Shelby Abbott: Growing up in a Blender

My father was interested in me until he wasn't.

And so that shapes you, obviously, in a number of different ways. I ran across a baby picture of me before my sister was even born, my mom and my dad, and I'm like, I wonder what he was like then. You know, they seemed happy in the picture.

I wonder what it was like then if he was responsible, if he was doing what it took to be a great father, to be a great husband, and to care well for his family. Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Ann Wilson. And I'm Dave Wilson, and you can find us at familylifetoday.com or on our Family Life app.

This is Family Life Today. Hey, so one of my favorite episodes of recording was when Ron Deal came into the studio. I mean, when you surprised me with Ron Deal coming in the studio. You guys didn't tell me it was Council Dave Day. It was Therapy Day. I was laying on the couch.

No, I mean, we didn't end up there. But, you know, Ron did such a good job walking me back through my life in a stepfamily. It was powerful.

I think I was crying half the time because I don't know if I've always realized how difficult that can be. Yeah, he pulled out some things in me that, you know, Ron has a gift of doing this, and he's back with us today in the studio. Thankfully, it's not to investigate my life, but Ron, welcome back to Family Life Today. It's always a joy to be with you guys. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, and it wasn't a surprise today either. We knew you were coming in, and you're going to be talking to Shelby Abbott. We get to listen to your Family Life blended podcast where you sat down with Shelby. Tell us a little bit about Shelby and what you guys are going to talk about.

Yeah, I'm excited. Shelby is on staff with us here at Family Life. He is an author. Campus ministry is something he's very passionate about. He's a conference speaker.

He's written a number of books, Pressure Points, Doubtless, wrote a book on cohabitation called What's the Point? And he's starting a new podcast on the Family Life podcast network called Real Life Loading. But we had to interview him about his family growing up. He too, like you, grew up in a blended family. And so on one of our episodes, I sat down with him and talked about his life growing up. And I got to tell you, it's a beautiful story. As our listeners listen to this, first of all, you're going to be reflecting on your own childhood, your own family. We all do this when we listen to other people's stories. It makes us think about our life and what was good and some of the residue that's not so good and how we deal with that. And so does Shelby.

He's very vulnerable and open. But you're going to hear how some of the pain in his life, but you're also going to hear about the grace that God brought to his life in the form of his stepdad. It's really a beautiful story. Well, Ron, this episode of your podcast is part of a series called Growing Up in a Blender. Talk about what is that series about. So really, we do a deep dive into the childhood experience of somebody looking back at their life growing up in a blended family.

And here's how it serves the listeners today. If you are in a blended family, maybe you're parenting a child or step-parenting a child or you're a grandparent and you're step-grandchildren. You're trying to figure out a relationship with them. Listen for the nuances of what it is to be a child and what they need and what you can learn from this in your own family.

But maybe you're not a part of a blended family. Still, you can be listening, reflecting on your own childhood journey. The things you learned, the things you want to do away with now that you're an adult, and the things you want to keep. Looking back over your life, what did your parents' divorce teach you about you? My parents' divorce taught me about me. It took a long time to probably discover more layers of that because God in His grace has been able to help me see that even though there were mistakes that were made, sin that happened on both sides, even on my own, that things were not a mistake. And reading specifically in Jonah, you realize that Jonah's disobedient, yet God uses his disobedience, for example, to bring the pagan sailors to Himself.

That was a direct result of Jonah's rebellion, his sin, yet it was something that God still orchestrated and worked out in the process of the messiness of rebellion. So that's been a little bit of a picture of how I've been able to learn and understand who I am in light of the mistakes that were made from the past, both by my father, my mom, both my step-parents, myself, my siblings, and things like that. And so, the divorce and the subsequent remarriage that happened shaped who I am in a number of different ways, and I found that out even more recently, too, through counseling of just realizing that it starts with a lot of just anger when I was in my car. It was road raging and people would cut me off or people wouldn't use their blinker or they'd cut in or whatever, and I'd be so mad. I was asking my wife, Rachel, why do you think I get so mad in the car?

And she goes, I don't know. And that started to manifest itself in other different ways. And so, I went to a counselor eventually and just said, I'm just angry, and it's really coming out in my car a lot. And he was able to link some stuff over time to help me discover that the divorce that happened when I was three and a half, I believe, was when my folks got divorced. And then my mom remarried my stepdad, who I called my dad when I was six, and just discovering that my kids at the time were around my age when I was struggling with this anger. So, I'm like, oh, my kids are like three, four, five right now. And that's what was kind of triggering some stuff for me of just knowing that there was an abandonment there. There was some hurt and anger, some wounding that happened at that particular time in my life, and I was seeing that kind of in my children at the time just because of their age. Their age was close in proximity to where I was at the time. Yeah, I gotta imagine that you as a dad wanted to protect your children, seeing them at that age, seeing them as vulnerable as they are at that age, and then going, huh, that was me, who was looking after me?

