162: One Family’s Journey to Blended Unity: Looking Back to the Teenage Years

Episode Transcript

FamilyLife Blended®

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Season 7, Episode 162: One Family’s Journey to Blended Unity: Looking Back to the Teenage Years

Guests:          Tim and Olivia Smith, Christie Meldrim   

Air Date:        April 21, 2025                      

Tim:                I remember at the wedding people commenting, “What a beautiful family. You guys are going to be so happy.” And then we jumped in a car and went away for two weeks, and it was a great two weeks. It was amazing. It was just the two of us. But then we flew home and we’re in the airport shuttle, and to this day, I remember Olivia in the shuttle reaching across and just laying her hand on my forearm and saying, “It’ll never be as good as it is right now.”

Ron:                Welcome to the FamilyLife Blended podcast. I’m Ron Deal. We help blended families, and those who love them, pursue the relationships that matter most. But if you don’t pursue what matters most with great intentionality, you probably won’t get where you want to go.

If you’ve listened to a couple of podcasts on this series, please scroll back and listen to a lot of them. We have a ton of podcasts on a number of subjects related to blended family living. We would love for you to be exposed to all of them, so just take a minute and scroll back through our topics.

Okay, so far, all the reviews for Nan and my new book, The Mindful Marriage, are five-star. Yep. That’s really feeling good to us, I can tell you that. One reviewer said, “Something for anyone, practical, engaging, and transparent. A must read.” You can get your copy of The Mindful Marriage wherever books are sold. A link to the FamilyLife Shop is in the show notes.

If you listen to this podcast regularly, you’ve heard me talk about the triangles in stepfamilies. For example, a dad, stepmom and stepdaughter, or maybe a mom, stepdad, and mom’s ex-husband. You also know that I like to give voice to each person’s experience of the family, and we need to give attention to each relational side of that triangle; so the people at the three points of the triangle and the relationships that are between them on all three sides of the triangle.

Well, today we get to do that, have that conversation about those three spots and how they relate to one another. We get to do that in real time because we’re talking with a dad, a stepmom, and a stepdaughter all at the same time.

Tim and Olivia Smith are co-authors of the book Blending: 100 Day Guide for Stepparents. I got my copy right here. Tim runs an organization called Nonprofit DNA. It’s a development consulting agency, and they also lead the Blended Not Broken resource ministry for blended families. His wife Olivia mentors young women with Bible study and prayer and is both a stepchild and a stepmom. I’m sure that’s going to be relevant here in just a second.

Olivia brought three children to their marriage. Tim brought three children to their marriage, one of which is Christie Meldrim, who also joins us today. Christie is on staff with a church in Dallas, Georgia, outside Atlanta, and she herself is a stepmom to four children.

Okay, Tim and Olivia, thank you for joining me. Thanks for being here.

Olivia:             Thank you.

Tim:                Thank you.

Ron:                And Christie, I appreciate you dialing in as well.

Christie:         Thank you for having me.

Ron:                Okay, let’s jump into this family story. Tim and Olivia, what year did you guys get married?

Tim:                1997.

Ron:                Alright, good, buddy. By the way, you got bonus points for—

Tim:                I know.

Ron:                —pulling that out.

Tim:                I had to think quick.

Ron:                You didn’t even know it was coming. Way to go, 1997. And Christie, how old were you at that point in time?

Christie:         I was the amazing age of 16 years old when my dad married Olivia.

Ron:                The amazing age. You got to tell us—

Olivia:             Fill in the blanks there.

Ron:                Yeah, we can fill in the blank. Everybody can use their own imagination, right?

Christie:         Yeah.

Ron:                Okay, so I want to do this little going around the horn thing. Now I know there’s a lot of other people involved in your blended family, and if you guys want to speak for them, you absolutely can, but I really want to zero in on the three of you since we’ve got you here today. So going around the horn of this little family triangle that we have with us, I’d like to know, and maybe this is hard, going back to 1997 because it’s been a minute, but the first, oh, 90 days, what was it like for each of you in your family journey?

So dad and Christie is the daughter who is the amazing age of 16, and Olivia instantly became a stepmom to Tim’s three kids, and she had three of her own. Okay, so we’re got the picture laid out. What were the first 90 days like? And Olivia, since you’re the stepmom, you get to go first. What was it like for you those first 90 days?

