Prioritizing Your Relationship

Is it possible for a stepdad to be the kind of protector and guide and leader to a stepdaughter that he wants to be?

Ron Deal says that can get kind of tricky. That's one of those delicate pieces where a stepdad's saying, yeah, but I'm here to help. He's got a big heart. He's got great intentions. He's been to the men's ministry at his church, and he knows what leadership. He's been listening to Dave preach about this forever, and you know, he's been through stepping up. And Dennis Rainey taught him how to be a man and be a leader, and here he's trying to do that. And stepdaughters going, well, you ain't my dad.

You know, back up. This is Family Life Today. Our hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson. I'm Bob Lapine. You'll find us online at familylifetoday.com.

How can a godly stepdad or stepmom be the kind of parent that God wants them to be in the lives of their stepchildren? Ron Deal says that can happen. It just needs to happen slowly and carefully. Stay with us. And welcome to Family Life Today.

Thanks for joining us. I've talked about this before, but it bears repeating. Ann, you were a gymnast, right? I was. And during the time that you were— This is going to be fun.

I always like when he goes there. She comes running in the house and does aerials. It's just fun. Maybe not. When you were a gymnast, a part of your score was based on the degree of difficulty of the routine you were doing. That's very good. I'm very impressed by this. Bob, how do you come up with this stuff?

I've watched the Olympics, okay? No, I mean, here we are, talking—okay. Yeah, I can't wait to see where it goes. I want to see where you go with this.

This will be fun. Well, so if somebody's doing a simple routine and they do it flawlessly, they're still not going to get a 10 because it was a simple routine, right? Exactly.

If you want a 10, you've got to do a complex routine, and you've got to do that really well. Exactly. So I'm thinking— I got you, Bob.

I know where you're going now. I'm thinking people in a first marriage may not ever get to a 10 because they don't get the degree of difficulty that's—and you know what I mean. That's kind of a genius thing right there, right? You can have a 10 in your first marriage. I'm not saying your first marriage can't be all that God intends for it to be, because it can be and should be, right? Yeah.

But the degree of difficulty in a second marriage is certainly usually higher because there are just a whole bunch more complicating factors that come into a second or a third marriage. And the reason I know that is because I've spent the last almost a decade— Because we have the expert with us. That's right. We've worked together, Ron, DLI. Ron, welcome back to Family Life Today. Thank you. We've worked together for almost a decade, but we go back—when was the first time you were on Family Life Today? 2001.

I hadn't even published my first book yet. We saw Ron's content, his material, and we knew at Family Life there's a need for this to be shared. And so we said, would you come and be a guest on Family Life Today? And Ron came, and then he came again, and then he came again. We kept asking him. We said, we can't afford— He's that guy.

He just won't go away. We couldn't afford to travel anymore, so we said, would you just move here and join the team? And for almost a decade now, you've been giving leadership to Family Life Blended. You've got a podcast, you do events, you've got books and resources, online material, and you've just updated the SmartStep Family video series. How many sessions in the series?

There's eight sessions, plus a bonus session for children and a bonus session for dating couples and a bonus session for pastors. It seems to me, as we've talked about this this week, a lot of the degree of difficulty and complexity in a blended family comes around parenting issues. I'm wondering, if a couple is getting married, both of them have been previously married, neither of them have kids from a previous relationship or previous marriage, are they going to have less complexity to have to juggle than a couple that's bringing kids into the equation? Absolutely, because there's something fundamental about having your own children and raising your children together. The bondedness, connectedness, and authority that comes in parenting is built in when they're your kids. My word was fierceness.

The fierceness. The fierceness a mother at least carries for that child of wanting to protect them, that's probably a big factor coming into a second marriage. And as you know, as a mom, that you have that fierceness when they're still in the womb.

Exactly. And so if you're a stepmom coming in, you have the desire for that, but that fierce relationship is a two-way street, and so you have to navigate and negotiate and build and strengthen, and that just takes time, and so it's not built in. So we were just in a setting together where somebody asked you a question that I thought was a pretty good question, because I've heard you say, I've said to people, in a blended relationship, the marriage ought to be the priority relationship. And this person said, boy, it just feels wrong to say that because it sounds like you're saying your kids shouldn't be a priority.

