169: Growing up Blended: The Hidden Grief Kids Carry

Episode Transcript

FamilyLife Blended®

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Season 7, Episode 169: Growing up Blended: The Hidden Grief Kids Carry

Guest: Blake Hudspeth

Air Date: July 28, 2025

Blake: It’s never easy to share that five percent that you’ve been keeping. It’s easy to hear it from someone like me who’s ten, fifteen years past it and just looking at it and it’s all great and rounded out.

Ron: —rosy.

Blake: Yeah, it looks awesome. I was having stress dreams, crying myself to sleep at two o’clock in the morning in these seasons of my life. This was a very difficult season of my life; to get honest with myself about that five percent but then knowing my relationship with my parents could change forever if I share this five percent with them and being scared of that. And the pain of not sharing that was greater than what would happen with their response.

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. And why in the world do we do that? Well, because we believe there is great joy in loving God and loving others, and it kind of makes the world a better place.

My guest today is Blake Hudspeth. He is with me in the studio today. Thanks for being with me.

Blake: Thanks for having me.

Ron: It’s really great to have people in the studio. I don’t get to do that very often, so it’s nice to have him here with me. Blake is associate pastor of the Summit Church in Conway, Arkansas. He grew up in a blended family. If you’ve listened to this podcast for a little while, then you’re aware that from time to time we talk with people about their growing up years, about their blended family childhood. We call it Growing up Blended.

And the purpose is this, to help you, the listener or viewer, parents, stepparents, leaders, put yourselves in the shoes of the children in your world and in your life. We hope this informs your journey as a parent, stepparent, as a ministry leader, and your interaction with kids going forward.

Blake, thanks again; appreciate you being here. Short little drive from Conway, wasn’t too bad.

Blake: Yeah, not too bad, 30 minutes; do it all the time.

Ron: And turns out we have a common friend.

Blake: Apparently, so.

Ron: Yes, we do.

Blake: He at least thinks pretty highly of both of us. That’s what he said anyway.

Ron: That’s what he said. After this, maybe not. We’ll see how that goes. You wrote a little piece some time ago. I don’t even know how long it’s been.

Blake: It’s been a while, seven or eight years.

Ron: Okay. You wrote a little piece that came across my desk. I got to take a look at it, and it’s titled this, if you’re listening or watching, “Dear Frankenstein.” Doesn’t that drive your attention. “Dear Frankenstein: Hope for Pieced Together Families.” Did your childhood feel pieced together?

Blake: Yeah, it happened when my daughter was five. She’s 15 now, so we were eating chicken tenders actually.

Ron: Okay.

Blake: And we were talking.

Ron: It’s memorable because you remember what you were eating.

Blake: I remember what I was eating, yes. I remember, I could take you to the table we were sitting at.

Ron: Wow.

Blake: Her name is May. May was asking me just different questions about my family because she saw that it was a little bit different than my wife’s family—who mom and dad stayed together, grandma and grandpa, they’re all together. And my family wasn’t like that. She knew my mom and dad were separate and that there were other grandparents that were with them, so she was just asking different questions.

I started sketching it out on a piece of paper—and I made the joke to my wife when we first started dating and I said, “I don’t really have a family tree. I have a family forest.”—and so I was trying to explain it to May. I realized I just kept splitting them off and putting them together with different people. And what she saw was this kind of beautiful family that she loved, but it was really more Frankenstein’s monster when you look at it from a piece of paper.

And so when I was writing, my main hope was to give those families who really maybe were in despair or just felt like they were drowning, just hope that “Hey, this isn’t the end. You can have these moments.” And even my daughter, it was a very redemptive moment for me to see her knowing how much she’s loved, how much she loves my family, and the family she was growing up in, and the family that she was in was going to be a different one than the one I grew up in, and that was okay. As I was looking at it, I was like, “This is a pretty pieced together family.”

Ron: That is really great. And I’m glad you capitalized on that and shared some of your thoughts.

I want to press in on a couple of things. So May, five years old—up until that time had you, maybe with friends or somebody, had to try to explain the complexity of your family? But this was different when it was your daughter, I would think.

