The Waiting Game

If you are in a stepfamily or are in the planning stages of forming a stepfamily, then you are going to do some waiting. Oh yes, there is much waiting that must be done in stepfamilies. If you learn how to wait well, then you will increase your odds of successful stepfamily formation.

You will wait for your stepchildren to appreciate you.

You will for your children to appreciate their new stepparent.

You will wait for issues with your new spouse's former spouse to be worked out.

You will wait for that "normal" feeling.

You will wait for consistent child support.

You will wait for swaps for parenting time.

You will wait for peace.

You will wait for logistics to get worked out.

You will wait for logistics to get (re)worked out.

With all of this waiting it might be hard to imagine just when things are going to get good. Well, there is no magic answer as goodness is defined differently for everyone and timing also varies between people. But here is a little advice while waiting.

1. Ask yourself what you are supposed to be learning while waiting for whatever it is you are waiting for.

2. Assess the impact of how you do waiting on the members of your stepfamily.

3. List out who you are blaming for your having to wait and then figure out a better way to understand their position.

4. Find meaning in the waiting. The world is ripe with meaning in all things at all times. Don't let the meaning of waiting get lost in the frustration of waiting.

5. Activate your creativity while waiting. That means you should make the most of it. Make it beneficial that you had to wait.

Good luck in waiting.

Stones in the blender

It's hard to blend a family.

The word 'blending' gives the image of something that happens in 15 seconds and creates something tasty. Blending families doesn't work that way.

In fact, when families try to blend it can seem like someone threw a load of stones in the blender. Bouncing and rocking around, sounding like everything is going to break, blended family life can get a little unsure every now and again.

Rather than blending and trying to get normal and 'tasty' in 15 seconds, rather than ending up as stones in the blender, how about trying to be stone soup?

Yes, stewing for a while, for years in fact, is the way to 'normalcy' in a stepfamily. One of the keys is to do stepfamily life for a long time. Enough time helps routines to form, traditions to develop - time offers the opportunity to do things many times such that the repetition gives the sense of normalcy.

Be patient. Be kind. Be forgiving.

Power and Motive

If there are two things that individuals bring into relationships that make a huge difference they are power and motive.

Relational power is how much one person can use their force or finesse to effect change.

Relational motive is how selfish/selfless a person is.

A powerful person who is selfish is also dangerous, but a powerful person with good motives is generative and makes good happen. A selfless person without any power might have good intentions, but really can't do anything with those intentions.

Now, take these combinations within a person and figure the interactions between two people. One person's power and motive interacting with the other's power and motive.

The greater the power differential between two people, the more necessary it is for the more powerful person to be selfless. Without intentional effort, the more powerful person will harm the less powerful person.

Relationships between parents and teens are necessarily very different in power. It is incumbent on the more powerful person (the parent) to become more selfless. Don't be tempted to be fair in relationships that differen in power. There is no fair. Striving to be fair is a fool's game.

Increase the motive toward goodness. Goodness (selflessness) is better than fairness - always.

Power should always be (and will always be) the tool for motive. Be good and let your power serve goodness.

Stepping into goodness

Stepfamily life provides many opportunities that first family life typically does not.

Your boundaries, tolerances, and limits will be explored in directions never dreamed of by first families. This may not sound like a good thing because if you are like me, you have little interest in constantly being stretched in difficult directions. I like comfy; I like cozy.

So, for a little perspective, when you are being stretched to your limits on something, take a step back and think of it as an opportunity few people get to be a good person.

I know what this sounds like - some power of positive thinking pep talk. It's not. Let me state that a little more emphatically - IT'S NOT!!!!!

Sometimes perspective is all you've got. Why belittle a hidden strength?

Allow perspctive to give you a chance to step into goodness.

Foolish Musings on Wisdom

What is wisdom and who can grasp it? Where can one go to purchase this thing called wisdom? Does one ever have enough of it? Once you get some of it, does it remain with you always?

