henry Cloud that I would not marry the first person that was nice to me, because they knew I was hurting and they felt like I could just fall into a trap. They said, “You must commit to date 20 people before you ever decide that you've found…” Ron: What did you think when you first heard them say that? Steve: “Oh, okay. Let's see—that ought to take about five years to do that.” [Laughter] Dennis: Yes; because you had a life with your children. Steve: Yes; I did. Ron: And did you do it? Steve: I did; absolutely. Ron: And looking back, was there wisdom in it? Steve: Oh, it was so smart. And of course, I've recommended it to other people.  12:00 Misty was the third person I went out with. Bob: She had to wait through 17 more? Steve: Well— Misty: I was not a fan of that season. [Laughter] Steve: But she said, “I don't want to be a part of this, so I'm going to…” Misty: I did. I stepped out; and I said, “I know you have to do what you have to do. I can't be a part of that, so I'm just going to hang back. You go do what you have to do, and we'll see.” Steve: But what it did—and it will do for anybody—is I have no question that there is nobody out there that would ever be better for me—I've resolved all of that. I didn't rush into anything; and it provided some security for me, where I could fully, fully commit and not have one question mark in the back of my mind. Misty: And to add to that, it's not 20 romantic relationships. Steve: No, no, no. Misty: It was 20 dates—meet 20 different people—just interact and get yourself having conversations again. Bob: That didn't include a speed dating night, where you got seven out of the way; did you? [Laughter] Steve: No; but—don't tell John and Henry—but it did include standing next to somebody in Starbucks and saying, “Hey, how are you doing?” and all of that. [Laughter]  13:00 So it wasn't a full 20— Dennis: Sixty-second rule! Steve: Yes; it wasn't 20 dinners, you know. Ron: You know, the brilliance to me of that little strategy is—I don't think there's anything special about the number 20. The point is—when you were going on one, two…five…ten…fifteen…—you told yourself: “This is not going to be the one. I'm not throwing all of myself and my eggs into that basket. I have to have some discipline to measure how much I invest in this person and this relationship, because there are some other things that I have to do.” Steve: And it provided time—to do that exercise provided time.  And here was the thing—Misty is absolutely beautiful and has a great smile, and that's what I was attracted to—first time that I met her. I kind of, a year later, thought, “That'd be great if we had a date.” Then, when we dated, there was this wisdom—she's been in recovery for all this [time] / she had been in a process, and I was blown away by what was inside.  14:00 All these other people would just be other people, and I had something to compare them to—there was never any question.  But again, when somebody goes and marries—well, you know this—they have an affair with somebody, and they marry the person they have the affair with—I mean, it's just a disaster waiting to happen. Ron: —a disaster; yes. Bob: One of the things I appreciate about both of you guys is—you're authentic and transparent, and you're open about who you are. I want to know—in the time following your divorce, before you started dating, you had to come, face to face, with some parts of your own self that maybe you hadn't seen before that had to be addressed / had to be confronted.  Steve: Yes. Bob: What were those—I'm asking what those—I'm getting nosy! What were the ugly parts you found in there? Misty: [Laughter] Well, yes; it wasn't pretty.   15:00 I was married, and addiction was part of our marriage before. I was very righteous about the way that I handled that and eager to put him down—very, very hurtful. I was going through trauma. Co-dependency and trauma mirror each other a lot. My counselor suggested that maybe I'd want to go to a recovery meeting. I stepped into a 12-step group for the first time and began to see that I really do contribute to the darkness—that I am capable of great darkness. I started the process of humbling down. I would say, before I got into recovery, I lived a life very much in reaction to what someone else was doing. My whole life was defined about the other person, and where they are, and how their actions and behaviors are. I didn't have a sense of myself.   16:00 When I got into recovery, and therapy, and those things, I started to just discover “Who am I?” apart from all this chaos. I started to define what I believe / what I think about things: “What's my favorite movie?”—I couldn't even answer simple questions like that; it was all defined through what another person was doing. Steve: She did some hard work. When my therapist met with her, and then I met with her therapist, then it was revealed, “She hasn't just been sitting around, blaming all of this on this other guy.”  For me, Bob, I set out on a mission to let everybody know that I wasn't the bad guy. I talked to Dennis, Dobson—I mean, anybody I could talk to, “Yes; you know, I'm not the bad guy here.” It was in counseling that I was confronted about that. I had to come to grips with: “I was a donor here. I mean, I had contributed; and here's how—out of my insecurity, my fear, out of my disconnection— 17:00 —and, really, no experience at heart-to-heart relationship.” Boy, that was—that was tough. And then I had to begin a forgiveness process, and my pride did not want that to happen. It was a tough battle in the beginning. Ron: What's really important here is that the process of recovering well through the divorce meant looking in the mirror for you guys, which had to come to your aid when you started dating and looking forward into the future. In fact, I have a specific question for you, Misty—that may or may not be related to what you just said / I'm not sure—but in the book that you guys wrote together, The Mediterranean Love Plan, you talk about the importance of attunement with one another, as husband and wife. You say in the book that, in the face of fear, you have a tendency to lean back towards self-protection. Do you mind talking about that a little bit? Misty: Sure. Yes; I wall up. I'm very good at barricading my heart.  18:00 As a little girl, what I learned to do, when threatened, I would get bigger—I would escalate, and I would just get louder and bigger. What that earned me, with my father—whom I love and adore / he passed away about five years ago—but when I did that, what I got in return was his respect. I was one who would go, toe to toe, with him. In other relationships in my life, though, it didn't earn respect—it just kept this cycle of escalation, and I wasn't finding resolve. Ron: With your first husband, you got righteous in the light of his addiction— Misty: I got angry; I got loud; I put him down; I criticized him. Ron: Yes; you got bigger. Misty: It wasn't my problem: “I'm not the one with an addiction,”—you know—“Why do I have to go to meetings?”—just arrogant/arrogant. Ron: Yes; so that pattern continued into that relationship. Had you not done some really hard work, and been open and humble, you might have just carried that right into this marriage relationship. Misty: Right; right—yes.  19:00 It's been a good humbling down / a good practice for me to look at my own darkness. In dating / in that single-mom zone dating, I did things that I was shocked about myself. I had to start coming to grips with, “I have my own sicknesses.”  It just gave me so much compassion. In my heart—what I noticed happening—was that judgment began to really decrease. I have very little judgment for any person, because I know they are wounded / that person is suffering. They're doing the best they can in a very messy world, and it takes us however long it takes us before we find answers. For some of us, it's a really long, messy process. Bob: You've used the phrase three times——you've talked about “humbling down.” Instead of hunkering down, it's a humbling down.  Dennis: Right. Bob: And Dennis, I think if somebody's going to move to a place, where they can pursue a healthy relationship, humbling down is an essential element there. 20:00 Dennis: Yes; and really, at the heart of humbling down is being teachable—learning from God and admitting your faults, your fears, your inadequacies—and being teachable. That's really at the heart of a great marriage—people who haven't been divorced / people who are just trying to make their existing marriage go the distance. I'm thinking of Romans, Chapter 12:1 and 2, where the Apostle Paul exhorts us to surrender our lives to make our lives a living sacrifice— Ron: Right. Dennis: —yielded to God. And that's what you're describing when you talk about humbling down.  And it [Romans 12:1, 2] also talks about not being conformed to this world. We didn't get a chance to talk about it, but you guys didn't sleep together when you dated. Steve: No; we didn't; no. Dennis: I just have to say—I have a concern, within the Christian community, that our standards are more of a reflection of the world than they are of the Bible.  21:00 Steve: Yes. Dennis: We really need to protect one another in this dating relationship; and we have a lot to learn, I believe, in how Steve and Misty handled this relationship. Bob: Yes; and I would hope everybody who's listening today is either already planning to be a part of the Blended & Blessed® livestream event that's coming up on Saturday, April 21st, or if you're not planning to already, you make plans today. This is something you can do in your living room / in your local church; or if you live near Charlotte, North Carolina, you can come join us at the site where the Blended & Blessed livestream is going to be happening.  Ron Deal will be there; Steve and Misty Arterburn will be joining us—Bill Butterworth, Dr. Rick Rigsby, Michele Cushatt. There's more information at FamilyLifeToday.com. You can find out where a Blended & Blessed event is happening in a city near where you live; or you can sign up to host one of these events, again, in your home or your church.  22:00 Go to FamilyLifeToday.com and plan to be a part of the 2018 Blended & Blessed one-day livestream event, coming up on Saturday, April 21st.  