Olivia:             Well, first off, very challenging. We dated just for a few months before we got married, so I really didn’t know Tim’s children that well and didn’t know Tim that well. So we had only dated. Coming from—being a stepmom, but coming also as a stepdaughter, I kind knew what I was getting into, but I also knew I wanted to do it completely different than what I had experienced because mine was a negative experience. So I was a little bit prepared, but with trying to work and we were juggling houses, schools, all the different things that you go through when you’re first blending.

                        We had to take my son out of his old school and put him in a new school, and that was challenging. Trying to balance work with being home was so chaotic. Plus we never had that newlywed experience because you have an instant family, and I’ve struggled with not having time with Tim. It seemed like all of the kids were needing us for so many different reasons.

So I don’t know that you’re ever really prepared. I thought I was, but I really wasn’t. It was difficult in so many ways. We had not read any books on it. It wasn’t that common when we first got married to have this big, blended family. I had no one to go talk to. I didn’t want to go dump on Tim and the kids, and so my source was God, honestly. I just would sit with Him every day and cry out to Him because I was overwhelmed.

Ron:                Okay. Yeah, sounds like you felt isolated too. Didn’t have resources; didn’t know who to talk to.

Olivia:             Exactly.

Ron:                I got to say, Olivia, as you were talking, I had three little phrases that we repeat in our ministry here at FamilyLife Blended a lot, pop into my head. Stepfamilies don’t have a family tree; they have a family forest. The complexity and the number of people and all this stuff moving on, there’s all of that. The other phrase that came to mind was, yeah, there is a honeymoon for blended family couples, but it comes at the end of the journey, not at the beginning.

Olivia:             Exactly

Ron:                That popped into my mind as you were talking. It’s just, yeah, so that’s a pretty typical experience and the isolation part, that is so difficult. Because when you feel like you’re detached from, really from hope—people or resources that can bring you some hope about the journey—that had to weigh pretty heavy on you.

Olivia:             It really did. I knew there was no—I didn’t know anyone who was blended. So I have close friends, but they’re not going to be able, because they’re not in my shoes, to give me the advice or the support that I needed during this time. I didn’t even know what I needed. It was just, I mean, I knew what I wanted, which was definitely more time with Tim, less stress.

I’m a people pleaser, so I really, really wanted his kids to like me. So I was on this journey to get to know them, but it just takes time. With the blended family, that’s the real key there is it just takes time to develop relationships. So if you’re in a hurry, it’s not good. You got to just take the time to develop those relationships.

Ron:                Yeah. Speaking of developing relationships, let’s move to Christie, who was the amazing age of 16—

Olivia:             Absolutely.

Ron:                —when all of this is happening.

Christie:         I’m going to be highly quoted on that one.

Ron:                Yes, you are. So at the age of 16, you have your own adjustments as well, I’m sure. What were the first 90 days like for you?

Christie:         So the whole entire time that my dad, even when he started dating before Olivia, I was kind of anticipating this season of life and by anticipating, I mean I was very stressed out. I made his life hard when it came to dating and all of that. But when Olivia came into the picture, she was just different.

                        And my dad even approached how he introduced me to Olivia differently because I was just that one child that needed that. And so the first 90 days for me—I mean when they always tell a story when they came back from the honeymoon, they knew that nothing was ever going to be as good as it was that very moment they always say. I mean, we just jumped right back into life and school started shortly after that time and we were just living life.

And so for us, my dad’s kids, it was all three of us, but only one of her kids really blending into the mix. And not that that wasn’t challenging or had its challenges, especially for the boys. All the rest were boys in the house, but we just dove right into life, and it was kind of, obviously it’s a transition and it’s so different, but also there were some cool parts too, because Olivia was a good cook. And so we had these rhythms, not that my dad wasn’t, but it was a little better than hamburger helper is what I’m saying.

So I just have these memories that started in those first 90 days where I would sit on the kitchen table and Olivia would start the meal and we would just have this interaction, and I just hadn’t had anything like that before. And I really remember that part with really positive feelings and really positive thoughts to be honest. It wasn’t, obviously there was transition, but it was a really comfortable start for me because I was getting something with a mom figure that I just really hadn’t had for a while.

Ron:                Wow. That is great. For somebody listening or watching right now, who’s going, “That’s so superficial. She cooked better than dad.” No, no, no, no. Now I want to say no, not at all. Kids need a reason to like their stepparent, their stepsiblings. Even if it’s simple like that, it’s a movement toward rather than away.