Blake: It was. So I was five or six when my mom and dad divorced. And so the closer that she got to the age that I was when my family divorced, it really emotionally hit me differently. I remember life before the divorce and after the divorce, so I have living memories of us together in our little farmhouse. And then obviously memories after that too, which was a very innocent question that she just was trying to kind of figure it out.

But I noticed it took my wife maybe a year to figure out the whole dynamic of my family. So I have—

Ron: Yeah, tell us the story.

Blake: Yeah, so I would say I have three brothers from three different moms. I’ve had four stepfamilies, I think is probably the easiest way to say that. Between five and twenty-one when I got married in college, I had had four completely different stepfamilies; some through divorce, some through death.

So I lost a stepdad when I was 18 very unexpectedly. Because of the dynamics—meaning I’m still close to Dale’s family who was my stepfather that died but I also now have a different stepfather. My mom remarried years later and so just how the dynamics of all of those family ties work took my wife a little while to kind of piece together and she grew up with me. We’ve known each other since we were 12.

As May got older—and then I have a son named Bear who’s 11 now, but as they inch towards that age that I was and I realized how much I loved them, how much they loved me, and what it would be like for them had me and Danielle split whenever they were in kindergarten, first grade, what it would do. I think the reality of it hit me a little bit more and really until May was that age, it was the first time I really—and you talk about this a lot, grieving, a healthy grief of a family that I wanted but didn’t have.

And when she was about that age was the first time I really, I think health, in a healthy way grieved that in a way that was very healing. It was healing for my mom and dad at the same time. I walked through it with them as well.

Ron: Wow. So say more about that. What were you grieving fresh and what happened when you’re looking at your daughter that you really hadn’t had to do before?

Blake: Yeah, it was kind of two things. It was coming to terms when you’re young. I used to hear a lot of things like, “Well, children are resilient, and they will bounce back,” and all these things. I think there’s some truth to that. I felt like it was, children are more like a sponge and they just kind of absorb everything that’s around them, good and bad, and they don’t know what to do with it. And so when I was growing up, the norm for me was that families just fell apart. So no family was really stable in my mind, no stepfamily was stable—and the ones that I was in even. And I loved everybody in those families really dearly, but I started kind of holding them a little bit more loosely.

Ron: I would think so, after a while, yeah; loss upon loss.

Blake: Yeah, you kind of start thinking any family is just a couple of weeks away from falling apart.

Ron: Wow.

Blake: What I didn’t realize was that my family, my mom and dad didn’t want me to think that. Their love for me had not changed at all. And until I got older and I realized what May was experiencing and later on what Bear was experiencing was really what in my heart of hearts, that’s what I wanted to experience, and I never got to. And so I never let myself be okay with that of admitting that.

And so I was 25, 26; I was in seminary. I was up in Louisville, Kentucky, and I had realized even at that point in my life, the Lord was doing kind of a work in my life about forgiveness. And I realized I had said I’d forgiven my mom and dad for all of just the pain that I had experienced as a kid. And they were great. That’s the other thing. My mom and dad are awesome. I have an extremely close relationship with both of them. It’s easy to think, “Oh, well, his parents’ divorce probably was super ugly,” and it really, it wasn’t.

And even today they very amicable talk very highly of one another in all of this, but one of the things they did really well was they always made sure I knew that nothing’s off limits for us to talk about. And so I’d always told them, “Well, no, I forgive you guys,” and all this stuff, but I hadn’t really. I don’t know if I really knew what I was forgiving them for until that season of my life when I was really grieving not having this. And so I did. I went to both of them in different times and just told them that, and it was for me, one of the most healing seasons of my life.

Ron: One of the things I always want to say to our viewer and listener about this is, it’s sort of like another layer of forgiveness that you have to put on because I heard you grieving something new in a fresh way and that brought about this need to forgive this new thing, if you will. From a timeline standpoint, nothing’s new, but from a realization standpoint, you now as a young man, grown man, married, parent, all of that sort of makes you see and experience the past in a fresh way, and so you have to wrestle with that.

I’m curious, do you mind telling us what is it that you had to say to them, to your parents at that season to sort of, to find the forgiveness or to be done with it?

