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Surviving and Thriving in a Blended Family

Do you live in a blended family? Current statistics indicate that as many as 1 out of every 3, or 1 our of every 4 people in the United States lives in a blended family. Blended families are formed in a variety of ways; most commonly through divorce or widowhood. Unfortunately the statistics for survival of the marriage in a blended or step family are not encouraging. Dynamics in a blended family are complex as couples strive to have a solid relationship with each other and also form a relationship with someone else’s children, or share their children with someone else and also deal with ex spouses. Children feel confused about where their loyalties should lie, “if I like my step-parent, am I betraying my biological parent?” Questions abound as to how to navigate the new family; should a non biological parent discipline their step children?” All of the uncertainties and new relationships add up to stress and stress tends to reveal any cracks in the foundation.

If you find yourself struggling in a blended family, a good place to initially place attention is to strengthen and protect the marriage. Keep in mind that the most difficult time in a blended family is often the first 5-10 years. So part of what is necessary is perseverance. Relationships and families can take a long time to find a place of security. Here is a helpful article to provide additional information.

Additional Technology Thoughts

After navigating a teen in the house with her first smart phone and the parental attention and limit setting it requires here is another link for more thoughts on navigating technology in your child’s life starting from their earliest days.

My experience is that addictive and immediate gratification of electronic devices without limit setting has an allure for a teen that competes with their God given desire to have actual face to face relationship. For the continued healthy development of our child and family relationships, parents must stay alert to what is going on with your child and technology!

Technology and its Effects

The rapid technological changes in our culture and their effects on minds and relationships are currently being studied and debated. Most of us cannot imagine life without our cell phone, the internet, texting, or social media. What effect is this having on all of us?

If you’ve ever spent time with a video game, you’ve probably noticed it’s rapid addictive nature. Technology has immediate gratification, we don’t have to go to the library to look something up, or buy the correct map to get somewhere, we just type what we want to know into our smart phone. We also are less likely to try to figure out an issue or problem on our own when we can so easily access so many opinions and information with a click. We’ve all heard about the soaring rates of childhood obesity and diabetes and increasing rates of attention deficit disorder. The social skills of kids and teens are affected by the lack of face to face contact. Rather than being able to read and participate in the subtle nuances of emotional expression conveyed through body language, tone of voice or facial expressions, kids and teens are carrying all the relationships through a screen. Time will tell as further studies are completed, but I suspect the lack of personal connectedness may be shown to foster relationship and marital problems, depression, and anxiety as our brains are continually overstimulated. I recently heard from a mom whose teenager applied for a job and was hired on the spot. The employer made the comment that the teen was the first one he had interviewed who was able to make and hold eye contact throughout a conversation. The mom commented that her kids had always had their technology use monitored and limited.

So what are we to do? Technology will not go away, it will undoubtedly advance and provide us with a new generation of faster, smaller and attractive devices. As in all things, moderation is key. Maintaining family dinner times, outdoor play, exercise, and limits on games and technology is important. Let’s learn to embrace the benefits technology provides us and avoid the pitfalls and teach the same to our children.

Here’s a link to an article that contains further discussion on the topic if it interests you!

Interacting with a loved one who is depressed

Here is an interesting article about what not to say to a loved one who is depressed. Click Here for article.

Marital Communication – you gotta laugh!

Here’s a short video you may have seen, but it points out some of the challenges in marital communication in a very humorous way. We all know how challenging communication can be, especially with those we love. Staying well connected in our most significant relationships does much in increasing our satisfaction and joy in life and preventing depression and anxiety. Have a laugh at this video, but if your marriage continually feels like you “don’t get each other” marriage counseling can help.

Discouraged by your progress?

