“Blended Family”
June 17, 2008
Colossians 3:12-14
12 Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. 13 Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. 14 And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.
Background
I was looking up statistics on families. I was astonished with what I had learned. According to the 2000 United States census less than 25% of our current population live in what is known as traditional nuclear families. The kind of family Mer and Jim grew up in. Divorce rate is around 43% for first marriages, remarriages 60%, and higher if both have children . . . wow, we all need serious prayer!
Let us give you a little family background.
I have two children from my previous marriage. Cole is now 19, Shea is 16. Mer has three children from her previous marriage. Jonah is 14, Jordan is 12, MacKenzie is 11. Cole and Shea don’t live with us.
In June of 2004, Mer and I married and our two families were to become inextricably tied. We are known thus known as a “blended family”, or also known as a “step family”. I guess we have to have a label for such things.
Our journey has taken us through some of the most exciting times and some of the most trying moments.
Breaking apart
So let’s understand this picture. I started out having a “traditional nuclear family”. Okay it wasn’t exactly traditional for my ex-wife and I couldn’t have children together naturally, so we adopted both of our kids. Each of them were adopted from the Philippines when they were around 7 months old, but we were the “nuclear family” part. After 17 yrs. of marriage we were divorced.
Mer started out having a “traditional nuclear family”. After 8 yrs, she and her husband were divorced.
We were two separate families healing. Divorce is an awful thing to have to go through, and is really awful when children are involved. The kids’ world is torn apart and life as they know it would never be the same. For those of you who have experienced this yourself know what I mean. It is a ripping apart of something that has grown together organically, first as a couple, then with kids. The family grows in such a way that your life rhythm revolves around the all the members of the family. You develop traditions, you create memories, you dream of the future together - you don’t imagine a world without any one of the members of the family. Now, despite whatever the circumstance that leads a couple to divorce, one feels like one’s world is turned upside down. And to me, and I know to Mer, our heart pained and ached with what the kids must have going through.
It is anguishing to feel like you are the one responsible to cause your own children such pain and sadness. To know that by our actions (whether justified in some way or not), our children’s lives will never be the same.
What I felt the most was guilt, tremendous guilt, guilt that felt would last the rest of my life. Then was the pain of loss. The loss of family. The loss of the kids for they didn’t live with me. The loss of a formerly loving partner.
Shortly after, in my particular case, there was another (no less important) story. In fact it has forever changed my life. I confessed for the first time in my life as a sinner, and accepted Jesus Christ into my heart as my personal savior. This was a new beginning - I was a new creation!
Baggage
I met Mer, courted her, and in the summer of 2004 I married Mer. Suffice it to say that my wedding to Mer and her kids was unquestionably the best wedding ever! Okay I’m biased. But what I’m really saying is that putting Jesus right in the middle of our wedding covenant was what would give us the very best chance of making this new family work. Picture this image on our wedding day: at our alter was a rough hewn wood cross, a rock, and the body and blood of Christ represented by the elements. This was our only chance for making it for we were entering into territory which would certainly be filled with joy indeed, but was statistically doomed for failure. Remember the statistics I recited earlier?
You see, when we came to this day we brought a lot of things with us. Not only was there our individual healing experience from the divorce with Mer and I and the kids, but we brought individual sets of past experiences of family life. As eight individuals in this new family, we were all bringing different sets of experiences into new, very uncertain relationships. And it is not like we were all just coming together for a weekend. This was to be our new life together.
In fact, to make matters more interesting, it doesn’t stop there. The past just doesn’t get erased. We are still connected to our former spouses - the kids’ original mom and dad. Furthermore, we are then also connected to our former spouses’ own life circumstance. In our case, the old separate “nuclear families” (mine and Mer’s) had divided and multiple new relationships were created – in my kid’s case for instance, Cole and Shea had to first develop a new kind of relationship with just me and my life separate from their mom’s and the reverse with their mom; then with their mother’s new husband, and then with his kids who are older than them; then one with me and Mer, and then Mer’s kids who are younger than them. Right now, Mer’s kids have a somewhat similar circumstance. Incredible adjustments that posed significant challenges!