And if you're looking for help today, for yourself or for someone you know who is a part of a blended family, we have copies of resources that Ron Deal has created—books and articles—all available at FamilyLifeToday.com. You might want to check those out as well. Again, the website—FamilyLifeToday.com—or call 1-800-FL-TODAY if you'd like to order any of the books or if you have any questions about the upcoming Blended & Blessed one-day event. Now, this weekend, we have eight FamilyLife® Weekend to Remember® marriage getaways happening from coast to coast—from Washington, DC, all the way to Seattle. Among those who will be attending this weekend will be pastors and their spouses. For years, we have scholarshiped pastors and spouses to the Weekend to Remember marriage getaway—  23:00 —we've made sure that the registration fees are covered. We've been able to do that because donors, like you, have contributed to the scholarship fund so that pastors and spouses could be at a Weekend to Remember, registration-free. I wanted to make sure you knew that so you could invite your pastor to attend a getaway, knowing that the cost is covered; but I also wanted to let you know that our scholarship fund is starting to deplete. If you'd like to help send a pastor / a couple to a Weekend to Remember marriage getaway—if you'd like to help cover the cost, you can make a contribution today to the FamilyLife Pastors' Scholarship Fund. Those funds will go directly toward covering the cost for pastors and spouses to be at a getaway. You can donate, online, at FamilyLifeToday.com; or you can call to donate: 1-800-FL-TODAY. Make your contribution to the Pastors' Scholarship Fund, and those funds will be designated for that.  24:00 Or, if you just want to contribute to the ongoing work of FamilyLife, and the cost of producing and syndicating this daily radio program, you can always donate, online, at FamilyLifeToday.com; or call to donate: 1-800-“F” as in family, “L” as in life, and then the word, “TODAY.” And we appreciate your generosity. Thanks for partnering with us in this ministry. And we hope you're back with us tomorrow. Ron Deal will be here, along with Steve and Misty Arterburn. We'll continue talking about being a step-parent and the challenges that go along with that. I hope you can tune in. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, along with our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our host, Dennis Rainey, I'm Bob Lepine. We will see you back tomorrow for another edition of FamilyLife Today.  FamilyLife Today is a production of FamilyLife of Little Rock, Arkansas; a Cru® Ministry. Help for today. Hope for tomorrow.  We are so happy to provide these transcripts to you. However, there is a cost to produce them for our website. If you've benefited from the broadcast transcripts, would you consider donating today to help defray the costs?   Copyright © FamilyLife. All rights reserved. www.FamilyLife.com  

FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript  References to conferences, resources, or other special promotions may be obsolete. Marriage Matters Guests:                      Steve and Misty Arterburn and Ron Deal             From the series:       Blended Family Tips  Bob: Children who have experienced the loss of a parent, either because of death or divorce, have experienced some level of trauma as a result of that loss. Steve Arterburn says if those kids become a part of a new blended family, they don't need a new stepdad to be a drill sergeant.  Steve: I know all these guys that come in: “These—look, these kids will respect me. I will discipline them. They will obey me.” It's so much more about trying to build a bond and a connection in the midst of horror that they've gone through than getting something from them that they should never have to give, reluctantly.  Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Friday, April 6th. Our host is Dennis Rainey; I'm Bob Lepine. If you're in a blended family, have you thought strategically about what your stepchildren need from you? We're going to spend time talking about that today with our guests, Steve and Misty Arterburn, and with Ron Deal.  1:00 Stay tuned.  And welcome to FamilyLife Today. Thanks for joining us. We're talking about one of those challenging areas in life when a couple starts a new marriage, where both of them have been previously married and they bring children into that relationship. That, for a lot of couples, is an unexpected kind of a blindside: “Oh, I didn't know this was…” “Oh, I didn't…” “Oh, oh….” You know, it kind of— Dennis: I do.  Bob: —it's a wakeup call for a lot of couples.  Dennis: It really is; and joining us in the studio today to give us a perspective about that is Ron Deal. His perspective counts, because he has been in this area for over three decades; right, Ron?  Ron: Am I that old? [Laughter]  Bob: Sorry to break it to you, but yes. [Laughter] Ron: I guess so.  Dennis: Ron heads up FamilyLife Blended®. He's also joined by Steve and Misty Arterburn, all the way from Indiana.  2:00 Thanks for coming down and visiting us.  Steve: Great to be here.  Dennis: Glad to have you.  Steve: Thank you.  Misty: Thank you.  Bob: Any radio listeners, who think, “Is this New Life Live!?”—no; it's FamilyLife Today—at least for the next 30 minutes, and then we might get to New Life Live! later on today; okay?  Steve: Thank you.  Bob: Yes.  Dennis: Steve is a pastor at Northview in Carmel, Indiana.  Steve: That's right.  Dennis: Great ministry at church that has—how many people attending every Sunday?  Steve: I think around 10,000 and 3 campuses are in prisons. We just love ministering to those prisoners.  Bob: That's great.  Dennis: That's great. You and Misty have authored several books together.  We want to talk about what Bob was mentioning at the outset about how blended families function, especially, around parenting.  Bob: Yes; it is one thing for a couple, who have met, following—both of you were involved in a divorce / you were both sinned against. Your church got involved— Steve: Yes. Bob: —and helped you in the process of all of this. You met a while after you'd had the divorce. You dated for a period of time.  3:00 Steve: Right.  Bob: You fell in love—you said, “We're going to get married.” You had two kids. Steve, you had a daughter. As you thought about remarriage, were you anticipating this could get tricky with kids?  Steve: We didn't think it would be tricky. We knew that, if it wasn't done well and right / if we didn't prepare before the marriage, it was just going to end up—it had a good chance that the kids would cause another divorce—or the way we were handling those.  I was very impressed with her mothering. I just—it was—I was blown away by the way she mothered. She had these little boys. By the time they were seven, they'd gone through The Chronicles of Narnia, and the whole Bible, and all this stuff. They had a foundation. I was just thrilled that that was the kind of mothering she had done in the wake of divorce.  Bob: Were you worried, Misty, about the blending of families and being parents together?  Misty: I was terrified.  4:00 I was terrified. I just don't take it lightly. Those are my boys, and their well-being was the highest aim. I was trying to make sure that I was healthy and that they could be healthy, and I didn't want to risk. So, we were— Dennis: That's what I wanted to ask you: “Was it hard to trust again?”  Misty: Yes; very, very hard. You go through a train wreck like that, and there's debris and carnage. You don't want to experience that again. It was very sobering to go through that; and I tried to keep my eyes very wide open, walking into a new relationship.  Dennis: And you wanted to protect your kids because they trusted too; huh?  Steve: Well, my daughter was kind of everything to me at that point. I was not going to expose her to somebody that would love her for a little while and then we'd break up and it would be over. It was a long time before we got the kids together; but I felt like, if she could mother those boys the way she did, she could sure be a great bonus mother to my daughter. 5:00 Ron: Now, we're going to talk about parenting and step-parenting here in a minute; but to set that up, we have to continue with what you guys have just talked about. To be able to trust one another, as husband and wife—when you're also holding so tightly to your children and then trying to figure out “How do I merge my heart with another adult and with their kids?”—there is a lot of stuff in that to consider. At the end of the day, if that marital merger doesn't go well, there's no way your parenting merger can go well. Talk to us around that journey for you.  Misty: Well, it's a lot of plates spinning all at once. It's not linear—it'd be great if we could just address one thing at a time, but there are so many things happening at any given moment.  I just try to take one day at a time—just keep it simple / just do the next right thing. Eventually, all those pieces unfold; and you get presented with the next challenge— 6:00 —just a constant state of surrender to God and His ultimate will—and not grasping onto what I think I want and trying to force my life into a certain container so that it will look the way I want—but truly surrendering—to let it unfold over time, and slow down, and the answers come.  Steve: I knew something, as a single man; and I forgot it after we got married. If I didn't have sex with her—if I wanted her to trust me more than I wanted her to have sex with me, as a single, she would trust me after we got married.  Now, after we got married, I didn't stick with that. I would—I'd make the goal: “Hey, let's be intimate together!” It has been a glaring lesson that, even in marriage, the goal is: “Wait, it's not to be sexually intimate; it is to build that trust so that she wants to be intimate.”  7:00 It began in dating and, I think—well, I mean, she said to me many times what that meant to her—that I didn't want to take from her.  Ron: Now, I know why you guys were attracted to each other; because there is so much character in what you just said. There is so much self-discipline in that—the surrendering to God—not organizing your life and making it work the way you wanted it to restore some fantasy that was lost from the previous relationship or whatever. No, no, no; you took it a day at a time. You listened to God; you made Him the priority; you made choices about purity on behalf of your relationship with God—that's how you begin to nurture and find clarity.  Bob: Okay; let me jump into year one of the marriage.  Steve: Yes.  Bob: Alright; it's now Steve and Misty Arterburn and their three kids.  Steve: Right.  Bob: How did that go?  Misty: All hell broke loose. [Laughter]  Ron: We've heard that before on this program. You're not the only ones—please know that.  Misty: Okay; so—no, truly, it was as if a bomb went off. It was—I think what happens is—you eat the wedding cake—we joke about “Don't eat the wedding cake because there is something in it.”   8:00 All of a sudden, the deal is done. All the fear just skyrockets; because: “Now, we have to make it work” and all of the “What have I just gotten myself into?”—and when the first problems arise—it's just: “I need the other person to come through.” I think just the intensity of the first year—and you're scared, and you're trying to do it, and you're trying to take care of the kids—and it is all these components all at the same time.  Steve: And I would say that all hell did break loose; but because we had counselors with us, we got it tied back together.  Misty: Oh, yes; yes.  