Have you ever noticed how hard it is to find an example of what we would call a “healthy family” in the Bible? It’s a lot easier to find families with a lot of sin and a lot of pain than to find families with a lot of harmony. For example, here’s just a sampling from Genesis:

The first recorded husband and wife calamitously disobey God (Genesis 3).
Their firstborn commits fratricide (Genesis 4:8).
Sarah’s grief over infertility moves her to give her servant, Hagar, to Abraham as a concubine to bear a surrogate child (Genesis 16). When it happens, Sarah abuses Hagar in jealous anger. Abraham is passive in the whole affair.
Lot, reluctant to leave sexually perverse Sodom, his home, has to be dragged out by angels and then weeks later his daughters seduce him into drunken incest (Genesis 19).
Isaac and Rebecca play favorites with their twin boys, whose sibling rivalry becomes one of the worst in history (Genesis 25).
Esau has no discernment. He sells his birthright for soup (Genesis 25), grieves his parents by marrying Canaanite women (Genesis 26), and nurses a 20-year murderous grudge against his conniving younger brother.
Jacob (said conniver) manipulates and deceives his brother out of his birthright (Genesis 25) and blessing (Genesis 27).
Uncle Laban deceives nephew Jacob by somehow smuggling Leah in as Jacob’s bride instead of Rachel (Genesis 29). This results in Jacob marrying sisters — a horrible situation (see Leviticus 18:18). This births another nasty sibling rivalry where the sisters’ competition for children (including giving their servants to Jacob as concubines) produce the twelve patriarchs of Israel (Genesis 30).
Jacob’s daughter, Dinah, is raped by the pagan, Shechem, who then wants to marry her. Simeon and Levi respond by massacring all the men of Shechem’s town (Genesis 34).
Jacob’s oldest son, Reuben, can’t resist his incestuous desires and sleeps with one of his father’s concubines, the mother of some of his brothers (Genesis 35).
Ten of Jacob’s sons contemplate fratricide, but sell brother Joseph into slavery instead. Then they lie about it to their father for 22 years until Joseph exposes them (Genesis 37, 45).
Judah, as a widower, frequented prostitutes. This occurred frequently enough that his daughter-in-law, Tamar, whom he had dishonored, knew that if she disguised herself as one, he’d sleep with her. He did and got her pregnant (Genesis 38).

That’s just the beginning. Time would fail me to talk of:

Aaron’s sons, Nadab and Abihu (Leviticus 10),
Gideon’s murderous son, Abimelech (Judges 9),
Samson’s un-Nazirite immorality (Judges 14–16),
Eli’s worthless sons (1 Samuel –2-4),
Samuel’s worthless sons (1 Samuel 8),
David’s sordid family (2 Samuel 11–18),
Wise Solomon who unwisely married 1,000 women, turned from God, and whose proverbial instruction went essentially unheeded by most of his heirs (1 Kings 11–12),
Etc., etc.

Why is the Bible loud on sinfully dysfunctional families and quiet on harmonious families?

Well, for one thing, most families aren’t harmonious. Humanity is not harmonious. We are alienated — alienated from God and each other. So put alienated, selfish sinners together in a home, sharing possessions and the most intimate aspects of life, having different personalities and interests, and a disparate distribution of power, abilities, and opportunities, and you have a recipe for a sin-mess.

But there’s a deeper purpose at work in this mess. The Bible’s main theme is God’s gracious plan to redeem needy sinners. It teaches us that what God wants most for us is that we 1) become aware of our sinfulness and 2) our powerlessness to save ourselves, as we 3) believe and love his Son and the gospel he preached, and 4) graciously love one another. And it turns out that the family is an ideal place for all of these to occur.

But what we often fail to remember is that the mess is usually required for these things to occur. Sin must be seen and powerlessness must be experienced before we really turn to Jesus and embrace his gospel. And offenses must be committed if gracious love is to be demonstrated. So if we’re praying for our family members to experience these things, we should expect trouble.

Family harmony is a good desire and something to work toward. But in God’s plan, it may not be what is most needed. What may be most needed is for our family to be a crucible of grace, a place where the heat of pressure forces sin to surface providing opportunities for the gospel to be understood and applied. And when this happens the messes become mercies.

My point is this: if your family is not the epitome of harmony, take heart. God specializes in redeeming messes. See yours as an opportunity for God’s grace to become visible to your loved ones and pray hard that God will make it happen.

Surviving and Thriving in a Blended Family

Additional Technology Thoughts

Technology and its Effects

Interacting with a loved one who is depressed

Marital Communication – you gotta laugh!

Discouraged by your progress?

God’s Mercy in Messed Up Families

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