We have to admit, we did not follow through on what all the books say that we should. And the reality is despite doing one’s best to set up the transition into a new family order, it is still up to the individual family members to make choices to step into this order in any way that they can. In our case, my kids had the worst time making this transition. They don’t live with us, and their ability to adjust to circumstances on my side was only a part of their deal. They were adjusting to their new step-dad and his family.
The New Church: New Faith, New Practices
When I think of the beginning of Jesus’ church in the first century, I think of how exciting the gospel must have been to hear! The “news” of this incredibly radical new truth being revealed to them through the faithful apostles for the very first time! For the Jews, at last indeed the messiah who frees us in a way most unexpected! For the gentiles, nothing less than God made flesh in order to transform our hearts and lives forever! What cause for celebration, what incredible joy! Then, these new Christians must have then wondered soon – well what now? Now that I know this truth and have begun to share it with others, what does it mean in my daily, perhaps mundane life? Oh this joy I feel, but what about my life do I change?
The wedding celebration was wonderful, but is now over and what does life look like now in this new truth - this union of two separate families? Different backgrounds and experiences and we are to now all of sudden live as a family? Mom is sleeping with a new man? Sharing bathrooms? Are the older kids really allowed to eat in the living room, but not the younger kids? The older kids get to sleep later, why not me? There are too many TV’s on, and I need quiet time! Oh, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Cole and Shea want alone time with Dad. Why doesn’t Cole want to play games with McKenzie? Mer doesn’t understand why Shea is allowed to talk on her phone at 11:00 at night! Is Jim buying more gifts for Cole and Shea than for Jonah, Jordan or MacKenzie? Jim is at another swim meet this weekend for Shea and Mer is running the boys around to their games. Why don’t Cole and Shea have to participate in all of the family functions? And the list goes on and on . . .
Well “sure”, you might say, “this is just life when you have a lot of kids”! Well, yes you are right. Yet it’s really not that simple. Remember, for all intents and purposes we all just came together and have no prior experience living the routines of life that had evolved naturally in our previous separate families. Even for MacKenzie, who is the youngest, she had 7 yrs of different family experience up until then. There are loyalty issues that come up in conflict. It is easy to throw out blame on the divorce and the parents when things don’t go well. And if in families we’re all supposed to love each other, what does this look like when you’re living with new people.
So when Paul wrote to the church in Colosse, he was writing to a church of new Christians that he hadn’t yet met, but was excited about their growing faith in Jesus. But despite the zeal for the truth in Jesus Christ, false teaching was infiltrating the church. This false teaching was obscuring the absolute truth in Jesus with bits and pieces of the world’s teachings. This was resulting in false doctrines and ultimately emptiness compared to God’s true plan.
In verses 12-14 (among other verses in Chapter 3) we find Paul teaching practical matters. That is, life practices that are consistent with Jesus’ teaching.
In verse 12 and 13 we read:
“12 Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. 13 Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.”
The people in Colosse were brothers and sisters in Christ, but like a family needed to understand what it looked like in everyday life to live together as believers. These were tools for living in Christ Jesus.
Mer discovered that our original expectations of what a blended family is to look like was not really working. We were swimming upstream. We think that in fact “blended” may not be the best word to describe the reality. We are two different families coming together, brought together by the bond and covenant of marriage between Mer and Jim. And at that point it is not as if we put all eight of us in a blender and started creating a single homogenous concoction. No, in reality, we are eight individuals, with different sets of relationships living everyday trying to extend grace to each other. That is why we have to see ourselves everyday being “compassionate, kind, humble, gentle, and patient” with each other. This was who Jesus was. A tall order, but through the grace and help from our savior we can begin to see how life doesn’t have to be full of frustration, anger, and sadness.
The urge to blame any number of things on each other is huge. When our family came together, we were constantly stepping on each other’s toes. We hadn’t learned all of each other’s pet peeves. We misunderstood each other’s words, and behaviors. We didn’t understand what kinds of things we all liked and disliked, whether it be food, clothing, make up, TV shows, whatever! We disturbed and offended each other without meaning to. How else can we not build up resentment and misgivings and maybe even hatred?