And you kind of reframed that. Explain how you would say that differently if you're talking to a couple now. Well, in Genesis, we talk a lot around here about the Bible talking about leave and cleave, leave father and mother and cleave to your wife, your spouse.

And that's really a shift in allegiance. It's not saying abandon your father and mother. Forget about your father. Dishonor your father and mother. Leave them to themselves. They'll figure out old age, all that. You've got nothing to do with them anymore.

You've got nothing to do with them. And it's not saying that. What it's saying is, no, you shift your primary allegiance to your spouse and become a new unit that establishes a new home and a new family. You maintain connection with relationship, father and mother, and care for. And as they age, we all know, that's a part of honoring them. So, they're still family. Likewise, when a parent marries somebody, you have this significant shift in allegiance.

That's what marriage is. You're saying, you are the primary relationship in my life, and my allegiance ultimately, till death do us part, is to you. I still have children. I'm responsible to them.

I'm obligated and committed to them, and I love them, and I care for them, and I'm going to pour myself out into them and their child-rearing years. But I'm married to you for life. So, it's never, you've got to choose one over the other, which is what sometimes people hear, and that's what's unfortunate.

Nobody's saying that. We're saying, continue to be a mom or a dad, and love your kids well, and your new allegiance in life is to your spouse. This is true whether it's a first marriage or a second marriage, because, again, the marriage needs to be the primary allegiance.

And, brother, I'm so glad you said that, because that's the other way of thinking about this. A husband and wife that are raising their children, if you went to them and you said, hey, look, who's your number one relationship? Is it to your kid?

They would say, no. You know, it's my husband, my wife. Well, does that mean you're neglecting your kid? No, we're not neglecting our children. Like, nobody even questions it when it's a biological first family. Here's where it becomes confusing for all of us. When your 13-year-old has more emotional needs, more challenges than your spouse does, all of a sudden you're investing more time, more effort, more energy into that, because the need is obvious. It's presenting itself. If you go, we've got to go where the trauma is, let's deal with this. And that can quickly start to feel like this has now become the priority relationship.

Right. There are seasons of any marriage, first marriage or blended family marriage, where you do need to pour a lot into a child or a group of children based on their life or circumstances that are going on. Sometimes kind of putting your marriage a little bit on hold, like you're hanging on, but you know you—and that's good and right and appropriate.

At the end of the day, though, you've got to maintain that marriage, and you've got to shift back to your allegiance and supporting and nurturing your marriage relationship so you don't give your marriage away to your kids. And I can imagine this happens a lot when one of the spouses dies. And so then let's say a wife dies and husband remarries a year or two, five years later, and 13-year-old daughter is still grieving, losing her mom, you want to be there and protect and walk through, but you can't be there for the next 20 years.

Yeah. And so there's a delicate balance here. What we would tell that dad, who is a widower and he's taking care of his kids, is you've got to continue to move towards your children and pour into them and grieve with them. The loss of their mother, and you've got to start investing in your new marriage. And by the way, I think there's an equation here. You move toward your biological children so you can move toward your spouse so that ultimately your children and your new spouse can move toward one another.

It's a triangle. And a biological parent is the one doing an awful lot of work, moving toward kids, moving toward spouse, moving toward kids, moving toward spouse. And yes, it can get taxing, but that's how you create a climate where new step people will begin to like each other. When you updated the Smart Step Family DVD series, the video series, you added something that had been missing. We've talked about this this week. You added the child's perspective and brought in some emotional intelligence and emotional understanding that maybe had been missing the first time around.

Yeah. I wanted people to hear from real-life couples and kids. And so we're able to work in some clips throughout the video series where you actually get to hear some real stories. One of those stories that you feature, we hear a daughter and her stepdad address the challenges, and we hear some of the emotions that she was feeling and some of the frustrations that the stepdad was feeling. My parenting style was more based on rules and structure. I came in, you know, this is how it's going to be with a whole lot of expectations. My big thing was wanting the children to help out the parents.

Me and my stepdad definitely butt heads a lot. It felt very much like he was trying to come in here and just be sort of like a patriarch or my dad or something. And I didn't like having someone else tell me what to do.