Steve: The thing that we went into—I made sure of—I didn't ever want to be abandoned again. There were no safety nets—there was no: “Well, you know, if this doesn't…” or whatever. No; this was going to have—I had to know that she would commit forever.  Dennis: You're talking about a covenant.  Steve: Yes.  Misty: Yes.  Ron: Yes.  Steve: So— Misty: We did have that.  Steve: —we worked through the hot stuff and got to the other side of it, and that was the blessing.  9:00 Dennis: Okay; I want to go back to year one, where Bob had us a few moments ago. In the midst of all hell breaking loose, what I want to know is: “Which one of you had the highest unreal expectations about being parents in a blended family? Who do you think had the higher expectations?”  Misty: I don't know if it was expectation or just desperation. We desperately—I desperately wanted my boys to have a stable man / father figure in their lives. He desperately wanted me to be able to be a mother to Madeline.  Steve: It was kind of mutual in our desire, but that was one thing that we really kind of got right in the midst of all of the difficulty of getting used to each other. We approached step-parenting in a different way than we'd ever heard about or taught, and we're so grateful that we did.  Ron: Well, one of the things you talk about is coming in as being a benevolent uncle or aunt— Steve: Yes.  Ron: —as opposed to instant authority in the kids' lives.  10:00 That had to help, especially, in terms of this desperation you were feeling about the other and what role they would play in your kids' lives. That had to help when you saw that softness. Talk to me about “benevolent uncle or aunt”: “What does that look like?”  Steve: Well, I just wanted to add to their lives, and I wanted to earn respect. I wanted them to enjoy being with me, and I wanted to do some things that they weren't expecting me to do.  Misty: One night—I think Carter was probably 11 or 12 and particularly cranky at the—in the kitchen, we were getting ready for dinner; and it was really getting out of hand. My instinct was to say: “Hey, you can go eat dinner in your room. You know, get a plate and head on up,” to my son. Steve chimed in and he said, “Or you could roll a raw egg across the kitchen floor with your nose the full length of the kitchen floor. You get to choose.” [Laughter] Instantly, the climate changed.  11:00 My son said, “Alright; I'll roll an egg across the floor.” We have this unbelievably treasured video of him rolling with his nose.  Ron: Oh, that's got to be good. Misty: We were laughing, and it just shifted. There was an instance where I was sort of coming down on top; but Steve so wisely came in and brought playfulness, and love, and laughter into the moment.  Steve: I was not the primary disciplinarian with them—  Misty: No.  Steve: —she was.  Misty: That's right.  Steve: Then, I supported her; and the same with my daughter. I know all these guys that come in: “These—look, these kids will respect me. I will discipline them. They will obey me.” It's so much more about trying to build a bond and a connection in the midst of the horror that they've gone through than getting something from them that they should never have to give, reluctantly.  Bob: One of the principles you've talked about is that stepparents need to do a lot more listening than they do talking; right?  Steve: Yes; you're out there, talking to be known because: “I'm the new kid on the block. I'm the leader here.”  12:00 Well, why not—why don't you listen to know them? Well, then, if you do that, they are going to know you have a heart for them; and they'll trust you.  Misty: That's right.  Steve: And to this day, I mean, when I get a text from James, it makes me tear—[Emotion in voice] —you know, he's asking for my advice. I just think you just— Dennis: That's a gift.  Steve: —don't know what that's worth—  Dennis: That's a gift.  Steve: —for a college student to be asking me for advice. It's just pretty special. Ron: That's beautiful. I hope every pastor listening to us, right now, is hearing what you are saying; because often, they are the ones who are guilty of telling a stepparent, “Step in there and be the dad.”  Bob: Yes. Ron: What you're saying has so much wisdom in it—you're saying: “I supported my wife as the parent to her children, and I came alongside her as a benevolent uncle to those children. I listened; I played; and I gained their trust and their respect.  13:00 “Eventually, I became the guy they text and ask for advice.” That's a beautiful picture.  I've got to just throw this in there. Steve has spoken at our Summit on Stepfamily Ministry that we sponsor, here, at FamilyLife® every year. That's one of the things we do there—is educate pastors and lay leaders about how they can minister well to stepfamilies in their church and community.  Dennis: And Steve, just comment on what he said; because you are a pastor— Steve: Yes.  Dennis: —of a local church—how the church can benefit from being trained in better understanding where stepfamilies are and how they can relate to one another.  Steve: Well, I go back to Jeremiah 6:14—it says, “They treat the deep wounds of my people with superficial treatments.” That is something that every pastor needs to memorize, because the issues of step-parenting and stepfamilies are so intricate. You really do need to not try to throw out these Band-Aid kind of answers, and you really need to look at— 14:00 —I mean, Ron has spent a lifetime of delving into this to try to come up with the true truth about this. I just hope and pray that you would take a second look at everything you've ever said about step-parenting and stepfamilies and be sure that you are being helpful and not hurtful.  Bob: Sounds like you guys were pretty well prepared for the shared parenting journey that you were stepping into. As you look back, if you could have one do-over in how you began the process of step-parenting, what would your do-over be?  Misty: Yes; there's a night that I remember. It was—I got offended by Madeline, and I really think that it wasn't helpful for me to be offended. I think the highest aim is connection, and correction must submit to connection—that's the first thing. Then, once there is a connection and safety, the correction is welcome and effective.  15:00 Bob: Hang on. Ron's writing that down.  Ron: Oh, yes. We've got to unpack that, because that is beautiful. It's absolutely on target, but we've got to flesh that out for people because that's so hard. We want obedience now; right?—we want good behavior. We want everybody, who is watching us in the store with our kids, to go, “Oh, you must be a fabulous parent; because look at how your child is behaving.” When obedience is the priority, then you stop being able to connect, in particular as a stepparent.  So how do you slow yourself down, as a stepmom? How did you slow yourself down to go: “You know what? Connection is the priority here”?  Misty: Well, I think it started with the healing processes that we went through—that we fall short of the glory of God, and here are these children—they are trying to make sense of their lives. They are trying to grow up—they don't know everything / they don't have everything—maybe, they had too much sugar today, and it has nothing to do with defiance and rebellion.  16:00 Maybe, they didn't get enough sleep last night. Maybe, it's a very basic need: “Do I have compassion or not?” If my child is misbehaving or doing things that aren't pleasing to me: “Well, what's it about? What's the underlying issue?”  Steve: Now, I just have to say this—as she talks about breaking connection and being more interested in correction, one of the things that we talk about in bonus parenting is: “Don't be the stepparent that's always right. Be the bonus parent who humbly and willingly admits mistakes and makes amends.”   Last night, when I'm telling Madeline we're going to come talk about this experience, I said, “So what is it that Misty did so well with you?” She says, “Connection and communication.” Now, why did she say that all these years later?—because Misty didn't stay there; she made amends. She came after her, from a humble perspective, after realizing, “That didn't go too well.”  Ron: Yes.  Steve: That's what the stepparent is so afraid to do—that they're never going to be viewed as a great person.  17:00 Well, actually, you're going to be viewed as a very great person when you're humble.  Misty: And we make things mean something about us when, really, it's about this child— Ron: That's right.  Misty: —and what they're—there is some skill that they don't have to cope with their situation. My job and privilege, as the mother, is to help them figure out what skill they need to handle that situation.  Ron: I've just got to add one more thought to this. Just this morning, we were recording another FamilyLife Blended radio feature. I was talking about putting on thick skin. It's a hard thing to say: “But sometimes, stepparents, you've just got to put on your thick skin.”  As you said, not everything is about you. Sometimes, it's about sugar; you know? Sometimes, it is about the past. Kids do have hurts and wounds on their heart, and they act out just like the rest of us do. It still doesn't mean that it's a rejection of you. It doesn't mean that your life is over. Let that bullet bounce a little bit. Ask God to give you the strength and courage to bear up under it. Find a way to put on compassion in that moment.  18:00 You'll probably find that the kid softens, and you soften, and you move past it.  Bob: I want to find out about a do-over for you, Steve. If you could go back to the first year or two and have a do-over, can you think of something?  Steve: Well, I think it was being gone too much and travelling too much versus saying: “You know what? I need to carve out this time and spend more time with them.” I think that would have been really valuable.  Bob: Blending takes— Steve: Yes.  Bob: —time, and intentionality, and effort. You can't just think, “Oh, this will happen”; right?  Steve: No; that's right. It's not easy, but the rewards later—I thought that these boys were an obligation that I had to fulfill to be married to Misty. They are two of the greatest blessings in my life.  Dennis: Sometimes, it's good to go out to the end of a matter and just be reminded of the big picture. That's what the Book of 1 Peter does—in Chapter 4, it says this:  19:00 “The end of all things is at hand; therefore, be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers. Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.”  Steve: There you are.  Dennis: Now, that's true of a blended family and— Bob: —true at our house!  Misty: Yes.  Dennis: —my house as well!  Misty: I sure need it.  Dennis: I'm just telling you—some listeners today need to be reminded, “Love covers a multitude of sins.” I think Misty demonstrated the attitude, repeatedly, this week on the broadcast, talking about humbling down— Bob: Yes.  