Blake: I’m pushing 40 now, so that was probably close to 15 years ago when we were having those conversations. It was mostly admitting all the things I had felt growing up. And it wasn’t like, “You are a terrible parent.” I wasn’t a bunch of accusations. It was more of, “I need you to know how this made me feel,” and “I don’t want this to be between us anymore.”

Both parents took it differently. Their responses were both very positive, but their reactions were different in both of them, very redemptive ways. What I realized though, after that conversation, was in my mind forgiveness was this one-time thing. I think you said it really well a moment ago, it was really more a new realization that I’m having to bring forgiveness into.

And so from that moment forward, every Christmas—Christmas, particularly for me, has always been difficult—and forgiving them fresh every Christmas, forgiving them fresh when some sort of memory arises, or I get to hear about, “I went to Mom and Dad’s.” That’s for me growing up, I remember my parents always saying, “We want you to have some things that we didn’t have.” And so when I grew up, my dream was I want my kids to say, “Mom and Dad”—wake up on Christmas morning and say, “Mom and Dad.”

And what’s been great is since that conversation, those forgiveness conversations, but even as I was getting married, my mom and my dad and my stepparents, whoever they were at the time knew that dream and they were my biggest cheerleaders in it, of wanting that for me. All of those things helped with the forgiveness. You can forgive and things not go great afterwards. Sometimes I didn’t know what my relationship with either one of my parents were going to look like moving forward after those conversations, but because of the way that they responded so positively to it, it really has grown our relationship deeper over the years.

Ron: Go back to mom and dad. You just wanted to be able to say, “Mom and Dad.” When you were a child, you couldn’t say mom and dad on Christmas?

Blake: I remember being able to say Mom and Dad—

Ron: —until the divorce.

Blake: —until the divorce.

Ron: And then after that, what did you find yourself struggling with to say?

Blake: Well, Mom and Dad weren’t together anymore, so it was Mom and Dale, Dad and Karen. It was never—

Ron: And so the longing of your heart was—

Blake: —Mom and Dad.

Ron: —to be able to just say those three words together.

Blake: A hundred percent, yeah.

Ron: So when Dale’s in the picture and somebody else is in the picture and stepdad number two or whatever, was there a little bitter with the sweet? You liked Dale—

Blake: Oh yes, I loved him.

Ron:—but it wasn’t Mom and Dad. How does that work in your heart?

Blake: Yeah. I think the best way I know how to describe it is I felt like a ping pong ball in some ways. And so I never felt like I had my family. It was this is Mom and Dale and their family. This is Dad and Karen, their family. I had brothers from there. I was close to everybody. I loved everybody that was in those circles. I don’t know if bitterness is the right word, as more of a lack of trust. I just kept everyone at bay with trust, including even—years later I had a counselor ask me about comfort, like “What parent would you go to for comfort?”

It was a great question, and I remember my wife’s response and then I remember thinking, “I reclused.” Because I actually didn’t trust, not just my mom and dad, I didn’t trust anybody with my emotions. I think more bitterness towards once I had children and realized what I didn’t have growing up; and that’s where the forgiveness part needed to come in. But when I was a kid, it was more a lack of trust in the stability around me.

Ron: I have to just jump in and say something. I really—we’re trying to hammer this home with our listeners. So in the new book that Nan and I have written, The Mindful Marriage, we talk about two essential elements of relationships and emotional safety is one of them. That’s what you’ve been talking about for the last few minutes is this idea that, do I feel safe with my parent? Do I go to them when I’m in a need of comfort? How do I feel with mom and stepdad, dad and stepmom? Trusting them or lack of trust adds up to, I don’t feel safe as a kid. It’s not my family so I keep them at bay, a little guarded, maybe some walls and I lean away rather than leaning in.

And one of the things that we know about when relationships come apart, like in a marriage, when it comes apart is I believe couples fall out of safety and then fall out of love. We stop trusting each other, stop moving toward each other, and then as we lean away, the affection begins to die. In stepfamilies, we want people to really work hard at safety first, then love. It’s the opposite. You build safety and that paves the way for love to take place.

