The Stepmom Wall: A Stepmom's Say

I don't have time to do my own writing anymore. Mainly because I'm spending too much time posting other people's stuff on my facebook wall. After all I am what I put at the top of my blog. A conduit. So I am promoting work that touches me.

Here's a blog I stumbled upon today. I have to admit Matt & I have struggled in this area. I shut my heart down for protection but remain ultimately open emotionally to my biological children, despite what they might do to hurt me. He is the same. There IS a difference in the connection between yourself and another person's child. It is unavoidable. Your child is YOURS. And a stepchild is not. You are only the step parent, even if you are in it 24/7. You remain the other.

As my children get older, I find myself in an almost constant state of reflection regarding my relationship with them and my place/importance in their lives. Having taught middle school for 10 years, I know what a complex and annoying creature an almost-teenager can be. Therefore, it is no surprise to me that there is an awkwardness that hovers over our house these days in our relationship with my stepsons.

We’re not cool anymore, and we sure as heck don’t have the answers they want to hear. It’s all normal.

Still, I know that the things I have been feeling aren’t exactly “normal.” As my own children grow older and begin to do the things that my stepsons were doing when I entered their lives, I am forced to admit that I feel differently about most things. I enjoy things with my children in ways that I never enjoyed with my stepsons. Most stepmoms will face this realization (if they can) with a sense of guilt and horror that they have somehow failed. There is a part of me that does feel like that.

But there’s another part of me that is beginning to understand what my role was never meant to be. The more I come to grips with my life as a mother, the more I understand my life as a stepmother.

We all have some walls that we surround ourselves with in order to guard against disappointment and hurt. If we are lucky, those walls aren’t that big or thick, and we make sure the gate is always open for those we love. I think most stepmoms (including myself) keep the gate locked for our stepchildren. I definitely scale the wall to meet them outside—and I really do love them—but the truth is, I have not let them as close to my heart as my own sons. I just can’t. Their potential to hurt me is so much greater than my own sons.

Funny how that works, huh?

I have had so many people tell me how important it is that I don’t treat my stepsons any differently than my own sons. To the extent that I can, I absolutely do this. Any variations in rules and expectations are mostly due to age. But there is something so false about this premise that I almost get angry when I think about what people are asking me to do.

There are many people in my life that I love. That I have CHOSEN to love. But this love is not unconditional in a way that a mother’s love is. I love my stepsons as much as I could ever love someone else’s kids. But I don’t love them the same way that I love my children. In addition, when you bring a child into the world, your heart is given to them in a way that is virtually impossible to give to another human being. For all of the intense feelings of love that we have for others, there is nothing like what we feel for our children. For some reason though, we expect a “good” stepmom to love her stepchildren the same way she loves her children. As if love is something that we just will ourselves into.

As much as I hate to admit it, some of why I have a stepmom wall is because of my stepsons’ mother. I just can’t let them get close enough to me so that she can use them to hurt me. I just can’t. Maybe this makes me weak, but it is just the truth. And I know it is not fair to them—–but it’s just how it is.

At this point in my life, I’m not sure that The Stepmom Wall is a bad thing. For me, it has allowed me to have a healthier, albeit more distant, relationship with my stepsons. It’s a fact of life for right now and it allows me to be the kind of mother I need to be for my sons. I hope that someday when my stepsons are adults, I will be able to have a more open relationship with them without the fear that BM will use them to hurt me. But for now, the wall stays.

As much as the perception and expectations of stepmoms is a constant source of frustration for me, I think that we all need to be a little bit more patient with the ignorant masses. The truth is, you honestly don’t know what it is like to be a stepmom until you are one. The best we can do is try our hardest and inform those around us about the realities of what we do and what we face.