Dennis: —bending your will toward the God of the universe and say, “God, I was wrong,” and then stepping back up—not wallowing in your mistake, and reliving it, and blaming and shaming yourself, but instead, go: “You know what? I'm going to use that as a tool toward learning and growing as a follower of Christ.  20:00 “I'm going to step back up, and I'm going to love because God first loved me.”  Misty: That's right.  Dennis: Misty/Steve, thanks for modeling these—not perfectly—  Steve: No.  Dennis: —I'm not going to set you up for failure there—but thank you for being open and honest and sharing your love for Christ but also your love for one another.  I just have to say to you Misty—the listener doesn't know it; but occasionally, we'll have a guest come in, Bob, who says, “Now, this is not really my thing.” I wish—I just wish our listeners could have seen Misty. She was reaching over, grasping Steve's arm, saying, “Stop talking so I can start talking.” [Laughter] Bob: “I've got something to say here. Step aside, husband.”  Dennis: “I've got more.” [Laughter] Thanks for being on the broadcast, Misty. Steve, we may invite you back again. [Laughter] Steve: Thank you. [Laughter] Bob: I'm thinking folks may get a chance to see this dynamic, live, when you guys are a part of the upcoming Blended & Blessed® one-day livestream event that's going to be happening on Saturday, April 21st— 21:00 —that's just a couple of weeks away.  Hopefully, our listeners are already planning to do this in their local church; or they are inviting friends over to watch the livestream in their living room; or if you live in Charlotte, maybe, you are planning to come out to where the event is going to be hosted, live. Ron Deal, Dr. Rick Rigsby, Michele Cushatt, Bill Butterworth, and Steve and Misty Arterburn are going to be speaking that day. It's going to be available, worldwide, on the internet.  You can find out more about how you can host one of these events in your local church or where a local church is already hosting one of these in your community so you can attend; or you can have the livestream in your home and invite others in to watch it with you. Find out more at FamilyLifeToday.com. Again, we're talking about the 2018 Blended & Blessed one-day livestream event, Saturday, April 21st.  22:00 Find out more at FamilyLifeToday.com and plan to join us for that day. We think this is going to be a great equipping day for couples who are in a blended marriage / a blended family and want that relationship to be solid and one that honors the Lord.  Now, this weekend, we've got couples in eight cities across the country, who are going to be joining us for a Weekend to Remember® marriage getaway. We hope you'll pray for these couples. We've got getaways happening in Indianapolis; Jacksonville, Florida; Lake Tahoe; Little Rock; Newport, Rhode Island; Omaha, Nebraska; Seattle, Washington—actually out in Bellevue—and in Washington, DC. There will be thousands of couples taking part in a getaway this weekend—including pastors and their spouses who will be attending, and they'll be attending as our guests. We've covered the registration costs for these pastors. Actually, you've covered the registration costs because those of you who are donors to FamilyLife Today— 23:00 —you have helped us fill up a scholarship fund so that we can provide scholarships for pastors and spouses. You may want to let your pastor know about that and urge him to take a weekend away with his wife and pour into his marriage.  If you'd like to make sure pastors and spouses can continue to attend a getaway, you can help make that happen. Our scholarship fund is starting to deplete. We're asking listeners to make a contribution to the FamilyLife Pastors Scholarship Fund. You can contribute, online, at FamilyLifeToday.com; or you can call 1-800-FL-TODAY. If you designate your giving, it will all go to the Pastors Scholarship Fund; or if you'd like to leave your gift undesignated, it will go to help support the cost of producing and syndicating this daily radio program. Thanks for your partnership with this ministry; and on behalf of pastors and their spouses, thank you for making it possible for them to attend a Weekend to Remember marriage getaway.  24:00 And we hope you have a great weekend. In fact, we hope you and your family are able to worship together this weekend in your local church; and we hope you can join us back on Monday when we're going to be talking about the unique relationship that exists between mothers and sons and how moms need to learn that what their sons need more than love is respect. Emerson Eggerichs will be here to help us understand that. I hope you can tune in as well.  I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, along with our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our host, Dennis Rainey, I'm Bob Lepine. We will see you back next time for another edition of FamilyLife Today.  FamilyLife Today is a production of FamilyLife of Little Rock, Arkansas; a Cru® Ministry. Help for today. Hope for tomorrow.  We are so happy to provide these transcripts to you. However, there is a cost to produce them for our website. If you've benefited from the broadcast transcripts, would you consider donating today to help defray the costs?   Copyright © FamilyLife. All rights reserved. www.FamilyLife.com  

FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript  References to conferences, resources, or other special promotions may be obsolete. Step-Grandparenting Guest:                         Ron Deal                   From the series:       Step-Grandparenting  Bob: When two families merge—when they blend—and now there are stepchildren and stepsiblings—one of the forgotten parts of this equation often, is the new step-grandparents. Here is Ron Deal.  Ron: Sometimes, when somebody else made a choice—and all of the sudden, you've got not just one, but maybe you've got five step-grandchildren—what if you had a bunch—what if you already thrown yourself relationship with your biological grandchildren, now you've got five more? It's like—“How do I fit all of this in? How do we do the finances?” I'm just saying—I've seen and been involved in situations where the step-grandparents just aren't terribly excited about this. That can be a disappointment to their adult child.  Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Monday, July 30th. Our host is Dennis Rainey, I'm Bob Lepine. Step-grandparenting can be tricky. We have some thoughts today from Ron Deal— 1:00 —on how to make it work more effectively. Stay with us.  And welcome to FamilyLife Today. Thanks for joining us. There was a conference back last fall for grandparents. We had some friends who put this together. We helped promote this event—a national conference of grandparenting.  Dennis: The Legacy Conference.  Bob: That's right. One of the speakers at the conference was Ron Deal who joins us in studio today and is the leader of FamilyLife Blended®. Ron, welcome back to FamilyLife Today.  Ron: Thank you.  Bob: You got invited to come and speak at this conference about step-grandparenting which, Dennis, I don't know if I ever even stopped to think about that subject—but that's an issue that a lot of families that all of the sudden find themselves in with very little preparation and very little coaching.  2:00 Dennis: I would say most grandparents feel overlooked when it comes to blending a family together; and I can't imagine what it would be like—to feel like—in some regards, you may be an outsider— Ron: Yes.  Dennis: —to get back in with grandkids that—at one point—you were their heros. You're hearing a lot about this subject as you speak around the country.  Ron: I am, Dennis. Bob, in preparation for that Legacy Conference, I did some homework. I do this every single day, but I was a little shocked to discover that 40-percent of families in the U.S. have a step-grandparent—40-percent! By the way, that's stat is 20 years old—it's old.  Dennis: So, it's likely higher.  Ron: It's likely much higher. The other thing that I found was that the prediction that demographers have is that by year 2030 in the U.S.—there will be one step-grandchild for every 1.7 biological grandchildren—less than 2 to 1 ratio. It is a very common experience. It's going to continue to be— 3:00 —a common experience—and of course, it touches all three of the generations.  Bob: Not just all three generations, but I'm thinking about all of the different permutations of what makes a stepfamily—and then how that expands to the grandparenting. So, if our son and daughter-in-law get a divorce, and now she is the custodial parent, where do we fit into that; right?  Ron: Exactly.  Bob: If there's an estrangement between our son and this daughter-in-law, we may be cut out of the picture— Ron: Right.  Bob: —with our grandkids.  Ron: What that means is that, at Christmastime, when you want time with your grandkids, there's probably four or five or six other sets of grandparents who, also want time with the grandkids. So, all of the sudden, life just got really complicated fast.  Bob: Then, I'm thinking about the other situation which is where our son or our daughter marries somebody who has been previously married and brings grandkids in, and we didn't just become new in-laws—we became new step-grandparents—and it happened in an instant.  4:00 So, instead of watching these kids be born, we're now step-grandparents to a 13-year-old and a 15-year-old that we haven't ever known before.  Ron: What if you have some real mixed feelings about that new relationship? By the way, this is one of the things we are hearing from people: “Hey, I have step-grandchildren. By the way, I also have some biological grandchildren. I've known them their whole lives, and they've known us—we have traditions and time together and all sorts of things. Now, I'm trying to figure out: “What do I do, and how do I find time for the step-grandchildren? But that relationship came about because my child”—let's say—"made some really poor decisions; and we have mixed feelings about those decisions.”  “Now, those decisions have resulted in them getting married and having stepchildren—that gives us step-grandchildren—we never really wanted this. It kind of feels like if we jump in as step-grandparents and throw ourselves into those relationships, that somehow, we're saying what my son or daughter did is okay.”  5:00 “We don't feel like it's okay. We're kind of stuck between, not wanting to give approval—but at the same time—the grandchildren shouldn't be the ones that suffer.”  That's the kind of difficulties that grandparents are finding themselves in—trying to wade through these waters and figure out what to do.  Dennis: You outline three different kinds of step-grandparents. There are step-grandparents who step into the life of a child and actually, are in a long-term relationship helping to raise that child to maturity.  