Again Paul instructs us in verse 13:
“ . . . bare with each other . . . “, “forgive”! Like Jesus forgives us!!
We certainly realized that this new family unit, however non-traditional as it may be, had to be grounded in something solid, very solid. Life up until then had indeed been tumultuous. The health of our marriage had to come first.
The Rock and Love
In Matthew 7:24-27 Jesus tells a parable of a wise man building his house on rock which withstood the beating of storms, but those who do not “hear” his words is like building his house on sand only to crash in a storm.
Hearing His words is believing in His Truth and living the Gospel.
Our marriage covenant had to be based on our redeemer – our rock of salvation, Jesus Christ. On this truth the Church must be built. So too, must our marriage be built. In order for our new family to have any hope of surviving, our marriage has to be built on rock – our foundation has to be Jesus Christ. Remember the picture I gave you about the rock at our wedding alter.
And then in verse 14 Paul instructs:
“14 And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.”
In the end, the church in Colosse is instructed how compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, and forgiveness is played out. It is through love. And of course we are not talking about being loving when we feel it. Or what may be referred C.S. Lewis refers to as natural love. C. S. Lewis compares natural love to what he calls charity. Love of another order that is acted as a choice that Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 13 - this is what Jesus modeled for us in perfection that we may strive to follow with all of our imperfection.
In our new family, we had to learn to love for we didn’t come to this relationship already loving with the one exception of Mer and I. The love in our covenant relationship has to withstand all the turmoil life has to offer. And we have to be the foundation that building our new family had to stand on. Of course, Jesus is our foundation.
Conclusion
Confession . . .
There is a point to the nature of what I shared, but let me make clear that despite all what may seem like difficulties and turmoil, I can tell you that there is real joy in our family. And there is no other way to have joy unless we know Jesus.
In hindsight are there things we would have done differently? Of course! We experienced major setbacks along the way – and we still encounter the consequences of earlier decisions and lack of attention to certain matters. But we know one truth and that is Jesus Christ is the only way. In him is not only our redemption and salvation, but the truths of instruction for our daily lives - today. He is and will be our rock.
June 17, 2008
Colossians 3:12-14
12 Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. 13 Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. 14 And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.
Background
I was looking up statistics on families. I was astonished with what I had learned. According to the 2000 United States census less than 25% of our current population live in what is known as traditional nuclear families. The kind of family Mer and Jim grew up in. Divorce rate is around 43% for first marriages, remarriages 60%, and higher if both have children . . . wow, we all need serious prayer!
Let us give you a little family background.
I have two children from my previous marriage. Cole is now 19, Shea is 16. Mer has three children from her previous marriage. Jonah is 14, Jordan is 12, MacKenzie is 11. Cole and Shea don’t live with us.
In June of 2004, Mer and I married and our two families were to become inextricably tied. We are known thus known as a “blended family”, or also known as a “step family”. I guess we have to have a label for such things.
Our journey has taken us through some of the most exciting times and some of the most trying moments.
Breaking apart
So let’s understand this picture. I started out having a “traditional nuclear family”. Okay it wasn’t exactly traditional for my ex-wife and I couldn’t have children together naturally, so we adopted both of our kids. Each of them were adopted from the Philippines when they were around 7 months old, but we were the “nuclear family” part. After 17 yrs. of marriage we were divorced.
Mer started out having a “traditional nuclear family”. After 8 yrs, she and her husband were divorced.
We were two separate families healing. Divorce is an awful thing to have to go through, and is really awful when children are involved. The kids’ world is torn apart and life as they know it would never be the same. For those of you who have experienced this yourself know what I mean. It is a ripping apart of something that has grown together organically, first as a couple, then with kids. The family grows in such a way that your life rhythm revolves around the all the members of the family. You develop traditions, you create memories, you dream of the future together - you don’t imagine a world without any one of the members of the family. Now, despite whatever the circumstance that leads a couple to divorce, one feels like one’s world is turned upside down. And to me, and I know to Mer, our heart pained and ached with what the kids must have going through.
It is anguishing to feel like you are the one responsible to cause your own children such pain and sadness. To know that by our actions (whether justified in some way or not), our children’s lives will never be the same.