And so we’ve got a stepparent, for example, who’s probably listening right now going, “Oh my gosh, that’s my life. I’ve got a stepchild. I’m trying to move toward them, but I sense they’re not letting me in. I sense that wall, I sense that guardedness in their heart toward me, toward the family situation, and the child is leaning out and I don’t know what to do. I can’t reach them.” Looking back at your life, you got a thought or two about what would be helpful for that stepparent, and/or what did your stepparents do right, that was helpful for you?

Blake: Yes, so when I was a kid, I’ll just use their names because it’s easier for me to talk about both of them. Dale was my stepdad that I had when I was a kid and he died when my—spring of my senior in high school. And then Karen was my stepmom from about the same age, ten till I was older. How I would describe both of those experiences with my stepparents was I always felt like they were on my team. They didn’t try to replace a parent for me. They always spoke highly of—so Dale always spoke highly of my dad. Karen always spoke highly of my mom.

Ron: Those get thumbs up.

Blake: It was very, very respectful. In fact, I don’t have any memory of either one of my parents saying anything negative about the other one in front of me ever.

Ron: Fantastic.

Blake: That’s why I say it’s easy to think that the amount of pain you carried was because of how horrible the divorce was. And I would say it was one of the better ones that I’ve seen as far as how my parents responded and how their spouses responded to us, and to my brothers, as my dad had more children with my stepmothers. I had two different stepmothers, one brother from each. How my mom responded to those, men now, is just so positive. And so I always felt like, Dale was on Blake’s team, Karen was on Blake’s team.

Ron: Got it.

Blake: And because of that, I trusted Dale with my life. I didn’t trust—now I didn’t trust he would be in my life all the time, which is what’s interesting about it. I actually, of all of the different parents and stepparents that I have or I’ve had over the years, I parent the most like Dale. And so things—

Ron: He had a big influence on you.

Blake: He had a huge influence on my life. So I tell stepdads all the time, “Don’t think that your family isn’t absorbing some of those good things that you’re giving them, even though you’re not their dad, you don’t know that they may raise their kids like you’re raising them right now.”

And my stepmom, I didn’t see as much because I saw my dad every other weekend and then throughout the summer; but even then, she was juggling another blended family. My brother Bryce is from my dad’s second marriage, and so she’s really navigating too at the same time. And she did it with a lot of grace when I was a kid.

And so I would say be on their team. Just make sure you go out of your way to make sure that “I’m for you,” and you don’t have to understand all the ins and outs of what they’re feeling, and it takes time.

Ron: The thing I like about that is that it shows yet the layers of complexity because you felt like they were on your team, but you also within you had questions about how long they would be around.

Blake: Correct.

Ron: So even when they got it right, so to speak, there’s just this piece of you that still wonders because life has taught you, you can’t really trust that things are going to last. Relationships and families come apart. And I think that’s so important for our listeners and viewers because sometimes we take all of the blame onto ourselves, “I got to get this,” or “What am I supposed to do?” and “How am I going to fix this in that kid?”

Yeah, there’s some things that are not up to you. There’re some things that the child is just wrestling with as a result of the journey that they have been on, and it is what it is. What you want to do is just continue to be that presence that shows up, that is loving, respectful, decent, kind, gentle as you can possibly be. That all builds emotional safety, which then furthers their ability to move towards you in love eventually, not usually, not quickly, but eventually. And so it just seems to me that that’s some of the things you can do, the power, if you will, that a parent/stepparent has.

You and your Dear Frankenstein, I took notice some things that you said about your stepparents, what they did right. I just wanted to give you a chance to comment and tell us a little bit more about that. You said all four of your parents and stepparents work toward some of these common goals. They encouraged anything that hinted at Jesus in your life.

Blake: Yes.

Ron: How did they do that?

Blake: So what’s interesting about it, my dad actually didn’t even become really a Christian—he took us around the church, but he really wasn’t even a Christian until I was in high school. I saw a radical—it was after his third marriage,—radical transformation in his life, which was amazing. But even still when I was young, would always bring me around our church and my grandmother would always take us to church. So anything that was around our relationship with the Lord, being around men in the church, they just were always very encouraging about.