Ron: Right. They've been in a long-term—we call them long-term step-grandparents, meaning maybe, they were a stepparent at a younger age; and they raised a stepchild, and that stepchild is now an adult, now married, now has children of their own. Technically, those are step-grandchildren to the grandparent; right? But you've been in their life since day-one.  6:00 That long-term step-grandparent, probably, has more of a relationship with their step-grandchildren like a biological grandparent would have with their biological grandchildren. It just feels more natural and more connected because of the length of the relationship.  Bob: Of course, all of this depends on the kind of relationship that the stepchild has with the stepparent because that's step-grandparenting is all incumbent on—“Are we still friends”— Ron: That's right.  Bob: —“with this child that we helped raise?”  Ron: Let's just kind of walk through the possibilities. On the one hand, let's say you have a great relationship with your stepchild who, now, becomes a parent. You have step-grandchildren. Odds are you're Grandma—end of story. That's going to be a wonderful, easy ride.  Maybe you have—on the other end of the continuum—a really awkward, difficult relationship with your stepchild who, now, has children. It can go one of two ways. What I see a lot is that all of the sudden, the step-grandchildren create an opportunity for connection.  7:00 They don't know you as anything different—they feel like you're Grandma to them or Grandpa to them. All of the sudden, it helps your relationship with your adult stepchild. They watch you be grandmother to their kids.  Dennis: By the way, if you want to win a parent's heart— Ron: There you go.  Bob: Yes. Dennis: —bless their child.  Ron: That's it.  Dennis: I mean find ways to build into their lives. I'm not talking about spoiling them with gifts. I'm talking about finding a way to encourage them, build them up, speak truth into their lives, and be an asset to them.  Ron: I hear from a lot of long-term step-grandparents who say, “You know what? My salvation with my stepchild was the grandkids. That was the backdoor that improved my relationship with them.” I say, “Amen! Hallelujah! Whatever it takes.” Pour into that grandchild, and all of the sudden, their parent is more appreciative of you than they've been before.  Dennis: What would you say to the person who is listening to our broadcast right now that would go—“That's me. I'm in that situation.” How can they take advantage of it?  8:00 Ron: You know it's the heart attitude of inclusion—and connectedness is always a good, positive thing. I mean, extending yourself in love generally works on your behalf—wouldn't we assume that as believers; right?  Dennis: Right.  Ron: Love conquers a lot of things. Now sometimes, you are not given permission to love. One of the barriers here for step-grandparents is that middle generation. Let's say you have a son or daughter or stepson—stepdaughter who blocks your ability to be a grandparent. Well, they can. They can just say, “No, the kids are not available”; “No, we're not going to come over and spend time on Sunday afternoon and have lunch. No—” They can do that, and that's really unfortunate—it's a heartbreak when that happens.  What I would say to that step-grandparent is “Okay, you have limited opportunity. Make the most of what you have and don't give up.”  Bob: I'd just throw in here— 9:00 —it can be our attitude: “I'm entitled to a relationship with my grandchild.” I think we've got to die to that entitlement at some point and go—“I can woo that. I can try to earn that. I can pray for that—but I'm going to have to let go of that sense of entitlement.”  Dennis: If you try to cash that chip in, you can alienate even further.  Ron: Yes. Yes, you certainly don't want to do that because then that just almost invites somebody to say, “Oh no you don't deserve”; right? Then, you've got them digging in their heels.  Bob: So, you've got long-term grandparenting. What's a second kind of grandparenting?  Ron: The second one we call inherited step-grandparents. Here is what's happened probably in your life. You've had a son or a daughter who made a choice to marry somebody who has kids. So, your son—let's just say that—your son has become a stepdad. Well, you just inherited step-grandchildren.  Now notice, this was not your choice. You're just cruising along in life. Your son made a choice to marry somebody with kids. 10:00 You didn't make that choice. You may be in favor of it. You may be happy about it—but at the same time, you didn't ask for grandkids—you didn't ask for this to be brought into your life.  I mean most grandparents are excited when they become grandparents. It's a little weird sometimes, to hear people say the very first-time, but—“Yes, I'm getting used to the idea.” Then they throw themselves into. Sometimes, when somebody else made a choice—and all of the sudden you've got not just one, but maybe you've got five step-grandchildren—what if you already had a bunch? What if you already had—you've already thrown yourself into relationships with your biological grandchildren—and now, you've got five more? It's like—“How do I fit all of this in? How do we do the finances?”  I'm just saying—I've seen and been involved in situations where the step-grandparents just aren't terribly excited about this. That can be a disappointment to their adult child.  Bob: We've got to keep in mind—you don't have an extended relationship with this new 11-year-old step-grandchild.  11:00 You don't know anything about what they like. You don't know anything about their history, for the most part. You are meeting them for the first-time at 11. They are not sure what to think about you.  Ron: —And you feel a little divided. You've got three other biological grandchildren. You do know what they like. You do have a relationship with them. Now, I'm supposed to take time away from them to invest time with this 11-year-old that I don't know?  Bob: —who is not sure he wants a relationship with you. The easiest thing to do for a step-grandparent in that situation is go—“Let's just back off and go where we're wanted” —but I hear you saying, “That may be the easiest thing to do, but that may not be the healthiest thing to do.”  Ron: I think we should always—I mean the life and times of Jesus Christ is a guy who walked around turning outsiders into insiders. Is that not the heart of the Gospel? People who were far from God, and He brings them near to God. He extends the hand of friendship, if you will. He extends love and grace to people who don't even know that they need it or want it.  12:00 That's the heart of our Savior.  I think anytime we do that in any situation—let's just paint a scenario like we were talking about before—let's say your son or daughter made a choice. It's a choice you didn't agree with. There are negative repercussions. You're not feeling great about it, but—bam!—you've got an 11-year-old step-granddaughter. I think you swallow hard, and you go—“Lord, help me be an influence in this 11-year-old's life—help us find ways of connecting—we've got to figure this out.” We don't just pull back and go—“Well, this shouldn't be, so I'm out of here.”  Dennis: I like where you are going with that, Ron, because I was just sitting back and thinking, “Most grandparents—when they are finally declared grandparents—are kind of wondering, ‘What's my assignment here?'” It's not necessarily cut and dried with every one of your adult children how they want you to be the grandparent in that situation. Then, you extrapolate the step-grandparenting assignment which that's a new category for a lot of people. 13:00 They don't even know—well, it's back to being dizzy again. Ron: Yes.  Dennis: “How do I relate to this person that's not biologically connected to me?”  Ron: You know here's a principle that I think would apply with both biological grandparenting as well as step-grandparenting: Define the relationship—we're going to have to have some conversations.  So, you go to your son or daughter; and you say, “Look, what role would you like for me to play? Here's what I would love to do. Here's where I'm interested. Here's my heart—my passion. How does that fit with you? Your schedule? Your needs? You have a wife or a husband to consider and their parents. Bring us in and give us some guidance so that we can come together and define what our role as grandparents look like.”  There is one other category, and it's what we call the later-life step-grandparent. This occurs when someone later in life marries somebody who is a grandparent. So, let's just paint a scenario.  14:00 You maybe, had a 30-year marriage, and your spouse dies. A few years go by, you're in your mid-60's—early 70's—and you fall in love again. You marry somebody who is a grandparent. You instantly have adult step-children and step-grandchildren.  Notice, you're the one who is motivated. You're the one who made the choice to marry this person. Typically, that step-grandparent is highly motivated to get to know all the generations—both the adult stepchildren as well the step-grandchildren—but the adult step-children and the step-grandchildren may not have any need for you whatsoever in their lives.  What we often find in this scenario is it's the adult children—now adult stepchildren—who go—“You know what? You're Dad's wife. You're not my mom, and you're not the grandmother to my kids. It's fine if you show up at Christmas, and we sure want you to cook the turkey at Thanksgiving— 15:00 —but don't step into that grandmother role. My mom was grandma—end of story. That adult child has a lot to say about whether or not that step-grandparent can play any role at all in the life of the family.  Bob: I just add to that—and we've talked about this before—patience—patience is a key virtue in all of this—and then grace. Keep in mind that your kids—your step-kids, their kids—everybody in this scenario has a context for what they are feeling. Loss has been a part of most of these people's experience—and when loss is a factor—that can pop up in some relationally challenging ways; right?  This is just where we have to be the people who say, “You know what? I'm going to give a ton of grace. When you start acting out of your loss and start getting angry”— 16:00 —“or frustrated or isolating yourself, I'm just going to go—‘Okay, there is a context for this, and I'm going to give a lot of grace here.'”  Ron: This later-life step-grandparent dynamic essentially creates what we call adult step-families. The person who gets caught in the middle of the bunch is the biological parent. Let's—back to our scenario—this man has married a woman later in his life—in their early 70's—and his children—they loved Mom. She was a wonderful woman in their life—and she will always be Mom—and to the grandchildren—she will always be Grandmother.  