What I felt the most was guilt, tremendous guilt, guilt that felt would last the rest of my life. Then was the pain of loss. The loss of family. The loss of the kids for they didn’t live with me. The loss of a formerly loving partner.
Shortly after, in my particular case, there was another (no less important) story. In fact it has forever changed my life. I confessed for the first time in my life as a sinner, and accepted Jesus Christ into my heart as my personal savior. This was a new beginning - I was a new creation!
Baggage
I met Mer, courted her, and in the summer of 2004 I married Mer. Suffice it to say that my wedding to Mer and her kids was unquestionably the best wedding ever! Okay I’m biased. But what I’m really saying is that putting Jesus right in the middle of our wedding covenant was what would give us the very best chance of making this new family work. Picture this image on our wedding day: at our alter was a rough hewn wood cross, a rock, and the body and blood of Christ represented by the elements. This was our only chance for making it for we were entering into territory which would certainly be filled with joy indeed, but was statistically doomed for failure. Remember the statistics I recited earlier?
You see, when we came to this day we brought a lot of things with us. Not only was there our individual healing experience from the divorce with Mer and I and the kids, but we brought individual sets of past experiences of family life. As eight individuals in this new family, we were all bringing different sets of experiences into new, very uncertain relationships. And it is not like we were all just coming together for a weekend. This was to be our new life together.
In fact, to make matters more interesting, it doesn’t stop there. The past just doesn’t get erased. We are still connected to our former spouses - the kids’ original mom and dad. Furthermore, we are then also connected to our former spouses’ own life circumstance. In our case, the old separate “nuclear families” (mine and Mer’s) had divided and multiple new relationships were created – in my kid’s case for instance, Cole and Shea had to first develop a new kind of relationship with just me and my life separate from their mom’s and the reverse with their mom; then with their mother’s new husband, and then with his kids who are older than them; then one with me and Mer, and then Mer’s kids who are younger than them. Right now, Mer’s kids have a somewhat similar circumstance. Incredible adjustments that posed significant challenges!
We have to admit, we did not follow through on what all the books say that we should. And the reality is despite doing one’s best to set up the transition into a new family order, it is still up to the individual family members to make choices to step into this order in any way that they can. In our case, my kids had the worst time making this transition. They don’t live with us, and their ability to adjust to circumstances on my side was only a part of their deal. They were adjusting to their new step-dad and his family.
The New Church: New Faith, New Practices
When I think of the beginning of Jesus’ church in the first century, I think of how exciting the gospel must have been to hear! The “news” of this incredibly radical new truth being revealed to them through the faithful apostles for the very first time! For the Jews, at last indeed the messiah who frees us in a way most unexpected! For the gentiles, nothing less than God made flesh in order to transform our hearts and lives forever! What cause for celebration, what incredible joy! Then, these new Christians must have then wondered soon – well what now? Now that I know this truth and have begun to share it with others, what does it mean in my daily, perhaps mundane life? Oh this joy I feel, but what about my life do I change?
The wedding celebration was wonderful, but is now over and what does life look like now in this new truth - this union of two separate families? Different backgrounds and experiences and we are to now all of sudden live as a family? Mom is sleeping with a new man? Sharing bathrooms? Are the older kids really allowed to eat in the living room, but not the younger kids? The older kids get to sleep later, why not me? There are too many TV’s on, and I need quiet time! Oh, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Cole and Shea want alone time with Dad. Why doesn’t Cole want to play games with McKenzie? Mer doesn’t understand why Shea is allowed to talk on her phone at 11:00 at night! Is Jim buying more gifts for Cole and Shea than for Jonah, Jordan or MacKenzie? Jim is at another swim meet this weekend for Shea and Mer is running the boys around to their games. Why don’t Cole and Shea have to participate in all of the family functions? And the list goes on and on . . .
Well “sure”, you might say, “this is just life when you have a lot of kids”! Well, yes you are right. Yet it’s really not that simple. Remember, for all intents and purposes we all just came together and have no prior experience living the routines of life that had evolved naturally in our previous separate families. Even for MacKenzie, who is the youngest, she had 7 yrs of different family experience up until then. There are loyalty issues that come up in conflict. It is easy to throw out blame on the divorce and the parents when things don’t go well. And if in families we’re all supposed to love each other, what does this look like when you’re living with new people.