I would say there are few people who would argue against the idea that wisdom is a good thing to pursue. And yet, there is so little space for wisdom in our culture that finding space for it is a daunting task. "Yes, wisdom is a good thing, but who has time for it?"

Here are a few foolish musings on wisdom:

1. There are two sources of wisdom. Personal experience and other people's experience.

Personal experience is often times pretty straight forward. If you do something, you know that it is like to do it. Then you choose whether or not to do it again. Or you choose to modify the way in which you did it in order to alter the outcome.

The experiences of others is not as straight forward nor are they as easily to internalize. Who the "others" are matters. Is it friends, family and co-workers and that's it? What about historical figures? What about Biblical figures? The storehouses of historical and sacred wisdom are so vast, so expansive that we hardly notice them. They are like intricate and highly detailed wall paper that you might notice at a glance, but seldom look at for it deep design or message.

2. There are pre-wisdom steps that are necessary in order to gain wisdom.
A. Acknowledge that there is such a thing as wisdom.
B. Assess its value relative to your life and find yourself lacking.
C. Decide that it is worth pursuing.
D. Pursue it in the course of daily life, not merely as a cognitive exercise outside of daily life.

3. Practice all the wisdom you gain.

4. When you fail to do number three, reflect on those times and assess what it is about you that wars against wisdom. If this becomes an exercise in guilt, then you're not doing it. In failure, wisdom transcends guilt toward a more wholesome and less toxic motivation.

5. Pass along your wisdom, but only when it has become part of who you are. Resist the temptation to immediately tell everyone about the great new thing you learned before it is really who you are. Sharing gained wisdom too quickly, before it is who you are, will result in embarrassment and hypocrisy.

6. When you fail to do number 5, reflect on those times understanding that guilt may be a temptation.

7. Develop relationships with people younger and less experienced than you are and live your wisdom in their presence. You do this for them, but you do this for you, too. If you have gained a sense of wisdom, being in relationship with someone who perhaps thinks you are wise raises the bar for you and challenges you to be persist in your wisdom.

What does all of this have to do with stepfamilies? Hopefully you see that it has quite a bit to do with stepfamilies. If anyone needs to pursue wisdom it is people who find themselves in complex situations wherein the rules are not clear, the playing filed is not level, and the cultural context works against them. Stepfamilies, in large measure, fit this definition.

Pursue wisdom a little and you will find it a little. Pursue it a lot and you will find it a lot. Never stop pursuing it and you will never exhaust its vast storehouses.

Forgiveness

If you're in a stepfamily (or if you're a human) you've been done wrong. In fact, from your point of view, you might be getting done wrong on a daily basis. It might be your former spouse sticking it to you in court, it might be your current spouse sticking it to you for not being fair to his or her bio children, it might your bio childrin turning the screws on you and testing your "true" loyalty at every turn.

What do you do about the residual pain and frustration caused by these relational injustices?

Well, you can kick and fight and scream and try to force your way. But I can tell you now, it just isn't going to work. No one comes to their sense because you beat the daylights out of them.

You could also let yourself get run over "for the sake of peace." I can also tell you that there is no happy doormat out there. The doormats ot there iwth smiles on their faces are lying.

What you can do is two-fold:

1. Be proactive in preventing future transgressions by direct, assertive, and generous communication. No blame her, but more so statements about how you feell and what you would like. Also, carrying no expectation that you'll get everything you want, but hope that it will change from the place it is now.

2. Forgive. The past may be indicative of the future, but it isn't the future. Holding things against people not only doesn't hurth them, it does hurt you. Your body, believe it or not, automatically detects unforgiveness, labels it stress, and releases more stress hormone, which you do not need more of.

You must relieve yourself of the emotional responsibility of keeping of making that other person responsible for what they did - for the good of everyone including yourself.

Let it go. Open up your fist and let it go. Things won't get worse, but they could get better.