Blended, Not Mended

Have you ever said, "I'll never..." and later found yourself knee deep in that exact "never"? Besides saying to my parents, "I'll never live in Georgia" (my home for the last 15 years), I told my children on more than one occasion, "divorce will never be an option."

It was the ugliest word I knew. Divorce. I stumbled through my parents' divorce wounded and questioning, then determined that would never be me. I loved my kids too much to inflict that same pain upon them. Though I assured them over and over, the sudden collapse of what I believed a solid foundation was out of my control.

I told a dear friend that getting married again would probably never happen. After all, I had six kids, mostly teenagers and an ugly set of baggage sitting in the corner.

Needless to say, I never thought I would be writing about life in a blended family.

I'm not alone. Nobody plans to join this club. We all started out with a picture in our minds of growing old with our spouse, visiting the grandkids together. We didn't marry with a plan to divorce. We didn't plan a family that included a future step parent by our side.

I am so new to this and so are our kids. I used to think I knew a little about parenting, but now I feel lost. That's the truth. I think we all do, our whole new blended family. In fact, "blended" is probably not the best description of us. Maybe we are all in the blender together but we have not combined to form a new pleasant flavor or mixture. Far from it.

Thankfully, we knew a few blended families and received enough wise counsel to know that this wouldn't be easy at all. My husband and I did not enter into this blindly or expect our children to be happy and excited for us. But we did pray for each of them (and offer to pay for counseling. For real.).

I don't even know why I am writing this, other than to just say it all aloud. That's where healing in us begins, when we acknowledge how difficult something is, admit we don't have answers, that we feel discouraged. I do. I feel discouraged.

This marriage, this amazing love that we feel like we are swimming in right now does not feel amazing to our kids. Far from it. Some are still drowning in sadness and grief.

But it's not hopeless. My hope is in the Father who loves our children far more than we ever could. He clearly is the author of our love story and I am confident that he is still at work, still writing.

Our children are not children. They are young adults and each is so amazing. We are blessed beyond measure and believe that one day they will see God's hand in it all. We know that even though this was not what any of us planned, he is working it all together for our good.