Blended Family Tips: Marriage Matters

Blended Families

FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript

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Marriage Matters

Guests: Steve and Misty Arterburn and Ron Deal

From the series: Blended Family Tips

Bob: Children who have experienced the loss of a parent, either because of death or divorce, have experienced some level of trauma as a result of that loss. Steve Arterburn says if those kids become a part of a new blended family, they don’t need a new stepdad to be a drill sergeant.

Steve: I know all these guys that come in: “These—look, these kids will respect me. I will discipline them. They will obey me.” It’s so much more about trying to build a bond and a connection in the midst of horror that they’ve gone through than getting something from them that they should never have to give, reluctantly.

Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Friday, April 6th. Our host is Dennis Rainey; I’m Bob Lepine. If you’re in a blended family, have you thought strategically about what your stepchildren need from you? We’re going to spend time talking about that today with our guests, Steve and Misty Arterburn, and with Ron Deal.

1:00

Stay tuned.

And welcome to FamilyLife Today. Thanks for joining us. We’re talking about one of those challenging areas in life when a couple starts a new marriage, where both of them have been previously married and they bring children into that relationship. That, for a lot of couples, is an unexpected kind of a blindside: “Oh, I didn’t know this was…” “Oh, I didn’t…” “Oh, oh….” You know, it kind of—

Dennis: I do.

Bob: —it’s a wakeup call for a lot of couples.

Dennis: It really is; and joining us in the studio today to give us a perspective about that is Ron Deal. His perspective counts, because he has been in this area for over three decades; right, Ron?

Ron: Am I that old? [Laughter]

Bob: Sorry to break it to you, but yes. [Laughter]

Ron: I guess so.

Dennis: Ron heads up FamilyLife Blended®. He’s also joined by Steve and Misty Arterburn, all the way from Indiana.

2:00

Thanks for coming down and visiting us.

Steve: Great to be here.

Dennis: Glad to have you.

Steve: Thank you.

Misty: Thank you.

Bob: Any radio listeners, who think, “Is this New Life Live!?”—no; it’s FamilyLife Today—at least for the next 30 minutes, and then we might get to New Life Live! later on today; okay?

Steve: Thank you.

Bob: Yes.

Dennis: Steve is a pastor at Northview in Carmel, Indiana.

Steve: That’s right.

Dennis: Great ministry at church that has—how many people attending every Sunday?

Steve: I think around 10,000 and 3 campuses are in prisons. We just love ministering to those prisoners.

Bob: That’s great.

Dennis: That’s great. You and Misty have authored several books together.

We want to talk about what Bob was mentioning at the outset about how blended families function, especially, around parenting.

Bob: Yes; it is one thing for a couple, who have met, following—both of you were involved in a divorce / you were both sinned against. Your church got involved—

Steve: Yes.

Bob: —and helped you in the process of all of this. You met a while after you’d had the divorce. You dated for a period of time.

3:00

Steve: Right.

Bob: You fell in love—you said, “We’re going to get married.” You had two kids. Steve, you had a daughter. As you thought about remarriage, were you anticipating this could get tricky with kids?

Steve: We didn’t think it would be tricky. We knew that, if it wasn’t done well and right / if we didn’t prepare before the marriage, it was just going to end up—it had a good chance that the kids would cause another divorce—or the way we were handling those.

I was very impressed with her mothering. I just—it was—I was blown away by the way she mothered. She had these little boys. By the time they were seven, they’d gone through The Chronicles of Narnia, and the whole Bible, and all this stuff. They had a foundation. I was just thrilled that that was the kind of mothering she had done in the wake of divorce.

Bob: Were you worried, Misty, about the blending of families and being parents together?

Misty: I was terrified.

4:00

I was terrified. I just don’t take it lightly. Those are my boys, and their well-being was the highest aim. I was trying to make sure that I was healthy and that they could be healthy, and I didn’t want to risk. So, we were—

Dennis: That’s what I wanted to ask you: “Was it hard to trust again?”

Misty: Yes; very, very hard. You go through a train wreck like that, and there’s debris and carnage. You don’t want to experience that again. It was very sobering to go through that; and I tried to keep my eyes very wide open, walking into a new relationship.

Dennis: And you wanted to protect your kids because they trusted too; huh?

Steve: Well, my daughter was kind of everything to me at that point. I was not going to expose her to somebody that would love her for a little while and then we’d break up and it would be over. It was a long time before we got the kids together; but I felt like, if she could mother those boys the way she did, she could sure be a great bonus mother to my daughter.

5:00

Ron: Now, we’re going to talk about parenting and step-parenting here in a minute; but to set that up, we have to continue with what you guys have just talked about. To be able to trust one another, as husband and wife—when you’re also holding so tightly to you...