So when Paul wrote to the church in Colosse, he was writing to a church of new Christians that he hadn’t yet met, but was excited about their growing faith in Jesus. But despite the zeal for the truth in Jesus Christ, false teaching was infiltrating the church. This false teaching was obscuring the absolute truth in Jesus with bits and pieces of the world’s teachings. This was resulting in false doctrines and ultimately emptiness compared to God’s true plan.
In verses 12-14 (among other verses in Chapter 3) we find Paul teaching practical matters. That is, life practices that are consistent with Jesus’ teaching.
In verse 12 and 13 we read:
“12 Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. 13 Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.”
The people in Colosse were brothers and sisters in Christ, but like a family needed to understand what it looked like in everyday life to live together as believers. These were tools for living in Christ Jesus.
Mer discovered that our original expectations of what a blended family is to look like was not really working. We were swimming upstream. We think that in fact “blended” may not be the best word to describe the reality. We are two different families coming together, brought together by the bond and covenant of marriage between Mer and Jim. And at that point it is not as if we put all eight of us in a blender and started creating a single homogenous concoction. No, in reality, we are eight individuals, with different sets of relationships living everyday trying to extend grace to each other. That is why we have to see ourselves everyday being “compassionate, kind, humble, gentle, and patient” with each other. This was who Jesus was. A tall order, but through the grace and help from our savior we can begin to see how life doesn’t have to be full of frustration, anger, and sadness.
The urge to blame any number of things on each other is huge. When our family came together, we were constantly stepping on each other’s toes. We hadn’t learned all of each other’s pet peeves. We misunderstood each other’s words, and behaviors. We didn’t understand what kinds of things we all liked and disliked, whether it be food, clothing, make up, TV shows, whatever! We disturbed and offended each other without meaning to. How else can we not build up resentment and misgivings and maybe even hatred?
Again Paul instructs us in verse 13:
“ . . . bare with each other . . . “, “forgive”! Like Jesus forgives us!!
We certainly realized that this new family unit, however non-traditional as it may be, had to be grounded in something solid, very solid. Life up until then had indeed been tumultuous. The health of our marriage had to come first.
The Rock and Love
In Matthew 7:24-27 Jesus tells a parable of a wise man building his house on rock which withstood the beating of storms, but those who do not “hear” his words is like building his house on sand only to crash in a storm.
Hearing His words is believing in His Truth and living the Gospel.
Our marriage covenant had to be based on our redeemer – our rock of salvation, Jesus Christ. On this truth the Church must be built. So too, must our marriage be built. In order for our new family to have any hope of surviving, our marriage has to be built on rock – our foundation has to be Jesus Christ. Remember the picture I gave you about the rock at our wedding alter.
And then in verse 14 Paul instructs:
“14 And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.”
In the end, the church in Colosse is instructed how compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, and forgiveness is played out. It is through love. And of course we are not talking about being loving when we feel it. Or what may be referred C.S. Lewis refers to as natural love. C. S. Lewis compares natural love to what he calls charity. Love of another order that is acted as a choice that Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 13 - this is what Jesus modeled for us in perfection that we may strive to follow with all of our imperfection.
In our new family, we had to learn to love for we didn’t come to this relationship already loving with the one exception of Mer and I. The love in our covenant relationship has to withstand all the turmoil life has to offer. And we have to be the foundation that building our new family had to stand on. Of course, Jesus is our foundation.
Conclusion
Confession . . .
There is a point to the nature of what I shared, but let me make clear that despite all what may seem like difficulties and turmoil, I can tell you that there is real joy in our family. And there is no other way to have joy unless we know Jesus.
In hindsight are there things we would have done differently? Of course! We experienced major setbacks along the way – and we still encounter the consequences of earlier decisions and lack of attention to certain matters. But we know one truth and that is Jesus Christ is the only way. In him is not only our redemption and salvation, but the truths of instruction for our daily lives - today. He is and will be our rock.
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