She held a picture of her mother in her hand. Sitting alone in the yard, this fifth grader looked anything but happy. Now and then she glanced toward the house. Perhaps her stepmother was watching her. She wanted that. Spite was the name of the game. Wishing her real mother was alive might just make her stepmother feel bad about the situation that had happened an hour before. Nothing out of the ordinary. The stepmother was just doing her job as a parent.
After a while, the stepmother called the young girl into the house. Feelings were discussed, issues, reasons why it was so hard to accept this new mother and how, as a young woman, this stepmother was doing the best job she could.
I was that girl. The talks worked, and through the years the two became best friends up until Dot died seven years ago. Dot was the woman my dad married after my real mom died when I was 4. I was forced into a blended family as I still grieved and fantasized about how things would have been if my mother had not passed away.
This story ended on a high note, but this is not true for many families. Counseling with members of blended families and leading seminars through the years has made me aware that there is no greater ministry for churches than to reach out to these individuals. Some churches are doing this.
On Sunday nights in our church, I have been leading a seminar for blended families. My resource material for the most part has come from a book by Dick Dunn, “New Faces in the Frame; A Guide to Marriage and Parenting in the Blended Family.” Dick’s interest in the needs of blended families came about as a result of his own divorce in 1977. When he married again in 1982, he was astonished at how different a second marriage is from a first. As a result of his own experience in blending a family, Dick wrote the books “Willing to Try Again: Steps Toward Blending a Family,” “Pre-paring to Marry Again” and “Developing a Successful Stepfamily Ministry.” Dick is a minister of singles and stepfamilies at the Roswell United Methodist Church in Roswell, Ga. The singles and stepfamily ministry at the church is one of the largest such ministries in the United States, serving more than 3,000 people each year. More than 22 different groups meet on a regular basis. I have been proud of the fact that as a denomination, we are in the preventive mode of helping marriages stay together. Marriage retreats abound, and the results are effective. After years of finally admitting that the world is full of divorced people and that they need ministering to, divorced support groups are part of the education programs of many churches.
And then there are the stepfamilies, blended together for different reasons — divorce, death, adoption. Check your church rolls and see how many families have children and the last names on the Sunday School rolls are different from that of their parents. Seems to me that at any retreat there should be a track for singles, divorcees, the widowed and stepfamilies.
My, what an opportunity for blended families. Dick Dunn states in his book, “Blended family life provides a laboratory to grow — and grow up — in ways unique to two merging families.
Where else would you have as many opportunities to learn patience, flexibility, sharing, unselfishness, consideration and sacrificial love. Children in stepfamilies often take on responsibilities at an earlier age, learn to function independently and thus mature faster than their peers.”
I agree with Dick Dunn. I learned a lot from my stepmother. That day I sat and held my mother’s picture, I deserved a spanking.
But she took the time to listen to me, to love me and to have patience. It paid off. To this day I miss her. We blended well, and I thank her.
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