Dad can—he's got to be careful because if he's in a position of demanding that his kids welcome her as they would a mother—I just find that that backfires. He's got to be patient, too. Now, I also want the new step-grandmother in that scenario to not become so possessive. I've seen some situations where they look to their husband and say, “Look, if they don't invite me, then you can't go be with your kids either—and your grandkids.” 17:00 Oh! Wow! Dennis: Yes.  Ron: That will divide really, really fast. All that does is sabotage yourself in the family. You have to make some sacrifices. Keep the connections alive so that eventually they see you as an asset—somebody new to get to know and hopefully, they do extend themselves and invite you in.  Dennis: Parents in any family are gatekeepers— Ron: That's right.  Dennis: —to give grandparents access to their grandkids.  Bob: You've just started exploring this subject. I mean we've just touched the tip of the iceberg in talking about it today. Have you written much on this? Can you point us to where we can get additional help?  Ron: Yes, actually, a number of my resources do talk about adult stepfamilies and the step-grandparent dynamic. The most recent is Daily Encouragement for the Smart Stepfamily, which is a one-year devotional for blended families that talks about a variety of subjects as you walk through the year.  18:00 The Smart Stepfamily book and our DVD series that churches can use also will talk about some of these things. Then the books, The Smart Stepmom and The Smart Stepdad, each have chapters on these subjects.  Bob: Of course, we've got these resources available in our FamilyLife Today Resource Center, and listeners can go online and look for the right starting place—where would you say? The Smart Stepfamily?  Ron: The Smart Stepfamily would be a good start.  Bob: Yes.  Dennis: I'd encourage people to look at the book of James. James, Chapter 1, verses 2 through 8 would be a great passage of Scripture for any step-family. Let me just read it carefully: “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness and let steadfastness have its full effect that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”  19:00 Let me just say here—in all this conversation of feeling dizzy—I think this next command here in Scripture is really timely: “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given to him, but let him ask in faith with no doubting. For the one who doubts is like the wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord. He is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.”  If you are in a step-family situation—whether you are a step-parent, a step-grandparent, a bio-parent—and you need wisdom, call on God. Ask Him to give you wisdom: “How do we handle this, Lord? This is so complex. We can't begin to sort through all the pieces of the puzzle here” —but God meets us at that point.  20:00 Bob: Yes. One of the things, Ron, that you have said is that you've got help on this subject. Folks can go to our website, FamilyLifeToday.com. You've written books and articles—and again, there is information online at FamilyLifeToday.com.  You and your team are working—now—on an event that's going to take place October 24th and 25th. This is our 6th Annual Summit on Stepfamily Ministry. It's going to be happening in Little Rock. In addition to you speaking at the event, Linda Ranson Jacobs—who heads up divorce-care for kids is going to be here. Dave and Meg Robbins will be speaking—Lamar and Ronnie Tyler and others. The focus this year is on parenting in complex families.  As often as not, when you're talking about blended families, the issues that people are asking you about are parenting issues. That's what the focus will be. Now, this is an event for pastors, church leaders, laymen and women— 21:00 —anybody who has a heart for step and blended families and wants to help those families thrive in local churches—they should plan to be in Little Rock on October 24th and 25th for the 2018 Summit on Stepfamily Ministry.  There is information available online at FamilyLifeToday.com—or call 1-800-FL-TODAY if you have any questions. There is early-bird pricing available now—so get in touch with us quickly to take advantage of that. Again, the website, FamilyLifeToday.com—sign up for the Summit on Stepfamily Ministry happening in October.  I know for some of our listeners, school has only been out for about five or six weeks now. For others of our listeners in other parts of the country, school is starting back up next week. Can you believe it? There are some folks headed back to elementary and junior high and high school as early as next week in some parts of the country.  22:00 That's why we're encouraging moms and dads now, to sign up for a 30-Day Prayer Challenge encouraging you to be praying for your children every day for the next 30 days as they head back to school—whether they are in kindergarten or whether they are in graduate school. We will send you a daily prayer-prompt via email. It'll give you Scripture and specific ideas on things to be praying for, for your children.  You can sign up for the 30-Day Prayer Challenge right now at FamilyLifeToday.com, and we'll get you started immediately with your daily prayer prompts. Here at FamilyLife we are all about trying to effectively develop godly marriages and families—and praying for our kids is one of the ways that that happens.  We're excited because there are a number of churches around the country who have already contacted us, and they are launching Art of Parenting™ groups this fall. In fact, some of them are kicking off the launch by showing the movie that we've put together called Like Arrows as a special church event.  23:00 If you'd like information about FamilyLife's Art of Parenting video series—or the movie, Like Arrows, again, go to our website—FamilyLifeToday.com. Maybe, talk to your church leadership about whether this is something you want to do in your local church—and then get in touch with us. You can call us at 1-800-FL-TODAY.  Let me just say a word of thanks to those of you who partner with us so that all that we're doing here at FamilyLife can actually happen. Those of you who are regular, monthly Legacy Partners and those of you who will from time to time help support the ministry with a donation—we are so grateful for your partnership.  In fact, we'd like to express our gratitude today—if you're able to help with a donation—by sending you a copy of the book that Dennis Rainey wrote recently called Choosing a Life That Matters. It's our gift to you when you go online to donate at FamilyLifeToday.com—or when you call 1-800-FL-TODAY to make a donation. You can also mail your donation, along with your request for the book. Write to FamilyLife Today at Box 7111,— 24:00 —Little Rock, Arkansas; our zip code is 72223.  Tomorrow, we want to introduce you to a father who has a rather unusual family—a large family. His name is Pastor Gennadiy—and you'll meet him tomorrow and hear about his 35 children. That comes up tomorrow. Hope you can be with us for that.  I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, along with our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our host, Dennis Rainey, I'm Bob Lepine. We will see you back next time for another edition of FamilyLife Today.  FamilyLife Today is a production of FamilyLife of Little Rock, Arkansas. A Cru® Ministry. Help for today. Hope for tomorrow.  We are so happy to provide these transcripts to you. However, there is a cost to produce them for our website. If you've benefited from the broadcast transcripts, would you consider donating today to help defray the costs?   Copyright © FamilyLife. All rights reserved. www.FamilyLife.com  

FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript  References to conferences, resources, or other special promotions may be obsolete. Putting Your Spouse in the Front Seat Guest:                         Ron Deal                               From the series:       Putting Your Spouse in the Front Seat  Bob: In a single parent family, it's not uncommon for a child to sit in the passenger seat while mom or dad are driving. When mom or dad get remarried, and now there's someone new in the family, that child may not like the idea that their seat in the car has been taken over. Ron Deal says we need to be aware of that and help those kids adjust to the new normal. Ron: Why would they react harshly to this idea of putting your spouse in the front seat? What's going on for a kid? Well, sometimes they just want to ride in the front and they want what they want, but also there is: “I've been through some really rough stuff. I've lost connection with somebody. My family has gone through major transitions,”—a tragedy of some sort: a death or a divorce—“I don't want to go through another one of those things.”  They are hypersensitive to the idea of being pushed aside, because they've seen it happen already in their home. 1:00 Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Monday, August 27th. Our host is Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine. We're going to talk today about strategies to help step-parents help their children adjust to the new normal of a stepfamily. Stay with us. And welcome to FamilyLife Today. Thanks for joining us. One of the key principles that we try to drive home in FamilyLife's Art of Parenting™ video series, and something that you and Barbara wrote about in your book, The Art of Parenting, is that, in a family, the marriage relationship has got to be the priority relationship. For the sake of the kids—  Dennis: Right. Bob: —it's got to be the priority relationship. That's true in an intact family. That has some unique challenges that come along with it if you're dealing with a blended family. Dennis: Yes. One of the biggest arguments we used to have with our kids, on our way to school, was who sat in the front seat—[Laughter]— 2:00 —who got the front seat with daddy. You know, when mom is in the car with me— Ron: Is there any debate at that point? Dennis: —there is—there was never a debate; because they knew that next to daddy's heart was mama. [Laughter] Bob: And by the way, that is our friend, Ron Deal, who joins us today on FamilyLife Today. Ron gives leadership to FamilyLife Blended® and appears here, from time to time, when we're talking about blended family relationships. Glad to have you here. Ron: Thank you. Dennis: And it's different in blended families. Bob: Yes. Ron: Think about your scenario—when mom gets in the car, there's no question—mom's in the front seat; everybody knows it. Now, one of your kids may go, “Ah, it's my turn; but okay, I kind of understand mom rightly belongs in the front seat.” Dennis: There is no discussion! Ron: There's no discussion; there's no debate.  But what if the storyline had been—they take their turns riding in the front seat, and there is no mother in the picture; you're a single dad. The kids ride in the front; everybody has their turn—they belong there.  