Christie:         And I’ll add to that, if there was ever somebody who wasn’t going to like their stepmom, it’s me. So for me to say these kinds of positive things that were happening is very, very authentic because I was always trying to convince my dad that he didn’t ever need to get married again. And I was making—I mean you could write funny stories about the things that I did, the most ridiculous things to make his dating life horrible. That was me.

So I know that there were things that were hard in the home because it was just different. And we all moved to a different house to accommodate all of us shortly after they were married. We sold the other houses, and we all moved into a bigger house. So much transition for all of us, but I want anybody listening to know that I was that kid, that kid who was like, I am not doing this life. I am not letting myself have a stepmom and I’m going to do whatever it takes to make sure that doesn’t happen. But right from the get-go, Olivia really did have some tools to start off our relationship in a special way. And I always remember that even to this day.

Ron:                So listener and viewer, keep in mind, we believe that building safety in a relationship between stepparents and stepchildren comes before you build love between them. And so safety is everything from “I’m comfortable being around you. I trust you enough to eat your food.” Little things like that that just are saying, “Yeah, okay, I kind of like you. I kind of feel like this is an okay place to be.” And the conversations that you just mentioned really, really terrific.

We’re going to bring Tim in a second, but Christie, before we let you go, I got to ask, I want one of those funny stories, what you did to try to sabotage dad’s dating and then unpack it for us. What was that risk for you if dad did date successfully? What were you trying to prevent?

Christie:         Right. So I remember one story and my dad was really good about not introducing us to somebody too early too. And so he was very careful about that. But somebody was coming to the house for dinner, and we had known this person. This was before Olivia, because I really didn’t do stuff like this with Olivia. It was a different experience with her, mostly because of her, not because of me.

But I happened to be walking by the front door when said person knocked on the door. And I went to the door, and I opened it, and I walked back to my room. Later my dad walked by said door, and this woman was standing there all by herself. And it sounds silly, I mean embarrassing even a little bit, but at that age—my dad didn’t date right out of the gate, so I was probably in the 13, 14, 15 range and my emotions were all over the place.

                        But what I think a lot of my struggle was inside of that was that it had just been me, my dad, and my two brothers for a good couple of years. And Olivia always tells me that what I have with my dad is very special in the dad-daughter relationship. There’s a lot of good dads out there. He and I just had, even before he went through divorce and everything, we just have something good. And so I was terrified that somebody would take that away.

And some of that, I mean, like Olivia said, there weren’t a lot of people we knew that were blended or going through the exact same thing. But I think what I knew was from TV and wicked stepmothers and they tear you apart and all of that kind of stuff. And that might sound a little funny or silly, but that was very, very real for me, that something, he would get married, and it would be so different, and I would lose that relationship. And that was terrifying to me. So it looked like leaving somebody at a door but those feelings that kids have are very big and very real for them in their season.

Ron:                Absolutely. And there’s a metaphor in that for everybody listening. Kids sometimes just want to keep the door shut on their heart to new people because of the fear of what it could bring; the pain that it could bring. They’ve already been through a lot of pain, and you don’t want any more, so you just close the door to your heart, keep it shut and keep people out. Yeah, it’s good.

Okay. Tim’s been listening. It’s your turn, first 90 days.

Tim:                Yeah, this is all very interesting so far. Yeah. So first 90 days, there are two or three things I remember. One, Christie just alluded to it. We got married, our attendance in the wedding were the six kids. We didn’t have anybody else. They each stood up with us. I remember at the wedding people commenting, “What a beautiful family. You guys are going to be so happy.” And then we jumped in a car and shuttled off to the airport the next day and went away for two weeks, and it was a great two weeks. It was amazing. It was just the two of us.

But then we flew home and we’re in the airport shuttle, heading back to Olivia—we had three houses at one point. It was really a mess. But we were heading back to Olivia’s house where all six kids were going to be there and waiting for us. And I always remember this to this day, I remember Olivia in the shuttle reaching across and just laying her hand on my forearm and saying, “It’ll never be as good as it is right now.” Now, nearly 28 years later, she was right. Absolutely right.

But I think in the first 90 days, I think what I was full of confidence when we got married that, yeah, I hear these stories of stepfamilies, but that won’t be our story, that we’re going to nail this, we’re going to do this. And that idea was shattered the first week we were all in the house together. And my ideas of structure and family, and I’d always had full custody of my three kids. I was Mr. Mom before it was popular actually.

And so I think for me, when I realized I had to throw out all those ideas that I had; that this would not be easy, but it was just something that I felt like I could handle and that I could influence, and I could change. And this is where it really hit me right between the eyes of the very first week was when we’d come home from church on a Sunday morning, we’d all gather around the table. We’d have some food and talk about the morning, that type of thing.