I mean, I’m in ministry now. I’m a pastor. Even that I’ve heard stories of men who felt like the Lord was calling them in the pastoral ministry and their parents are like, you’re never going to make money at that. That’s a terrible idea. I just had none of that. I went on a mission trip when I was 17 to Slovakia and as now as a dad of a 15-year-old daughter, I’m trying to imagine myself putting her on a plane and sending her overseas one day.

Ron: Slovakia.

Blake: Yeah.

Ron: I don’t even know how to spell it. I don’t know.

Blake: Yeah, it’s in Eastern Europe. But I was thinking, I was like, my parents let me as a junior in high school, go on a mission trip in a way that I am scared to let, would be scared to let my daughter go on. And I’ve been walking with the Lord my whole life.

So student ministry, anything that I wanted to be involved in with the church, they just really, they were my cheerleaders with it. My very first sermon I ever preached, I was 17 years old at my dad’s church, and I would also say because of that, I’m the biggest fan of the local church because I think the local church gave me things that divorce never could take away from me. And so I had, because my mom and stepdad put me around men and women of God, because my dad and stepmom put me around men and women of God, I got to see other families. I got to see how other families work. I didn’t get to grow up with my dad as much, but I had men in my church teach me how to ask a girl out on a date.

So an example is Steve Graham, who’s my father-in-law. When I was in maybe ninth grade, was in our student ministry, and he came and he spoke on the way that you treat women, and my ears perked up because that’s Danielle Graham’s dad and I went to school with Danielle Graham. She’s pretty awesome, so whatever he has to say, I’m going to listen to.

Well, he talked about this is how you ask a girl out on a date, and I still remember everything he talked about, and it was really the first and only time I remember anyone talking to me about that. And well, it paid dividends later on for him because I’m the one who ends up marrying his daughter and raising his grandkids. That was the type of relationships that I had in the local church.

Ron: Very cool.

Blake: All of my parents were just champions of that.

Ron: That is very, very cool. We’re going to come back and talk about ministry in a little bit, but I just got to flag that as an example of the power of the local church to invest in students’ lives no matter what their family story is and perhaps fill some gaps, but also just come alongside that family unit and how important and powerful that is. You said about your stepparents, that they wanted the best for you and that you always had them in your corner.

Blake: Yes.

Ron: You said earlier they were on your team. How did you know that they wanted the best for you? Can you think of an example or story?

Blake: Yeah, so part of my story is when I was ten, I started having this intense pain in my sinuses and in my ears and all of these things and ended up being hospitalized and through a series of tests, doctors found my entire head was filled with tumors and they had no idea what they were. They turned out not to be cancerous, but they responded similarly to cancer. From ten to about seventeen, I went through a series of just excruciating surgeries, but chemotherapies and lots of medication and specialists and things like that.

What that did, I mean the divorce happened probably in arguably one of the most vulnerable times of my life: five, six years old, very impressionable age. This health crisis happened to me in another very vulnerable time in my life, which was preteen, and through my 10th grade, 11th grade year of high school. What that did redemptively was bring all of my family together around me.

And so we’re sitting in doctor’s offices and oncology clinics together, all of us. Mom and Dad and Dale and Karen, we’re all together waiting on the results of this last thing and all this. And I just remember through all of those moments just feeling very loved and supported. And when I say in my corner, not only just from I care about you, but I care about your future too.

So the thing that I get so sad about sometimes not seeing Dale anymore is how proud he would be of me and of my brother, getting to see our family. He just was a huge cheerleader of, “Hey, I want you to find God’s woman for you, and I want you to stay there.”

Ron: Quick little drill into that snapshot of all of them in the waiting room with you, supporting, waiting for information. We have people listening who are saying, “We can’t do that. We can’t be in the same room with my ex or his new wife or whatever.” Do you have any sense of what your parents and stepparents had to do in order to make that happen?

Blake: Yeah. There was a marriage in between with my dad that that is the case.

Ron: Okay.

Blake: “We’re not all going to hang out at my house together.”

Ron: So it was your first stepmom.

Blake: It was my first stepmom, and I have a brother, Bryce.