3:00 Then you go and marry somebody, and now it's her that rides in the front seat. How do your kids react to that? Bob: What had been their territory/their spot—they've just been displaced. We may think, “Well, that's not a big deal”; but that represents something. I mean, we're using it as a big deal about where mom sits in the car. This represents something about the order of the family that can be very threatening to stepkids. Ron: I have to say—one of our most popular articles on FamilyLife.com, in the blended family section, is an article that is exactly about riding in the front seat. In fact, it's called “Putting Your Spouse in the Front Seat.” I write about this, at length, in two of my books: The Smart Stepfamily and The Smart Stepfamily Marriage. Why?—because we have learned this is such a critical dynamic to get right for your blended family to do well. Bob: Ron, I was just recently at a Weekend to Remember® marriage getaway, talking to a couple in crisis. They weren't sure they could make their marriage work—blended situation.  4:00 She brought kids into the marriage; he didn't have any kids from any previous relationships. We were having this conversation. I said to her: “I understand that you feel guilt and shame. You feel responsible for the loss you're kids have experienced. You want to do anything you can to try to make sure you're making up for what you brought into your children's lives. So, at times, you prioritize them ahead of your husband just because, emotionally, you're thinking, ‘I've put them through so much. I've got to sacrifice him for their sake.'”  That's the impulse a parent feels. Explain why that's a wrong impulse—not a wrong impulse—but why giving into it is a wrong response. Ron: That's a very well-worded question, and it's important to the answer. The impulse is understandable.  5:00 Of course, you're concerned about your children—as I would say to this woman: “Your mom heart is very deeply concerned about their well-being. They have been through a lot. You do see the pain in their eyes from the past. You don't want to see more pain in the present, so you want to take care of them and diminish that; so that means putting them in the front seat and asking your husband to ride in the back seat, in which he feels, in that moment, like he's in the trunk.” That is a marital issue, immediately, for the new spouse. That's why you can't put him in the back seat, because you are risking the stability of your marriage. Even though your marriage followed the children, you still have to have it in the front seat, so to speak, in order for your relationship to lead the home.  If you're going to lead from a position of unity, this is both a parenting issue and a marriage issue all at the same moment. If you're going to position the new stepdad, in this case, beside you so that you can lead together, then you have to put him in the front seat.  6:00 You have to say to your children: “I'm' sorry. You're going to have to go to the back.” You're going to have to, then, deal with their being upset and them feeling like, “Oh, you mean you love him more than us?” You're going to have to deal with that hard moment. And by the way, how do you deal with that?—a lot of love, some big hugs, a little TLC: “Now, get in the back.” It's a combination of “I get it. This is hard for you, but he's my husband. Now, he's going to ride in the front. I'm thinking about letting him drive, but one thing at a time.” [Laughter] Dennis: I want to ask, at this point, if you treat this like Barbara and I did—which was, instead of going through the battle, at the moment, of who sits in the front seat, you have a family time—you just say: “Hey, you know what? This is a point of constant strife in our family, so here's how it's going to work.” Ron: Yes; you can anticipate this in a blended family and go: “You know what? We've picked up on this—there's some weeping and gnashing of teeth every time we have a front-seat moment in our home.”    7:00 What does that look like? “I consult my husband about parenting. I didn't ever have to ask anyone else before. I was a single mom; I could do whatever I wanted. Now, I stop for a minute and I ask him.” The kids notice; and they go, “Wait a minute why are you asking him?” Well, this is a front-seat moment: “Well, I'm asking him, because he's my husband; and I know things have changed.” Dennis: And you want your kids to understand the loyalties are to the other parent. The marriage has to be a priority and that they need to feel secure in that commitment that you're not going to run the show by yourself— Ron: Yes; absolutely. Dennis: —or let the kids hijack the car. Ron: So you do some proactive: “Hey, we're going to have a family meeting. Just want you guys to know that some things are going to change around here and this is why.”  Let's just pause a second and talk about language, because I learned a hard lesson. When I wrote the first edition of The Smart Stepfamily—it came out in 2002—and in that edition, I talked very directly about this matter.  8:00 But I made a mistake in how I worded a few things. I used language that implied that, somehow, there was more love for the spouse than for the kids. I don't even remember exactly how I said it, but that's what a few people would walk away from. I'd get letters, and I'd get questions at conference events that I do around the country, even now.  I learned: “Wow! I have to change that, because…”—for example, we say: “It is God first, then your spouse, and then your kids”; right? What are we saying with that?  We're saying, “We prioritize those relationships.” Why do we prioritize marriage? Scripture talks about leaving father and mother; cleaving to your spouse—that is the start of a new home—it's the marriage relationship that lays the foundation.  But sometimes, when you say that to somebody who has children from a previous relationship, what they hear is: “Abandon your children, reject them, leave them in isolation and spend all of your time and energy with your new spouse,”—that is not what we are saying.  9:00 When I wrote the revised, expanded edition of The Smart Stepfamily—that came out in 2014—I changed that wording. I was very careful, because I knew what people had heard. That's not what we're saying.  What we're saying is that there is one single important relationship in your home that will eventually bring stability to your home. But, now, notice—in the beginning of a blended family, putting your spouse in the front seat actually creates a little instability in your home. Now, that's backwards; that's not something that is typical—that's not true of biological families—but it is true of stepfamilies. It's another adjustment for kids; but eventually, it does bring stability to your home because you, as a couple, are leading from a position of unity, and togetherness, and oneness. The children see that and honor that.  Dennis: Ron, we've been talking about calling a family meeting and getting the stepchildren and the bio-children together and addressing them as one group.  10:00 It might be wise for the bio-parent of the children to address the issue separately from the stepchildren, so that it's not an “us” versus “them”: “Here's how we need to absorb this, as a little miniature family, as a part of the bigger family.” Ron: Yes; yes. That‘s wise. The message of that biological parent can be to their kids: “Look, you're the greatest kids in the world, and no other children in the universe are more important to me than you guys. Oh, by the way, there's no other adult more important to me than my new spouse. Now, I realize that that means, for you, that you don't get as much time with me; and every once in a while I talk to him”—or—“her about decisions. We're a team. You may not always like that.” Dennis: And “As the best kids in the universe, I want you to rally around this person I love!” Ron: Yes; invite them to that.  Bob: This is not just a stepfamily issue. Ron: Right. Bob: I mean, in intact families, kids try to divide mom and dad.  Ron: Yes. 11:00 Bob: They try to compete; and in intact families, new mamas often give their heart, time, and attention to their kids—and daddy is now on the sidelines—because mom's got this new love in her life. So this child-centered versus marriage-centered issue happens in both intact families and in blended families.  I remember, again, in the Art of Parenting video series—Bryan Loritts tells the story about getting invited to do ministry in Dubai—they said: “We'd like to invite you, and we'll send you two plane tickets.” He said, “Okay; Korie and I—my wife and I are going to go to Dubai.” He said: “One of my kids said: ‘Why are you taking Mom? Why does she get to go to Dubai with you?” He said, “Well, because I kind of love her more than I love you.” [Laughter] And you think, “You don't want to say that to your kid.” No; it helped his child to hear—and he went on to say: “And you know what? Someday, you're going to leave; and mom and I are going to be together long after you're gone. This is what's important.”  12:00 Ron: This is a really good point, and I want us to unpack what you just said; because there is a difference in saying that in a biological family than in a stepfamily. Here's the difference. When you say that, tongue in cheek, to a child—“…because I love her more than I love you,”—something inside of that kid kind of laughs along with it, because they know that your love for them is unmistakable; it's good and right that you love mom. In a blended family, that is unclear. Bob: Right. Ron: Sometimes children say, “It's good and right that you love your new wife, my stepmother”; but sometimes they're like: “Now, wait a minute. I'm your flesh and blood. How can you say that?” So what has a positive impact in a biologic home can have a negative in a stepfamily home. Bob: And the stepkids have likely been through some kind of loss. Ron: They have! Bob: So when you say, “I love her more than I love you,” they're hearing, “…loss magnified.” Ron: “Oh, no! Here we go again.” “Wait a minute! You said that you loved dad; and then you divorced.  13:00 “So now you're saying that you love this person more than you love me. Does that mean you're getting rid of me?” It does have very different implications, given the narrative of the family's journey, which is why this is important.  By the way, what we're doing right now, guys, is so helpful—this is what I call “going around the Horn”—we're going around the family; and we're jumping into the shoes of the child and saying: “Why would they react harshly to this idea of putting your spouse in the front seat? What's going on for a kid?” Well, yes, sometimes kids just want to ride in the front and they want what they want. But also there is: “I've been through some pretty rough stuff. I've lost connection with somebody. My family has gone through major transitions,”—a tragedy of some sort: a death or a divorce—“I don't want to go through another one of those things.” They're hypersensitive to the idea of being pushed aside, because they've seen it happen already in their home.  