And Sarah's grades were struggling. I started to ask Lori to speak into that situation and pass out some consequences and to make sure that she was following through. Lori initially thought it was very harsh, very extreme.

Because she would come to me and I would give permission without talking to him. It was difficult because I had felt like I was a single parent for seven years and I did everything. I would negatively interpret what he was saying as him saying that I was a bad parent. Instead, I was more like, okay, well, I still have to co-parent over here with my ex-husband.

And we need to be on the same page as far as if there's a, okay, you don't get your phone for two weeks, or you don't get to go out for Halloween this year because you are failing this class and you've not been doing your homework. There have been times where I've felt disrespected and even left out to dry or left in a lurch by Lori. And it's at that point that I need to just remember that she's for me.

She's not against me. And I need to understand that there's going to be some things that she wants to do that is for the benefit and blesses all of us. Well, you can hear all three of those folks trying to figure out how to work it out and they're trying to figure it out. They're all a little frustrated with how things are going because it's counterintuitive to how they would naturally move things.

And they want to believe the best about one another, but in the midst of it, we can get sideways on this stuff. He wants to be a good leader. He's trying to bring some good structure and some good ideas into the family. His stepdaughter says, you're not my dad.

Don't try to act like my dad. And she's got a point, right? And he's not the dad. She's got a biological dad. She's trying to figure out what to put him in her heart. And the biological mom is saying, well, are you saying I'm a bad parent? And she's feeling accused. If you're telling me something about my daughter, you're kind of telling me something about me. And then Lori, the mom, is saying, oh, and I have a former husband I have to consider and we're co-parenting, so there's a third parent in this equation.

And all of a sudden, there's just a whole lot of things to navigate and negotiate. We're back to the complexity and the degree of difficulty, but they can get a 10 in this, can't they? They can.

If they can learn how to execute the routine. And I got to tell you something a little behind the scenes about this family. Kirk, the stepdad, is actually a seminary student at Dallas Theological Seminary, and he's my intern right now, working at a distance. And his goal when he gets out of seminary is to specifically do marriage ministry and blended family ministry. Wow.

Really? And they are doing very, very well, dynamic couple. Lori's terrific, and we've met them and spent time with them. And my point is, even smart people have some challenges as it comes with navigating all of this terrain related to blended families. There's just a lot of things happening in the mix. I want to point out, the daughter felt like he's trying to be my dad, I don't want you to be my dad. I think we ought to talk about that for a second, because that's one of those delicate pieces where a stepdad's saying, yeah, but I'm here to help. He's got a big heart. He's got great intentions. He's been to the men's ministry at his church, and he knows what leadership. He's been listening to Dave preach about this forever, and he's been through stepping up.

And Dennis Rainey taught him how to be a man and be a leader. And here he's trying to do that, and stepdaughter's going, whoa, you ain't my dad. You know, back up. And so how do you do this? I'm paying for everything, but she won't let me be the dad. It's delicate. This is where you respect where the child is, and you figure out how to lead through your wife.

Tell us how you can do that. Give us an example. A good example would be Kirk coming to his wife and having dialogue about, what do you think about this or that or this behavior or how we respond to that situation? And the two of them do a lot of conversation behind closed doors about how they want to lead as a unit. Then, on agreement, change might happen. And we're probably going to encourage in the beginning years of this blended family that mom be the one who implement those changes. Why? Because she has a clearly established relationship with her daughter, and her daughter knows exactly who she is in her life.

You're my mom. And there's some weight of authority there. And so all of a sudden, Kirk and Laurie are leading from unity, and Laurie's implementing. But Kirk is bringing great wisdom to the family, and he's making his contribution.

His direct relationship with his stepdaughter will be a function of time and relationship, and it could take another period of time before he feels comfortable enough saying directly to her, let's do it this way, or no, you can't do that. But he's earned his stripes at that point. So it's almost like Josh McDowell's quote that we've all heard, rules without relationship equal rebellion. So in this case, he's not the rule guy, at least at the beginning of the relationships, it's all about building the relationship, but he's still talking to his wife about what could this look like. He's still the leader.

He's just leading indirectly instead of directly. That's a wisdom that I think stepdads really need. And you show in this series, you let us see that when couples, when they stay after this and they're committed to this, there can be a good outcome. In fact, we get to hear from the same family some of their good outcome.