And so we came home, we all changed our clothes and came down and Olivia’s youngest son, Chris, had popped in, threw a hot pocket in the microwave, ate it and was out the door. And I was like, “Where’s Chris?” “Oh, he’s out hanging with his buds.” And that’s when it hit me. We had two different cultures that we were trying to create, to blend and bring together. I think that was the big aha for me to just chill out a little bit.

It didn’t happen in that moment. It took many years for me to get there, but just to chill out a little bit and take it as it comes, take it each day as it comes, and really learn about my stepkids and get to know them as well as I know my own kids. Don’t speak too quickly. Just be patient. Let them come to you. And all that was stirred up in those first 90 days for sure.

Ron:                We have such a combination of insiders and outsiders in this conversation. Somebody may have said, “Why Ron, did you start with Olivia? Why’d you let her talk first? And then why Christie? And then why Tim last?” Actually, there’s a little method to my madness. I really believe children and stepparents are often the most vulnerable in stepfamilies.

Now, Tim, you’re a stepdad to her, Olivia’s kids, so you’re also a stepparent. But stepmom’s and stepdaughters, there’s something really challenging about that for a lot of people. So the biological parent often feels like they’re hopeful, and you just express that to him, “Hey, we’re going to do this, and I love everybody and it’s going to be fine.”

Well, that’s what insiders feel, and that’s the optimism that they enter the family with and that there’s nothing wrong with optimism. But when that meets reality, if you’re not able to adjust that optimism, then sometimes the insiders become part of the problem because they’re so determined to make it into what they needed it to be, wanted it to be, hoped that the family would be, that they push and push and push. And sometimes that just creates a pushback from other family members.

So just really interesting to hear each of your different perspectives, what you were thinking, what you’re experiencing and feeling. And it’s a good example of magnify that by all the other kids who had their own thoughts and experiences and ideas about what the family would be. And you’d definitely get a journey, if you will.

As you guys listened to one another was there anything that you sort of heard with fresh ears or maybe felt in a new way or a different way that you maybe didn’t know or want to know more about now, even now?

Tim:                I think they’re all staring at me, so I’ll respond. I think for me, it was to increase my compassion, not just for my stepkids, but even for my kids of, I think in the beginning I had a plan. I’m a bit of a planner and I’m strategic about things so I had a strategy. I realized that that strategy wasn’t based on reality. And I think just learning to take the time to increase my compassion, slow my responses, and especially with Olivia’s kids, her two oldest kids.

Megan was a freshman in college when we got married, Jason lived with his dad, so they never really lived in our home full time. And I just found I had to work much harder with those two than I did her youngest son, Chris, who was with us all the time. And so I think to just kind of make that shift, and it wasn’t easy. It wasn’t easy because I’m goal oriented. I like to check boxes, and I couldn’t find the boxes I needed to check much less check them at times.

Ron:                Wow. That’s good. Christie, Olivia, you have thoughts?

Christie:         One of the things as they were sharing that I really heard was, well, especially what my dad said honestly about just recognizing what her kids needed and being able to get over some of the little things. It’s interesting for me to hear them talk about that part because I think of my role as a stepmom, honestly, and going through the same things. And of course, I didn’t know to study what they were doing back then. I didn’t think I would be a stepmom one day, and then all of a sudden, of course I was.

But just to hone in a little bit on what he said about—so I’m kind of like my dad—this is what we do after Sunday church, and we come home, and we have lunch, and it’s not called a hot pocket and stuff like that. And just being able to, I always tell stepmom’s or young women who might be dating somebody with kids or they’re about to be a blended family, that you have to get over yourself a lot. So you might have went into this thinking, “It’s going to be this, this, and this.”

Or for me, I didn’t bring kids in, so my husband Mark had four kids so I’m honestly blending into their system more than anything. And so there were things that in the beginning, I really let bother me and irritate me and all of that. And over time, if you want to have some happiness and some peace, you really do learn what it might look like for you to even take a backseat in that situation or to honestly be a student of what each of those children needs. And I think that’s kind of what my dad was speaking to is each of Olivia’s kids were different in themselves, much less different from us.

                        And some of her kids, like he said, were out of the house and in a totally different stage of life. And just to be able to be a little bit more relaxed, which is challenging for me. I’m very, I’ll say it, I’m like Type A. I’m thinking about how everything is going to work and how it should work and all of that. But in my story is a story of what it looks like to be a student of the family and the kids, and to be one more person who’s in their corner cheering them on. And that looks really different than anything I had done to that point.