Ron: She was closed to it. She didn’t want everybody hanging out.

Blake: Well, it would’ve just the way that divorce happened and all of that, if it were Bryce, it would be a different situation in that waiting room is what I’m getting at. I think by the time you got to me, this is what I found out as an adult. And maybe something that can encourage listeners who you might have younger kids right now or kids that are teenagers, and you’re just wondering, “Am I doing this right? My report card hadn’t come in yet of what I’m doing, what’s going on.”

As an adult, the thing that surprised me the most was how self-aware my parents were, and my stepparents were, of what was going on. In my mind, I’m like, “They don’t know how this is making me feel,” or “They don’t know that this is so wild and crazy, and our family is just a big old crockpot and all this.” They knew all those things and they chose to purposefully talk well about each other, to give the other parent the benefit of the doubt, to allow us—to release weekends for me sometimes if that meant to go to one person’s thing as opposed to another. Never making me feel like I was a tug rope or a rope in between them.

I didn’t realize they consciously made those decisions. They talked about those decisions. That wasn’t just something that happened on an island from each of those.

Ron: So helpful.

Blake: But I didn’t know that when I was 16.

Ron: You just knew you were free to go.

Blake: I was just experiencing it. And then as an adult, when I’m telling them all the things that I was experiencing as a kid, good and bad, they were able to say, “We did that on purpose.” And in fact, one of the hardest things I would say when you write something—you would definitely understand this because you’ve written a lot of really wonderful things—when you first give whatever it is you’re writing to someone, it’s a real vulnerable thing. And so you think, “Oh, I hope this helps you. I hope this doesn’t make me look like an idiot, all these different things. The hardest thing I think I’ve ever done was giving that manuscript to my mom and dad and said, “This will never see the light of day if you guys are not okay with this.” And the reason was, I thought, “This is going to shock you. My story is going to shock you with all of this.” And not only did it not shock them; they were like, “Blake, we knew all of these things, and every person needs to hear this.” And so just as I got older, what I wish my parents would’ve done is they would’ve initiated that conversation instead of me.

Ron: Oh, interesting.

Blake: If they would’ve initiated that, I wouldn’t have felt so much emotional turmoil on whether or not I should talk about it.

Ron: Yeah, by the time you get there, you’re all keyed up thinking you’ve got this big thing, you got to address forgiveness.

Blake: And they’ve been living in it for 20 years. And one of the things my mom said that I thought was really helpful when I was in that grieving season where I was forgiving, one of the things she said I thought was very insightful was, “I just didn’t know what age you were supposed to be when we were supposed to have this conversation.” And I thought, “That makes a lot of sense.” It’s not like, “Well, when you’re 18, we’ll sit down and have this conversation.” For me, it was 24, 25. And so my thought was if that would’ve been something that either one of them just said, “Hey, when he is this age, I’m just going to sit down, and we’re going to have a very honest conversation and just open that door for him.”

Ron: As I’m sitting here listening to that. You’re right, very insightful. And how would anyone know what the right time would be.

Blake: Right.

Ron: And it makes me think that maybe what somebody could do is just signal that they’re open to it. In other words, do a soft knock on the door to have that conversation to say to a child, “Hey, look, someday, you may want to know what all of this has been like from our side of the situation, and you may want to hear more of the backstory, and we’re open to that.” —if you just to sort of softly put that out there to a child who just, at least they feel permission.

Blake: Yes, yes. And I think my dad layered those moments in with—I always say, and I think I say this in that Frankenstein manuscript, which he was just clutch. He was able to make some clutch moments with me when I was young, and one of those was kind of layering in some of that of, “Hey, nothing’s off limits. You’re not going to hurt my feelings. We can talk about these sort of things.”

So when I got to that point with my dad, it was a little easier. With my mom, I think my mom cared so much about nurturing me and being a rock that it was almost like she didn’t want to make it feel like she had cracks in the rock. And what I didn’t realize is she knew that the whole time. And so I think for her it was harder to know. I think that’s a really great piece of if she just would’ve said, “Hey, anytime you want to talk about this, just know I’m open to talk about it.” I think just that open invitation would’ve been way easier for me. I would’ve had a lot less angst.