And for people like me, put it out there for you to read.


http://astepmomssay.wordpress.com/

Watch the Drift

Last night @ church our guest speaker talked about drifting. We don't drift into an intimate relationship with our spouse, our children, our friends, God. Naturally, we drift apart. It takes work, real work and committment to that work, to "drift" in to intimacy. Today, this was the message from Blending a Family Ministry and I have seen these slow poisons erode past and present family. It brings my heart sadness. One of the great new songs @ church last night had a sentence "Break my heart for what breaks Yours". We become incredibly desensitized to things that break His heart and we accept it. I have found that one of the biggest changes of myself in the past 6 years. Sometimes I shake my head at myself for what I accept as normal. - Rebecca

Blending A Family Ministry eNewsletter - November 2009
Hi families and friends!

I was thinking today about my pack of beagles. One of my former hobbies was to hunt rabbits with a pack of beagles, and my hunting buddies and I had many fond memories on those hunts. In 1991 I sold all of them because it was getting too difficult to find a place to hunt without leasing property. That is when Paige and I got Chloe, our first Labrador retriever puppy.

When I was trying to develop a good pack of hunting dogs, I took my best male and female beagles and bred them. I got four of the most beautiful puppies from them. I gave one of the puppies to a close friend and kept the other three, and three of our children named them. One day I took them on a hunt with the mature dogs (that's how you train hunting dogs). Within 30 seconds of letting them out of the cage to start the hunt, two of the puppies start fighting over some trash on the ground. It turned out that they found a piece of meat from a dead animal. They did not have time to ingest it before I got it away from them --- so I thought.

Within thirty minutes one of the dogs began having convulsions and throwing up. About 20 minutes later it was dead.
We hunted for a little while and then left for home. On the way home another puppy started throwing up, then convulsing. Before I got home it had died.

What a loss - I was devastated. I was so proud of those puppies. I felt so defeated.
I found out later from the property owner that he had put out poisoned chicken necks in another field about a mile away to kill animals that destroy his crops. Apparently an animal had dragged that poisoned meat to our hunting field before ingesting it and dying. My dogs found it and did not know it was harmful.

I tell this story because people often do not realize when they are partaking of something that will harm them, their marriage, or their children. In our new book, God Breathes on Blended Families - Second Edition, we address how our adversary the devil uses the process of erosion to damage and destroy us. Erosion starts so subtly in our life, but can eventually bring destruction. Here is an excerpt from the Book pages 69-70:

Consider the following questions:
• When do occasional drinks progress into alcoholism?
• When does trying an illegal drug grow into an addiction?
• When does the first glimpse of pornography become a compulsive lifestyle?
• When does repeated anger escalate into uncontrolled verbal or physical abuse?
• When does a hobby become a compulsion?
• When does the enjoyment of good food become obesity?
• When does an office friendship turn into an affair?
• When do frequent arguments between a husband and wife escalate into disrespect and resentment?
• When does discipline by a stepparent become resentment in a child’s heart?
• When does hurt in a teen’s life escalate to isolation, depression, or suicide?

All of the above are examples of what can happen through the erosion process—erosion of our thought process, our emotions, and eventually our will. People lose control of their own will. Their emotions take control over their sound judgment, and their life is led by ungodly thoughts and uncontrolled emotions. Life gradually yet surely turns into what seems to be a death spiral, taking its victim further away from making right choices (righteousness)—and seeing no way out.

(End of excerpt)

Sometimes the impact of the poisons we play with, or we allow to entertain us) is sudden. Other times the impact is slow and painful.

"Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?" 1 Corinthians 5:6

Leaven is the yeast that is added to bread dough to make it rise. Just a small pinch of yeast will leaven the whole loaf. Sin works in the same manner. Unrepentant sin and compromise will infect your whole life and everyone in it.

Consider your steps:
1. Be determined to walk holy with the Lord, and set standards for your family to do the same.
2. Do not become careless.
3. Be on your guard - watch for simple, subtle, little things that can infiltrate your mind and you home.
4. God is your front and rear guard, your protector. His Holy Spirit will warn you of things that are harmful.
5. Your responsibility is to be prayerfully alert.

"Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers.
But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night.
He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers." Psalm 1:1-3