Listen to how part two goes. But this past weekend we were at a wedding and she actually pulled me aside and said, thank you so much for loving my mom the way you do. And it meant the world to me because it was almost six or seven years of just constantly feeling frustrated and finally getting through to say, you know, it is making a difference. It's not easy. Parenting in any relationship is not going to be easy, but it's one that really there is a light at the end of the tunnel and the kids definitely see it.

You know, when you get a little reward like that, you really need to hold on to it. And Kirk obviously did. Let me just point out that his stepdaughter didn't necessarily say a direct comment to him. Thank you for being my stepdad. Thank you for loving.

Thank you for stepping into my world in life. What she said was, thank you for loving my mom. Now, that may not be the ultimate compliment that Kirk's looking for, but it's a pretty good one because what it represents is I see the contribution you're making in my mom's life, it's helping her life, and that's helping my life.

Sometimes stepchildren have a hard time saying thank you directly, but they can say it indirectly. Take that and run with it. I was going to say, that's like a 9.8 on that vault landing. And you wanted a 10, but that's as good as a 10.

9.8 is pretty good. That's right. Yeah. You end this series with a pretty emotional moment.

Do you need to set this up for us before we hear this clip? You know, as we've already said this week, you need to know that there's rewards coming. And we talked about the passage of time, and you can never really predict how fast any one blended family is going to come together, but typically it takes five to seven years, and sometimes a little longer, sometimes a little less. But recognizing that you're on a journey, and you've got to trust the process to work in your behalf, and if you give up on the process, then you don't get the rewards that you've been looking for.

You need that perspective. This next clip, you're going to hear from a stepdad, a mom, and a stepdaughter talking about, in the words of the child, we were a mess. And they stuck with it, and it ends pretty good. Kevin and I, probably about a year after we met, got married, and so of course I brought our child into the relationship, and she was just turning 12.

And that brought within its own set of challenges. When my mom and Kevin first got together, I really kind of didn't know how to feel. It was kind of new for me, and so I was not receptive. There was a lot of pushback. We wouldn't eat at the same table.

She would take her food upstairs, we're very seldom riding the same car. Going through that phase of it, the tension, that was probably some of the dark times for me. There were just lots of very tense moments where it just did not seem like it was working.

Lots of times with him in the garage, kind of working out his frustrations, lots of times with her telling him, you're not my daddy. And me kind of caught in between, and trying to get both of them to kind of come together. So there was a time when I was having some extreme health issues, and I noticed that a lot of the people that I called my core friends were not there for me, were not able to come through to the point where I was isolated and didn't have anybody. But my mom and Kevin were there for me.

They dropped everything regardless of our background, our history. It was like God had dropped a ton of bricks over my head and said, wake up. Regardless of how she acts, you still show love, show that you care, show that you're going to be here regardless. She realized, oh, they are going to always be here for me. And I could kind of see the change in her. For three or four years, I'm starting to see the growth and the connectivity of our family, our unit, right?

And so I'm loving this. And so I still felt like something was missing. And so talking to God and praying about it, I actually called my mom one day and I was like, Mom, I have an idea. I'm going to ask Kevin to adopt me.

I knew nothing about it. I thought we were going over to shoot a video about Blended Family. And little did I know that I would be asked to adopt.

Of course, I would say yes in a heartbeat. I was just overjoyed. God taught me how he views us. We're ugly. We're broken.

We're all different shapes and pieces. But look what God can do with anything because our family was a mess. But look what he's done and look what he's doing with us.

He can make something out of anything. It took close to 18, 19 years for this thing to come full circle. It was truly God working in her life. Just the fact that we're all together. That was a long road, a long journey. What I love about this guy, his step-parents, man, this guy said, you know what? No matter what she does, I'm going to love her. And he felt the tug of the Holy Spirit on him.

Just stay dedicated to doing what you can do. I can imagine the many, many nights. Can you imagine not riding in the same car because your step-daughter won't ride with you? That's awkward. That is painful. That's rejection. That's rejection. And night after night after night, you can just imagine him going, okay, I'm supposed to still love?