Ron: Again, this all speaks to emotional safety. Is it okay to talk about this stuff? Your dad’s saying to you, “Hey, I’m okay with that.” To show ourselves as not fragile and fearful of conversations that are hard and difficult for our children, but to show ourselves as people who can step into that space on their behalf, that is all a part of that building that context of emotional safety. The irony is, and again, what I want parents and stepparents to take away, the irony is when you do that, you show yourself to be somebody that they can move toward good, bad or ugly, whatever it may be, but they can move towards you and they don’t have to be afraid of you, if you will, or the relationship or the difficulties. And that makes you likable, respectable, and that is what comes before lovable—safety, likable, respectable, lovable.

You said some other things about them. They didn’t pretend like being a blended family was easy or natural for them or for you. They never spoke negatively about the other parent. You talked about that earlier. They were quick to forgive and show grace toward each other, toward you?

Blake: Towards me, specifically, yeah. I didn’t see them as much ask for forgiveness towards one another, and they did for sure. Something though that my dad said to me—I was probably 24, 25—that I have never been able to shake off of me—and it was during that season where me and mom and dad were having these deep heart-wrenching kind of conversations. Or for me they were heart-wrenching. For them I think they were very open conversations. I told Dad, I said, “I just can’t imagine dropping May and Bear off with Danielle every other weekend.” I was like, “I can’t imagine what that was like, but I also can’t imagine getting into a place where I’m okay with that.”

My dad was quiet for a moment, and he said, “Blake, I think you just don’t realize how deceptive sin can be.” And it stopped me in my tracks. It stopped me in my tracks because I might not understand how that would happen, but I understand the deceitfulness of sin and I understand what my dad was like when he was young and the thought of, I might not go down this road, but sin is just as deceitful in my life. And so my dad was no stranger to grace, and my mom was no stranger to grace. So they didn’t try to put on airs necessarily around it because they knew we had front row seats to our family. We knew what life was like in front and back and all that kind of stuff.

Ron: And if they tried to pretend or lie.

Blake: Oh we could see right through it.

Ron: Exactly.

Blake: We could see right through it. But when Dad said that to me, everything changed about even how I viewed, not just forgiveness, but it humbled me big time. And he did not say it—

Ron: —to humble you.

Blake: Not at all.

Ron: He said it out of humility.

Blake: He said it out of humility, and it wrecked me.

Ron: Yeah. Wow. And I imagine your respect for your dad went up.

Blake: Oh, my respect for both of my parents out of that season skyrocketed, skyrocketed. I think more of my parents right now than I’ve ever thought of them in my life. I ask for advice for them. They know everything going on in my life. I want them a part of my children’s life, all of that.

Ron: I want to capture this. I think what you’re telling us is, for you, that whenever that monumental—you were 24, 25—

Blake:Yeah, mid-twenties.

Ron: —when those conversations started happening and you’re getting their point of view and you’re saying things that you’ve never known how to say, and now you’re giving birth to it, so to speak, and they’re going through that, that somehow that experience opened up a level of depth and intimacy and trust with your parents that you had not experienced before.

Blake: That’s right because I knew they weren’t perfect. I didn’t need perfect parents. I just wanted my parents. And so when I felt known and loved by them and I felt that I knew them better, then all the other stuff, the good stuff, the “I’m in your corner. I’m rooting for you. I’m your cheerleader. I’m going to be there no matter what.” I started believing all those things in ways that I didn’t believe them fully when I was a kid.

Ron: What I want our listener to get is listen to the power of the leaning away, holding back, you keeping yourself, and a part of yourself, not all of you, just a part of you—that really intimate part that they didn’t know—keeping that away created a gap, a limitation on the depth of your relationship. When you took the risk and pushed in and toward and then discovered, “Wow, there’s more here,” and “I’m learning. They’re learning. We’re connecting.” that opened up some stuff. Now you can continue to lean in and move toward.