Ron:                Wow. That comment makes me think of something Olivia said in her opening remark. You had had, Olivia, a difficult stepmom relationship. I’m not sure how you would say that. I do know this because you’ve written about it. Your biological mom died when she was 36; that left you, and your dad’s trying to raise five girls. You were one of them, the youngest, I believe. And a couple years after your mom died, your dad married again.

So now you have a stepmom, and they have a child. I think you have a new sister that comes into the family, and you just felt lost. You’ve written about this. You felt lost in all of those transitions, and you felt unloved, unseen, and unimportant is what it sounds like.

I’m curious, so as you walk into this family and you’re now the stepmom, how did those experiences with your stepmother growing up, how did that impact your thoughts, your concerns, your maybe anxieties about becoming a stepmother? How did you cope with all that stuff and then those first 90 days when you began to experience some of the challenging realities. I’m just wondering, where does all of that pain from the past go in terms of you walking it out now as the stepmom?

Olivia:             That’s a great question. Growing up in a stepfamily like that was very, very difficult. I think the thing that which I’m amazed at God, all the pain that I experienced as you described, feeling unseen, unheard, unloved, all of that pain, God absolutely used to make me a better stepmom. I knew that I did not want to do the things that my stepmom did. And so that was the first thing for me.

I remember my sister asking me when I told them I was getting married again—I’d been a single mom for ten years, and I told her about Tim and his kids, and she said, “Your kids are almost all grown. Why do you want to step into this and raise someone else’s kids?” And I had to think about it, and I said, “I kind of feel chosen by God to be their stepmom and be a part of their lives.” So I kind of saw it more of a calling than anything, of God’s called me to be a mom to them.

So I was a little bit excited about how I was going to do that. And I wanted to know them individually, and I did study them. I wanted to learn what they liked and disliked, and I wanted to be a part of those things that they were a part of, because I think that’s one of the ways you show love is going to their level and being a part of their life.

But what I didn’t know is none of this comes natural. It’s not like bringing a baby home from the hospital and you have that instant love that a mom and dad has. This is not something that happens. You grow to love. You learn to love your children. You make those daily decisions to be part of their life in spite of how you feel. And so I intentionally chose to do some of the things that I wanted to do to develop that relationship and certainly all the hurt and pain.

But let me just say this, I probably judged my stepmother too harshly because when I got into her shoes, I’m like, “She didn’t know God the way that I know God.” And if I didn’t have Him to depend on and scriptures to turn to, and the prayer is my prayer life, I think I would’ve struggled so much more. But I did go, “God, I’m sorry, I judged her.” I mean, she wasn’t the best, but it’s a difficult position and I really owe most of my victory to the Lord and how He helped me be that kind of stepmom I wanted to be.

Ron:                Well, amen to that. Knowing the Lord does make a difference. And I just for one, want to thank you for taking what you experienced as a child and using it as motivation to not repeat that, to be different, to be the generational change so that the next generation, the family that you guys raised together would have a different experience of a stepparent. I think that’s marvelous.

Christie, I’m just wondering, speak to that. What did you experience in your relationship with her?

Christie:         Yeah, I’ve actually talked about this with her and thought about the fact that if she wasn’t somebody who could have experienced something in her own family and said, “Hey, I want this to be different. I’m going break this cycle,” in a sense, then I would’ve probably had a very different experience with her as a stepmom.

And I alluded to before, I didn’t really know I was learning how to be a stepmom from her, but I can recount all of the things that, to be honest, shocked me. It speaks to the way that God does what He does, because I really, even though Olivia was so kind and so nice, and we had a good experience getting to know her, I still was like, “This is not going to go well for us,” before we actually jumped into it because I had those real, real fears.

                        I was 11 years old when my parents got divorced. So I was old enough to kind of understand some of these things on some level too. But I really think about who Olivia was to me in those moments. I was, like I said, 16 years old and just the kind of person, the kind of really mother figure that she was to me back then.

But I think of a couple of the things that we have even talked about since I’ve been a stepmom that really just opened up a really cool conversation of, I felt like it was so easy for her. And when I married into Mark’s family, it was not easy. I really struggled in the beginning, and I experienced that isolation. But as a stepdaughter, I didn’t know she experienced that isolation.