Are you kidding, God? Where's the payoff for this? And then one day she says, would you adopt me? Now, I want to be quick to say adoption is not the ultimate end-all game of blended family life. But in this case, it represented the culmination of all of that work. And they reached the promised land.

And you talk about perseverance. 18, 19 years, he said. Especially in a culture and a generation that we want immediate gratification.

He waited 18 to 19 years, and he was so patient. The verse that came to my mind was Proverbs 3, 5, and 6. Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding, which is so easy for all of us to do. In all your ways, acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.

And that took a while to make straight that path. Thanks, Ron, for making me cry today. Just doing my job. What a beautiful story, though.

Just doing my job. The verse that came to mind for me was Romans 5, 8, which says, while we were still sinners. Yet sinners. Christ died for us.

Christ died for us. And I'm just thinking, this stepdad modeled the love of the Father, the persevering love of the Father, in the face of rejection, in the face of sin, and just said, I'm still going to love you while you're still in rebellion against me, while you're still in isolation, while you don't want anything to do with me. It's the gospel. It is the gospel, on display in a blended family. And ultimately, that's what we're praying for.

Yeah. In a first marriage, in a second marriage, whatever it is, we're praying that redemption, reconciliation, forgiveness, healing, hope, all of that comes to bear, and God gets glorified in the process. And the church has a role in this.

If this guy had had, I don't know this part of the story, but if he'd had a group of people around him, maybe some other blended family couples he gets to meet with on a regular basis, or a pastor he gets to meet with who says, yeah, I get it, man. I'm hearing you, but hang in there. I'm with you. We're praying for you. Here's a tip. Here's a tool.

Here's a resource. Here's something to encourage you along this journey. Keeps him going. Yeah.

You've got to believe, on year three or four, when he's still being rejected, somebody's whispering in his ear. Somebody's saying, come on, hang in there, because to go on your own, you get discouraged pretty quick. And you put together this video series hoping that you would help not just to transmit information, but to build communities, structures, support structures, little microcosms, little support groups, so that couples can be doing this for one another all the way through.

Yep. And church leaders are going to learn a lot from the series. They're going to get that tip or that tool or that one sentence that they have in their back pocket to share with somebody at the end of a service who really needs some encouragement.

I think it's the way to go, letting the church be the church to one another around some good information that's going to help encourage them on their journey. Always great to have you on Family Life today, and we love listening to the podcast, too. Thank you. I love doing the podcast. We're hearing good things from listeners. It's a lot of fun, and we're able to talk about real-life things on that podcast, so it's good.

Thanks, Ron. You can find out more about the Family Life blended podcast when you go to familylifetoday.com. Also information about the Smart Step Family DVD series that has been redone recently. We've been talking about that today.

Information on how you can get copies of those videos or access the videos. Go to familylifetoday.com for information about that. And then we should also tell people about the event you have planned for October 1st and 2nd. For the last, I think almost a decade now, we've been doing a summit on Step Family Ministries in the fall, and it's a two-day event. People have been coming from all around the world to be trained and equipped on how to do Step Family Ministry more effectively. This year, October 1st and 2nd, the Summit on Step Family Ministries is going to be happening in your home community. It's actually going to be happening in your living room, because we're doing it as a live-streamed event. We've all figured out here in the last several months how to connect with people more effectively online, and we believe this is going to be the largest event ever held to train people on how to do effective Step Family Ministry.

It happens October 1st and 2nd. People are already signing up to be part of this event. Information is available online at familylifetoday.com. Go to our website and make plans to carve out a couple of days with other people on your church staff or people in your community, in your life, in your world who are involved in ministering to couples or families, blended families and step families. Go to familylifetoday.com and plan to be part of the Summit on Step Family Ministry happening October 1st and 2nd. The info you need is all available right there. If you have any questions about the Summit or any of the resources we've talked about here today, call us at 1-800-358-6329.

That's 1-800-F as in Family, L as in Life, and then the word Today. Now tomorrow we're going to talk about what can be one of the hardest, most painful circumstances that married couples have to deal with, and that's the issue of infertility. Matthew Arbo is going to join us to talk about how we hang on to our faith, how we walk with Jesus during those difficult times. Hope you can tune in for that. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, along with our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Anne Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life of Little Rock, Arkansas. A crew ministry. Help for today. Hope for tomorrow.