Exactly. And that's what the counselor was able to help draw out of me and help me to see. So, there's all these personality tests that people do, but Enneagram has gotten more popular, and for better or worse, whatever that is, one of the things about my Enneagram personality is I'm an eight, and therefore I'm a protector. And I will confront people as well in the spirit of protection, which usually, according to the tests, kind of link back to childhood trauma. And I discovered that over time that I'm very fiercely protective of my kids. And I think seeing, you're exactly right, seeing them in this moment, wanting to protect them and knowing the injury that did happen to me as a result of my parents getting divorced and subsequent, you know, popping around. My mom had custody of me and my sister.

We would have summer visitation with my dad, my father. And so, that caused a number of different key issues in my life that shaped me into who I am today. Of course, again, that didn't come out until I was in my late 30s, early 40s, where I discovered, oh, this anger that's been here, it's been here for a long time as a result, going back all the way to when I was three, four years old.

Right. You only saw the vulnerability of yourself when you were finally looking at your own children. I'm so glad to hear you say, and I believe it's true, the right understanding of God helps us cope with things that have happened to us in our life. On our journey to getting that right understanding of God, we often feel lost and confused and don't know how to cope with some of the things that have happened to us. You wrote at one point, in a very real sense, my stepdad has been my dad ever since I was six, and I praise God that he's been a stable presence in my life from such a young age. As I think back, however, I can't help but wonder what would be altered today if things had gone differently, if my father had never cheated and my parents had never divorced. Let's talk about that part of you that can't help but wonder what life would have been like had none of that ever happened.

Yeah, that's a deep question. It's a hard question because I don't really know my father. My father was interested in me until he wasn't. And he's shown some more recent interest in me, again, after I went to that funeral, and that's been difficult for me. From the time I was about 15 onward until my early 40s, he just hasn't really been interested in me.

And so that shapes you, obviously, in a number of different ways. So it's difficult for me to look back and go, what if my father, if he wouldn't have cheated on my mom, if he wouldn't have been selfish, if he wouldn't have been a child in many ways as an adult. It's difficult for me to even process that because that person doesn't exist in my mind, in my heart.

I'm sure there were times when he was great. And looking back on that, when I was like a baby, I ran across a baby picture of me before my sister was even born, my mom and my dad. And I'm like, I wonder what he was like then.

They seemed happy in the picture. I wonder what it was like then. If he was responsible, if he was doing what it took to be a great father, to be a great husband, and to care well for his family. Unfortunately, that's just never been a part of my memory that incorporates my dad. So I wander back, and does your sin define you?

Well, when you're in Jesus, no, it doesn't define you. But in many ways, the sinful decisions that my father made shaped who he is as a person. And I wouldn't want that guy as my everyday dad.

I'm thankful for the gift of grace that God gave me in my stepdad, who again, I call my dad. So he's the one who taught me table manners. He's the one who taught me how to drive a stick shift. He's the one who made fun of me when I liked girls. He was the one who, you know, would drop me off. I hated this. My sophomore year, he would drop me and my sister off at school. And every single time in front of the school, he would honk the horn and wave, Bye, kids.

Have a great day. I love you. And I was like, I hate this so much. But looking back on it, I love that.

I love that he did that. And so he, in many ways, has been the gift of the stability that I needed, not only with me and my sister, but with my mom. He loves my mom, and he always has loved my mom. And I praise God for who he is in my life. And he shaped not just my relationship with him, but my relationship with my mom, with my sister. And those have been gifts of goodness, of grace.

Yes, absolutely. You know, it seems to me we should ask the same question I started with when I asked, What did your parents' divorce teach you about you in terms of your identity and your belonging and how much you mattered to people? I think we should ask it about your stepdad, too, because it seems like his involvement has been a gift of grace. What has his involvement in your life taught you about you? How has that helped shape your identity today?

Well, that I have value. I think that he never, ever, ever treated me like a stepson. You know, that typical what you hear, that negative connotation of a stepchild. He never treated me like that. I never felt like I was the second-rate child to his biological children.

I never felt like that. He always cared for me well, loved me, taught me responsibility, disciplined me where I needed to be disciplined. Of course, he has his flaws, too.