Of course, they're not going to welcome this new person riding in the front seat of the family car. 14:00 What you have to do, as a parent, is understand that but not be paralyzed by that. That is the big mistake that biological parents make—they see the pain in their child's eyes, and they go easy. All of a sudden, they're putting their kid in the front seat and their spouse in the back seat. That's the wrong move; because over time—you may have prevented a little bit of pain in your child's heart in the moment, but you've created a bigger pain, on behalf of your family, in the long run. Dennis: Are there some ways that you've seen blended families put their spouse in the back seat without them understanding it? I mean, what are the issues that typically show up in a blended family, where the spouse ends up in the back seat or—maybe, as you mentioned earlier—the trunk? Ron: We had a woman write in on Facebook®—follows us on FamilyLife Blended Facebook: “I don't get any time alone with my husband when his children are here. For weeks, it feels like we're strangers.”  15:00 Their scenario is—you know, his kids are at their biological mom's house most of the time. When they come to this house, then dad throws himself, 100 percent, into his kids.  Now, I want to balance this; because, on the one hand, I think that's important—he's dad, and they don't get much of him. He needs to throw himself into his children; and yet, he needs to spend time with his wife, in their presence, so that they see that this relationship/this marriage is really a big deal to dad. It's a delicate balance, but he's the one that has to keep that balance. If he gives 100 percent to his kids and 0 time to his wife while they're there, the message is: “She's in the back seat,”—that's a mistake. Bob: Let me just offer, I think, what can be a helpful word picture here. When your kids show up—and they're now entering into your family / into your marriage—they're going to be with you for the weekend, or they're going to be with you for the next two weeks, or for a month in the summer / whatever it is—you can look at it like: “The kids are here.  16:00 “Our life stops; and now, this new chapter—where the kids are in the middle of it / where they‘re at the center of it—that begins.”  Instead of thinking of it that way, I think blended families need to think: “When the kids show up, they step into our journey. They become welcome passengers in a journey that is ongoing. We're glad to have them here, but they're coming into something that doesn't stop but something that is ongoing—a relationship that is continuing. Life doesn't shelf out of one gear into another, but they hop in and we keep moving forward.” Ron: That's leadership—you are saying: “This is our family. Come join us; we want you to be a part of this.”  Now, again, I have to acknowledge that that's harder than it sounds. There are some situations where it's difficult. For some children, they have felt slighted—because of how things happened or how they got shifted around between homes—so this feels like another “I'm just getting pushed to the side” sort of moment. 17:00 I'm a firm believer that biological parents have to move toward their children with intentionality, so they can move toward their spouse with intentionality—it is both/and. Really, this is where we come back to that language thing. Yes; it is God first, and your spouse second, and your kids third; but that doesn't mean you ignore your kids. And yes; your spouse is your priority relationship, but that doesn't mean you don't love your kids. It's not either your spouse or your kids—it's both/and—of course, it is both/and. But we recognize that there is a need for intentionality to position the marriage to lead the home. If you don't do that—particularly, the biological parent hast to be the one to make this happen.  If they're unwilling—let me share a quick story with you to make a point. I was talking with a guy, one time, about his life—I said,” Tell me about your childhood, growing up.” He said: “Man, I grew up in a blended family. My mom and dad divorced when I was very, very young.  18:00 “Probably around age five or six my mom remarried. I had a stepdad.” Listen to his words—he said: “I love this guy. I called him, “Daddy,” almost from Day 1. He was important to me/valuable to me. He's still my dad—far more my dad in my life than my biological dad has ever been.”  Then these words came out of his mouth: “But I didn't respect him. Early on, my mom said to my stepdad, in front of us kids, ‘Hey, listen, if anything every goes wrong around here, I'm taking the kids and I'm leaving.'” See, that was a huge back-seat moment. She said to her husband, “I love my kids more than you, and I will choose them over you any day; so you better watch your step.” What this young man picked up, at the age of five or six, is that: “I don't have to respect him. Mom didn't respect him. He's not in the front seat; I am.”  Listen to how powerful that backseat moment was in undercutting the stepdad's role in the home. You don't ever want to say that to your spouse in front of the kids.  19:00 Rather, the message needs to be: “No, honey; you're in the front seat,” and “You and me—we're going to lead these kids from this moment forward.”  Dennis: And I would say: “Don't ever say the word, ‘divorce' or say ‘leave.' ‘We may have conflict, but we're going to stick it out for a lifetime.'”  Bob: Maybe a time out, but that's okay—it's different than leaving. Dennis: Exactly. I'll never forget flying on a lengthy flight, one time, with a young lady seated next to me. I struck up a conversation with her—she was on her way to her father's house—she said:” I have two homes. I spend one week in one place; one week in the other place,”—joint custody. I'm playing out this whole scenario of front seat/back seat. I mean, we just have to stop and say: “If divorce is about to cause your intact to be split up, we're talking about complexity here that kids should not have to deal with.  20:00 “They should not have to try to figure out who's in the front seat: ‘Where do I fit with mom?—with dad?—with her new spouse?—his new spouse?'”—etc. My heart went out to that young lady, thinking: “What must she think? What must be going on there? How could she be sorting through all the emotions that she was feeling?—the fear: wondering who she was / whose home did she belong to?” Ron: If there's any way to save a first marriage, do it! If there's any way to do that, seek reconciliation. Strive to make that relationship work, because you and your children are going to be walking out a tremendous amount of complexity and ambiguity if it ends in divorce. Dennis: I'd encourage our listeners to go to FamilyLife Today.com and check out the blended family section that's there. Read some articles, listen to other broadcasts, and also come and join us at a Weekend to Remember and get some training to head this stuff off at the pass.  21:00 You don't want to have to go through this. This is not the way marriage and family were designed, by God, to function.  Bob: You mention that you've written on this subject of putting your spouse in the front seat. We have a link on our website, at FamilyLife Today.com, to the articles that you've written; and we've got links to the books you've written. Again, there's information available, online, at FamilyLife Today.com. You and your team are working now on an event that's going to take place October 24th and 25th. This is our sixth annual Summit on Stepfamily Ministry. It's going to be happening in Little Rock. In addition to you speaking at the event, Linda Ranson Jacobs, who heads up Divorce Care for Kids, is going to be here; Dave and Meg Robbins will be speaking; Lamar and Ronnie Tyler; and others.  The focus this year is on parenting in complex families.  23:00 This is an event for pastors, church leaders, laymen and women—anybody who has a heart for step and blended families and wants to help those families thrive in local churches. They should plan to be in Little Rock October 24th and 25th for the 2018 Summit on Stepfamily Ministry. There's information available, online, at FamilyLifeToday.com; or call 1-800-FL-TODAY if you have any questions. Again, the website—FamilyLife Today.com—sign up for the Summit on Stepfamily Ministry happening in October. I know this is a busy time of year for a lot of families, with people already back in school or heading back to school. Summer is winding [down]—school supplies/new clothes—I mean, all kinds of things that just crowd this part of the summer. I want to ask you, in the middle of the busyness, to do something. Here, at FamilyLife®, in the month of August, we've had friends of the ministry who have come along and offered to match every donation we receive this month—  24:00 —on a dollar-for-dollar basis—up to a total of $500,000. This is the last week of the month. If we're going to take full advantage of this matching-gift opportunity, we need to hear from as many FamilyLife Today listeners as possible this week. So in the midst of everything else that is going on, can I ask you to go online and make a donation to help support the ongoing work of this ministry?—or call if that's easier: 1-800-FL-TODAY—you can make a donation over the phone. When you give to FamilyLife, your money helps us take this message—this practical biblical help and hope for marriages and families—take it to more people more regularly. That's where the money goes. Again, your donation will be doubled if we can hear from this week; so go to FamilyLife Today.com to donate, or call to donate at 1-800-FL-TODAY.  When you do, we're going to say, “Thank you,” by sending a copy of Dennis and Barbara Rainey's new book, The Art of Parenting.  24:00 It's our thank-you gift for your support of this ministry. Especially this week, we want to say, “Thank you for getting in touch with us.” We hope you can join us back tomorrow. We're going to talk about how we can have conversations in this culture about Christian beliefs and Christian values without those conversations going south. Dr. Tim Muehlhoff from Biola University will be here to talk with us about that. I hope you can be here as well. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, along with our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our host, Dennis Rainey, I'm Bob Lepine. We will see you back next time for another edition of FamilyLife Today.  FamilyLife Today is a production of FamilyLife of Little Rock, Arkansas; a Cru® Ministry. Help for today. Hope for tomorrow.  We are so happy to provide these transcripts to you. However, there is a cost to produce them for our website. If you've benefited from the broadcast transcripts, would you consider donating today to help defray the costs?   Copyright © FamilyLife. All rights reserved. www.FamilyLife.com