Or one thing that I love to talk to stepmom’s about because it’s almost like the secret thing that we don’t want to talk about, but that we’re most likely all experiencing; one day I talked to Olivia about, because I was for sure she did not experience this in her stepmom’s story, and that is the area of this jealousy that happens.

And so when I became a stepmom, one of my favorite things is that my husband Mark has this amazing relationship with his children. He has three girls, one boy. And so he is just the most present, loving father. And just like we had just lived with my dad for years, they had just lived with their dad for years. I’m trying to blend into this and finding myself jealous of the thing that really, I think is so great about Mark, which is how he is a father.

                        But one day, I mean, it was ruining me, and I went to Olivia and I’m like, I am very embarrassed to say this, but this is what I’m feeling every day when I get home. They’re just all doing their thing. And I didn’t have, we all talk about that honeymoon period happens at the end more towards the end, and I was not properly prepared for that at all.

And so when I mentioned that to Olivia, she’s like, “Do you think I didn’t experience that? Look at the kind of relationship you had with your dad, and I loved it, but I just was trying to figure out how I fit into that whole thing.” And so that has been one of the biggest gifts honestly for me, is that I could start to bring stuff to Olivia, and she could properly coach me on just certain aspects that are really, really true of a stepmom.

And then you take me who hasn’t been a parent at all, and I’m now with this whole full-fledged family. And so I’m super thankful for her story of how she was committed to being a healthier stepmom than what she had because it definitely has benefited my life. And to be honest, it’s benefited my stepkids’ life too.

Ron:                So I want to ask you, Christie, to read something that you wrote. You wrote one of the journal entries in the book that Tim and Olivia have published, Blending: 100 Day Guide for Stepparents. You wrote one of those, and I’m going to ask you to read it right now, and then we’re just going to let Olivia and Tim respond with whatever that rises up in them.

Christie:         So this devotional was basically just entitled “A Stepdaughter’s Message to her Stepmom,” that of course I wrote well into even being a stepmom, but really some very honest and true thoughts that if a stepmom could understand what their stepdaughter or even stepson are going through. It’s just that raw feeling that we feel as stepparents, these kids also feel.

So this is what I wrote. “I know I may be a lot for you. I may be giving you the business and keeping you very distant, but this is a lot for me too. What I want to say to you but can’t quite find the words to articulate is this, I appreciate the respect you give me with my relationship with my dad. He has been my lifeline for the past few years, and I’m afraid to lose that.

I need you to invest in your marriage. I have seen divorce up close, and I can’t bear to watch it again. I know that I am the hard one, but deep down, I have a desire to be close to you. And more than anything, I want my dad to be happy. Your investment in your marriage means a lot to me too.

I struggle with where my loyalties lie. I want relationship with you, but I also have a mother. It’s a lot for me to figure out. Thank you for giving me the space. And most of all, thank you for not giving up on my dad, even though I know it has to be tough with all of us in the mix. Your patience and understanding are very important to me. It is teaching me how to be patient and understanding back to you. Thank you for loving us.

Ron:                Olivia, I know you’ve heard that before. What does it rise up in you now?

Olivia:             One of the things Tim and I did right in the beginning was when he introduced me to Christie. He had informed me “This is what Christie’s going to be like.” And he had told me about the relationship, and we wanted to introduce her for her to get to know me when none of the other kids were around. She’s very big on that personal touch that you can give her. So we had a plan, and I was prepared a little bit for her.

But the other thing was that I knew that they were incredibly close. I needed to find my place and let her still have that with him and not get jealous of it, but also find my own place with Tim. So I had all of that knowledge about her, which was very helpful. We didn’t read that in a book. It was just something we had just talked about and planned.

And because of that, God really opened that door of that connection for Christie and I when we were able to finally get together and meet with her. He sealed the deal. She was working, she needed a new outfit for work, and so I said, “Let’s go shopping.” So we did that, and I was able to connect with her girl, a woman to daughter as far as shopping and stuff. So all of that was just such a plus with her and getting to know her that way. So I do feel like I was probably more prepared than I realized with Christie.

The boys were easier, they were definitely easier. I knew some of those things that she had shared, and those things were important to me as the number one thing is Christie and her dad are a powerful team. And so I wanted that to stay that way.

Ron:                That’s great; wonderful wisdom. I hope our listener, viewers are catching that wisdom. A couple of observations from my side, and then Tim, I’m curious, just hindsight reflection on some of this dynamic, I’m curious how it feels to you.