But, you know, tracing things back to that original event and how it shaped me for all the bad things, there are all the good things that have happened as a result and we're still works in progress. But he, in many ways, I feel more comfortable with him as a parent than even sometimes with my mom. He's a lot more of an easygoing personality and he's easy to talk to. Granted, we have some of the same similar interests and maybe that's as a direct result of him. I have a deep respect for the military. I have a deep respect for a hierarchy of authority because of who I saw him to be. He's a very, very hard worker.

He graduated from high school and enlisted in the military and the Air Force, made enough money to be able to pay for his own college, went to college, graduated in two and a half years, and then went back in as an officer and retired as a full colonel, which he was offered at the time of retirement to become a Brigadier General and he just wanted to get out. So he works very, very hard. He's not lazy at all and I learned my work ethic from him in a lot of ways.

I learned, like I said, respect for authority. He's helped me to appreciate even fun things like the NFL a lot more because he's way more into the NFL than I am. I'm into the NFL but he's really into it and so I love talking football with him. He taught me how to golf when I was really young, when I was like 12. Sounds like he's just really been a big influence in your life. Yeah, he's been a huge influence in my life and in many ways I don't consider him anything other than my dad. He's not my stepdad. I've never called him my stepdad. I never called him Dave by his first name. He was always dad to me. This is Family Life Today and we're actually listening to a podcast called Family Life Blended where Ron Deal sat down with Shelby and talked about life in his blended family. And I tell you what, that just ended so beautifully.

Wasn't that so good? Yeah, I mean it just gives you an idea of what it can look like, right Ron? Yes it does and you know, for all the grief we give step parents sometimes and the grief they take from the negative stereotypes that society lays on them. I mean here's a picture of a stepdad who came in and made a difference. You know, stepped up, loved on Shelby and grace comes in various forms, right?

And sometimes it comes in a person that you would have never chosen or never expected to come into your life. Yeah, so let's go back to the conversation where you asked Shelby a pretty pointed question. In other words, should a parent tell his child about the divorce? So let's hear what he had to say. Every once in a while I run across a parent who says to me, okay, my former spouse had an affair, that's what ended our marriage, my children don't know, should I tell them?

Do you happen to have an opinion about that? I think it depends on the children's age. There could be a delicate way of putting that when they're younger, but I mean we've done an intentional job to talk to our kids. My kids are nine and seven now.

We've done an intentional job to talk to them about what sex is, why that's a holy thing, an important thing, and why it's not to be kind of frivolously thought about or tossed around as you get older. And so I think if you're talking to your kids about those things and they understand what they mean and why they're important within the context of a marriage and why they're not to be shared with anyone else, yeah, I think you should talk to your kids about that kind of stuff. I mean if your kids said, hey, dad, why is your father living here and why does grandma live here? Would you at some point feel the need to tell them, yeah, this is originally what happened in the beginning?

I think so if you don't have an agenda, if you're willing not to spin things in a way that makes you look better and makes the other parent look poorer in the eyes of your kids, because I think you have a responsibility to care well for your kids by not demonizing your ex. Now that's hard to do. And I don't pretend to know what those things are like personally because I've never been divorced and I don't know what it's like.

That's difficult to do. But we're asked probably to do that in a way that shows grace to other people and forgiveness as Christ calls us to do. But at the same time, it's not just you on the line, you're talking about your kids and you're shaping their opinions and the thoughts and feelings of their other parent, whether you recognize it or not. You know, I was thinking as you were just talking, no, you don't know what that's like from an adult standpoint, but you kind of know what it's like from a child standpoint. I mean the little comments made here or there that your mom dropped or the things that your dad said, do cast a shadow on the other parent and do shape your heart and mind. I mean even to the point where you call your mom and say, hey, we want to stay and live here with our father. That obviously grew out of what you felt like dad needed you to do.

Somehow you were drawn into that. That opinion was his. And the same thing's true when mom in an angry moment would say, well, your father, blah, blah, blah, and essentially blame him for the whole divorce process. Kids are easily swayed by all that and they take on the opinions of their parents and of course you agree with your mom or of course you agree with your father. That's your parent.

Am I supposed to disagree? Unless you have reason to sit back and go, nope, somehow this is your fault, which that was happening with your biological father. But still there's this desire to keep them close, to agree with them about how they see the world and that naturally pits you between the other parents.

You've talked around that a little bit already, but I just want to flesh that out a little bit more for our listeners. Even visitation, you know, moving between homes. What was that like for you in terms of what flowed well? What did your parents do well?

