Stepping into a blended family

I didn’t become a Christian until later in life, and even then my growth was slow at best until after the turn of the millennium. My wife and I married during that slow-growth period, but it wasn’t until years later that I learned what a family really is – a group of people bound together in love through adoption, marriage or blood. One person I spoke with not long ago referred to her family as a “family forest” rather than a “family tree” because of the numerous adoptions that have taken place. If that family is a forest because of its adoptions, then my family is a staircase because of all the steps involved in its creation.

My mother died when I was an adolescent, and my dad remarried a few years later. My stepmother, Carolyn, has two daughters by a previous marriage from which she is divorced. My younger stepsister was divorced with children when I met her. She remarried, had two more kids, divorced again, and is now married to her third husband. My elder stepsister has also been divorced and remarried. Carolyn’s parents were divorced after their eighth child; her mother remarried and had another two children. If you think this is confusing to read about, you should try living it. If it were biological, Carolyn’s half-brother would be my uncle. As it stands, he is my half-step-uncle, and her stepdad is my step-step-grandfather, whose stepson from another previous marriage is my step-step-step-uncle.

When I first learned of this divorce trend in the new part of my family, I became disgruntled with the idea of calling them family at all. I turned off my emotions toward them so as to maintain my old life as best I could. I started making up jokes that showed my frustration: “How many divorces does it take to screw up a family?” Or, shaking my fist like Darth Vader, I would claim, “You don’t know the power of the dark side of Divorce!” I resented all of them, especially after I met Atulah, the woman who was to become my wife.

Atulah was divorced with three daughters when I met her. I began avoiding Carolyn (my stepmother) and her clan when Atulah and I were engaged because I felt that all the steps in my family would have a negative impact on my future. To my stepdaughters-to-be, I reasoned, I would be a stepdad, Carolyn would be their step-step-grandmother, and her stepdad would be their step-step-step-great-grandfather. I felt that three stepdaughters was enough steps in one family; standing in the middle of this staircase frustrated me, especially as a young believer.

Atulah, though, (bless her heart) was never happy with my coldness toward Carolyn and her family. She tried to teach me a different way of seeing them, but her lessons fell on belligerent ears (belligerent, not toward Atulah, but toward God). She began praying for me then, and soon after I met her nieces and nephews. That’s when God began to show me that those children were not my stepnieces or stepnephews any more than I am Atulah’s stephusband. They are simply my nieces and nephews.

With some reflective thinking, a little aid from Atulah and a degree of heart-pounding repentance, I began unlearning some of the things that I had so effectively taught myself. Specifically, I decided that Carolyn is a replacement of my mother’s absence, rather than a replacement of my mother. When I finally allowed her to have a relationship with me, the step between us subsided like a step in an escalator at the end of a run. By applying to Carolyn what God taught me through Atulah’s nieces and nephews, my relationship with Carolyn began to be based on something other than blood, but equally as effective – mutual love; Carolyn didn’t need to be just “Dad’s wife” anymore.

I still think divorce is a harmful thing. It bothered me for a long time that Carolyn and so many in her family had been divorced and that that trend had been incorporated into my life via Dad’s and Carolyn’s marriage. But I don’t have to let my dislike for divorce interfere with my relationship with my family, any more than Atulah lets my faults interfere with her relationship with me. That realization freed me to have a family. As far as I’m concerned now, divorce was not brought into my life through marriage, only Carolyn and a plethora of wonderful new relatives.

The same realization became especially important when struggling with how to be a parent to my children. “They’re just my stepdaughters,” I’d think when I felt unneeded. But God showed me that they were stepdaughters only because I had stepped away from them. As I learned to love them like most biological fathers love their kids, God removed the steps from among us and I became their dad. They still refer to me as their stepdad to their friends, but the way they treat me tells me that they think of me as dad. They come to me with their needs. They seek my approval, call me when they’re sick and submit to my discipline when they make poor choices, just as they do with their mother.

“Step” is a term coined to describe how certain relations appear on paper. It shouldn’t be allowed to be a stumbling block for how people relate. A family is a family because of love; blood is secondary at best; otherwise marriage would be impotent in bringing husband and wife together. The last step in the creation of my family was the reconstruction of me. Even though I “divorced” myself from them, I had thought the division was their fault. When I learned that I’m the step bridging the gap between my parents and my kids, God provided us with a healthy family.

A.J. Mittendorf lives in Prince George, B.C.