Listening to Christie talk all over the place, that is so common of children. “I know I’m hard. I know I’m difficult,” and at the same time, “I want you to have a good relationship with my dad because divorce is hard on people, and we don’t want that to happen.” And so there’s this, “I’m for you, I’m against you,” kind of thing. And there’s this, “I’m struggling to figure out my place, our place, new family, new cultures. I don’t know how this is going to work.” So there’s question marks everywhere. So identity is uncertain and ambiguous and at the same time there’s a hopefulness to what you wrote in all of that.

                        And I just tell parents and stepparents, yeah, you’re going to get the gamut out of kids. It’s all of that. And if you single in on one particular thing, then you can sort of get a skewed perspective. “Oh, they’re in favor of our marriage.” Well, yeah, there’s a part of them that is, but there’s another part of them that’s not. That the other part of them is feeling the pinch of that new relationship so it’s everything. It’s just all of it.

And as I listen to Olivia as I’m listening to you, it’s like you have the wisdom of navigating that space to say, “I know I got to find my relationship with my stepdaughter, but I also know I can’t do it competing with her relationship with her dad.” And that’s something Gary Chapman and I talk about in our book, Building Love Together and Blended Families.

                        As soon as the stepparent’s relationship with their new spouse or with the child is competing with the biological relationship between bio parents and child, wow, that begins to unravel a lot of things, and it feels like somebody’s got to win and somebody’s got to lose. And then jealousy is what pops up.

You guys have talked about that. I’m just listening to this going so much wisdom and saying it’s both and. And yes, my husband and his daughter need to keep that close relationship, and I’ve got to find my own spot in the mix. I’m not trying to compete against them and just be me. It can’t be that. It’s got to be both their relationship and my new spot in the family. And that’s just confusing as you’re navigating all that terrain with lots of question marks, just unsure what to do.

Tim, let me toss it to you. I’m curious, as you’ve been listening, what are you thinking right now?

Tim:                Well, it is kind of fun to hear them talking about it because I felt like I had a front row seat to the whole process. And at the same time, I couldn’t force that to happen. It had to happen very organically in our home, but I was right there to watch it all. And it’s kind of fun to see it today, and especially Ron, something I’ve heard you say is that how stepparenting is a delayed gratification. You don’t really get the sense of how well you did or how it turned out till much later.

Well, we’re almost 28 years in, and we’re at that gratification stage where we can see the value of the things that we did well, and we see the damage of some things we did not do well.

                        And I think one of the things we got right was allowing space and time, not just with Olivia and Christie, but also my two boys, Ryan and Brent, and none of my kids really have a healthy relationship today with their biological mom. And what’s really fun for me is to see how Olivia has become that influence. She’s become that maternal person. She is the go-to for all three of them. And I couldn’t have asked for anything more.

When we talk about blended families and things that we do with blended families and mentoring that we do, Olivia’s the glue if you haven’t figured that out yet. But she’s the glue to the whole thing and her ability to really engage my children. And she’s talked a lot about how fulfilling that was for her as well to actually have that privilege. She mentioned she’s a people server, and for a while she ran a restaurant. Every night she’d cook whatever everybody wanted, and I was like, “This is not sustainable.” But that was, oh, I mean, she goes, “I want everybody to make sure that they’re getting their best from me.”

And so other thing I think about Ron is when I look back, there are some hard times that we’ve had across the board as stepparents. And I think the thing that has really sustained our family is that Olivia and I have an unwavering commitment to our marriage.

                        And even in those crazy days, you put six kids at times in the house, there’s no place to be alone. I don’t care how big your house is, there’s just no place to be alone. And we had to really work to find places. And when it was hard, we found retreating to each other was the real benefit in getting us through some of those harder times that don’t look so hard today but at the time were really, really struggles.

Ron:                And retreating into each other is not easy when the stress for most couples, wherever it starts between you and a stepchild or between you and the ex or whatever, it tends to ripple into the marriage relationship. And so it’s outside of you, but it quickly becomes inside of your usness. And for a lot of blended family couples, that’s what erodes their marriage. And so give me one quick tip, Tim and Olivia, about not letting that stuff keep the two of you from retreating into one another.

Tim:                Well, from my perspective is just keep, stay open-minded; that Olivia was much more grace oriented than I was. And so I was a little more stern about things. Today I’m probably the gray parent and she’s got a few more rules than I do. But I think that for us, there were times that we were combative about the way to do things and how to do things. But in the big picture, I feel like we made each other better by listening to one another and just gaining new perspective.