What were the things that made that really awkward and difficult for you? It went well because we operated on a schedule. So that was people were, you know, both sides agreed to the schedule. Until my father didn't.

But mostly up until that summer there was a schedule and we followed the rules there. The visitation that was bad is stuff that I had mentioned before. It was just constantly like, where do my allegiances lie?

Where are my loyalties? You know, looking back at an adult, I was like, should I have had to ask those questions as a kid? No, you shouldn't have had to ask those questions. And so that was more confusing than anything. Because, you know, my father talked about my mother in a certain way when we were there over the summer. And it was not great language, not positive at all in any way. Even like accusatory of what she used child support for. Like what she used that money for.

Little derogatory comments. Yeah, which I found out later on he wasn't even paying child support to the degree that he should have been. And then, you know, for a long time also this is one of the things that I had to relearn when I got married. The term Abbotts, which is my last name, was always a negative connotation in my family. The Abbotts were always like the bad part of the family. And so when I got married and my wife Rachel and I were known as the Abbotts, there was some like intentional relearning that I had to do about my own last name.

Plural. Because it was the Abbotts were always the bad element and they always did the bad things, said the bad things, behaved in a bad way. This is such an important story because we tell our listeners on this podcast on a regular basis. When you say something negative about your child's other parent, you are in effect saying that to the child because they know they are 50% that other parent. And this, you know, literally puts it into the last name. You know, oh, well, you're an Abbot and we all know that's a bad thing. And so now you as an adult have to unlearn that, rethink that. Again, it speaks to identity. But that is a part of me.

That is my last name. That is who I am. And yet I don't want to be associated with that. So how did you justify or rectify that in your own mind? Part of it was there's not a godly legacy that was left by the Abbott family, no matter how much lip service they would pay to that. And so part of me was like, I want to redeem the Abbott family name and make it a godly home, make it a godly family.

I want people when they hear the Abbotts to think godliness. So there was like an excitement with that and a wanting to like bring renewal. And yeah, a great opportunity for me, my wife and my kids. But now it's like it's been redeemed because of Jesus. And oh, I'm a part of his story now. So it's not about trying to redeem my name per se. It's about adding my name to the greater plan of the gospel and then just being thankful for the grace that God has given me.

Because if it wasn't for his grace, I would have no redeemable qualities at all. So yeah, it was kind of a reorienting of my priorities. We're listening to Family Life blended with Ron Deal and Shelby Abbott on Family Life today. Man, this is a powerful ending. Oh, it's our story.

Yeah, that's what I thought. Identical, I mean I remember Joshua 24, 15, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. So that became a foundational mantra of the Wilson name as well. So to hear Shelby, it's like I'm hearing the same angst in his soul that's been in ours. And man, when God redeems your family name, it's a beautiful thing, isn't it Ron?

It sure is. And guys, you know this, the meta story of scripture. It's not that we finally get perfect and bring our perfection to God for his acceptance and approval, but that instead we bring our imperfection and he lays perfection on it in the form of Jesus Christ and the cross. And our narrative changes. You know, we say all the time, our little slogan at Family Life blended, our unofficial slogan, is you can't change your past or your story, but you can change the story you tell about your story. This is the woman at the well. She comes to the well in shame. She's hiding.

She's embarrassed. She can't change that family narrative of her life and relationships. But Jesus enters the picture, changes what it means. Now all of a sudden, she is an instrument of God redeemed by him, and now she's using her story to tell other people to come meet Jesus.

She couldn't change her past, but she changed the story she told about her past. It's a redemptive story, and Shelby's doing that for his family and the Abbott family name, and it's a beautiful picture of God's grace. What a great reminder for all of us that God, that's what he does. And you can hear the rest of this conversation on our Family Life blended podcast, which is part of our Family Life podcast network.

I'm telling you, it's going to inspire you to allow God to redeem your name. I'm Shelby Abbott, and you've been listening to Dave and Anne with Ron Deal on Family Life Today. We've been listening to clips from episode 63 of the Family Life blended podcast. You can hear the rest of my conversation with Ron in the full episode.

Just search for Family Life blended wherever you get your podcasts, or click the link in today's show notes at familylifetoday.com. Now next week, Dave and Anne Wilson are going to be joined by several guests, including Jen Ochsman. Jen is going to unpack outward beauty, purpose, meaning, body image, and gender. It will not be boring. That's next week. On behalf of Dave and Anne Wilson, I'm Shelby Abbott. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life, a crew ministry, helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.