Ron:                And I hear your commitment to, we’re not going to let this divide us too. That’s a big piece of it. Okay, all three of you. Before we close real quick, what do you want the church to know? All three of you’re involved in ministry, one form or another. What do you want the church to know about blended families and blended family ministry?

Christie:         Yeah, I’ll start. I want the church to know that your church is filled with blended families. And the thing, I mean, I work for a church like you mentioned in the beginning, and I even want to help our discipleship area figure out ways to come alongside blended families because often, right now, I’m the resident stepmom and “Oh, you need to meet with Christie. You need to talk to Christie.” But just being able to come around having, there are resources now. When my dad and Olivia first got married, they said there weren’t books to read or people who are coming alongside blended families.

And so they can speak to what they’re doing at their local church but just being able to have these resources available and the work that you guys are doing, there’s so many things to come alongside and to lock arms and help them because as you know, probably more than anyone that the divorce rate in a second marriage is even higher. And so we have to be able to come alongside.

And just the thing that I think is one of the most helpful things is just what people I find are looking for are the people who have been there, and they have done this blended family, and they have come out on the other side, and they’ve learned all the things. And I think people just want a place where they can talk. And there’s other people who are like-minded who have walked through the exact same things and who have also wanted to give up and figured out a way not to. And I think that’s really, really important for the church to come around.

Ron:                Good. Tim, Olivia, any final thoughts?

Olivia:             I’ll go here. We are not going away. The blended family is growing all the time, and we are really a part of your church. And I think we need to be acknowledged and validated. I don’t think we fit into the other groups. I think sometimes they want to put us there, but since we’ve done our own blended family group, the response we get is finally a place to be ourselves, to be real. And somebody gets us, somebody gets us. You’ve been through it, and they have hope that we’re going to walk alongside of them and pray for them and encourage them and be there for them. And it just has made all the difference. We have great relationships with the people in our blended family now. They’re family.

Ron:                Yeah, that’s right.

Tim:                Yeah, I would echo all that. I think if there’s something I would want to say to churches, to pastors, to church leaders, is to just celebrate blended families. I think so many, and we experienced this, and we started our group. We’re three years in now in our church. We are part of a pretty large church. Our pastor thinks probably over half of our church have or are touched by some kind of a step relationship.

And I’m so thankful that they allow us just to not look at this as a recovery group. That was something that I was really against, but rather, this is a major demographic in our society today and how can we help build stronger couples? And when our pastor approached us about this, I said, “I may not always be kind to how churches have treated divorced people or blended families.” He said, “Bring it on. I love it.” And so we have.

The very first week we had our first group meeting a few years ago, I always remember one of the younger moms, she came up to me afterwards, tears in her eyes. She says, “So this is not going to be just another churchy, list five things you can do to have a happy blended family. You guys are really going to get real.” And I go, “We’re going to try.”

And now these years later, that same young mom and her husband, when I’m out of town, they show up to shovel my driveway for Olivia. They bring food over. And I mean they’ve become, we’ve created a community inside the structures of our church, and I’m thrilled about that. I wish more churches would just celebrate Blendeds and really go that extra mile.

Ron:                Well, I know Blended Not Broken, your ministry is trying to make a difference. You’ve got online resources and videos that help teach people, and you’re working on a book by that title, Blended Not Broken. We look forward to that coming out. Tim, Olivia, Christie, thank you so much for being with me today.

Christie:         Thank you.

Ron:                Thanks.

Olivia:             Thank you.

Ron:                Wow, to our listener, viewer, check the show notes. You want to learn how to get connected to them, Blended Not Broken. And if you haven’t subscribed to this podcast yet, if you’re just getting here, make sure you subscribe. We don’t want you to miss anything.

And by the way, we have a monthly newsletter that’s free, Strengthening Stepfamilies. Just check the show notes. We’ll get you connected to all of that.

And if you’re not familiar with FamilyLife Blended, I just want you to know we’re the largest blended family ministry, equipping ministry for couples and for church leaders in the country. And we’re more than happy to come alongside you. Whether you’re a church leader or a blended family couple and you’re just getting started, we have tons of resources for you. We’d love to be able to help you. So just reach out, look us up at FamilyLife.com.

Okay, next time I’m going to be talking with a bonus mom, and a bonus daughter, Jessica and Jayla Pickens will be joining me. You don’t want to miss it. That’s next time on FamilyLife Blended.

I’m Ron Deal. Thanks for listening or watching. And thank you to our production team and donors who make this podcast possible.

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