I just want everybody to hear the power of that. If you’re talking to somebody right now who’s still leaning out—maybe they’re the stepparent who’s leaning out, not really ready to take another risk. Maybe it’s a child who’s a teenager or they’re young adult and they’ve never had this heart conversation with a parent or whoever—what would you say to them about continuing to lean out versus prayerfully considering pushing in?

Blake: Yeah. I would say two things. The first is it’s never easy to share that five percent that you’ve been keeping. It’s easy to hear it from someone like me who’s ten, fifteen years past it and just looking at it and it’s all great and rounded out.

Ron: Rosy.

Blake: Yeah, it looks awesome. When I was having stress dreams, crying myself to sleep at two o’clock in the morning in these seasons of my life, this was a very difficult season of my life to get honest with myself about that five percent. But then knowing my relationship with my parents could change forever if I share this five percent with them and being scared of that. And the pain of not sharing that was greater than what would happen with their response, I was going, “I can’t spend the rest of my life faking it with my mom and dad, and so I need them to know this about me. I don’t know how they’ll respond, but I know how they respond will probably dictate how the rest of our relationship will go in the future.”

So that is extremely angsty when you’re walking and thinking that. And so to someone who is leaning away, I would say it is never going to be easy. That five percent is never going to be easy to share. But on the backside of it, it’s so worth it and it will never feel natural. That will never be my, I don’t know if it’s a human problem or if it’s a childhood problem for me but sharing that emotion that last five percent is not my default. My default is leaning away. So just because you do it once doesn’t mean that you’re going to be able to do this and stay in that posture. You’ll have to keep kind of moving forward.

Ron: Such a good word. And I want our listener to know we’re not promising that you would have the same outcome that he would have. If I was sitting with somebody who’s wrestling with that decision I would say yeah, pray. Let’s consider. Let’s talk through. Let’s think about where your parents are and whoever this person is you need to approach, where you are. Come with low expectation. Let’s be realistic about what you should expect the response to be. What you’re going to try to do is be as loving and kind with your approach and your words as you can possibly be. Those are the things you can control in this situation, but maybe the risk is worth it. And by the way, they call it risk for a reason. It’s not supposed to be easy.

We will talk about ministry in just a second. Last question. You happened to mention as we were giving you a quick little tour around our office that you saw The Smart Stepfamily sitting on a shelf and you said you cried reading through that book.

Blake: Yeah, I cried—every time I picked it up, I started crying. Two reasons. The first was thinking about what my parents and stepparents did right intuitively; of going, they really did some things terribly, but they did some things right. There were some things that I just was grateful for, and I’ve seen it go sideways with other families. The other thing within that same kind of vein though, is crying. The tears came from acknowledgement of the pain and the thought of “If my parents had had this 15 years ago, how differently my life would be.”

So I’ve bought it for friends, I’ve bought it for people who are thinking about getting married in a blended family of, and the line I will always say, I said, “If my parents had this, my childhood would’ve been better.” And it was not a horrible childhood, but the tools that are in some of the pages in there are so helpful. And if I could tell any parent one thing that would’ve been most important for Blake when he was a kid was acknowledging the pain that you experienced. And that has to be so hard as a parent because to know that I was a part of that pain—and I’m not talking about going and wallowing in guilt in front of your kid. That’s a terrible, that’s a ditch. Don’t go into that ditch. There’s a difference between wallowing in guilt and acknowledging that the pain, that you did have a hand in causing in some way.

And so the way that I’ve described it with people was, if you could put pain in a pile, then there’s been a lot of kind of crazy things as a young guy that I experienced with—I kind of shared about tumors and chemo and surgeries; losing my stepfather when I was 18 absolutely wrecked my life; experiencing miscarriages with Danielle and I—if you could put all that pain in a pile and then the pain of my parents divorce when I was six years old in a pile, I think that pile would be higher because of the effects that the after effects and aftermath of what that did. And I always thought I was crazy for that. I was like, “That just can’t be true.”

So fast forward to just a few years ago, I was actually in therapy for working through a lot of anxiety and trauma that I experienced at Children’s Hospital through just medicine, medical, just waking up and being in intense amounts of pain and being scared and being scared for my kids and that sort of thing. Well, I had a classmate that I grew up with that had spinal cancer the same time that I was getting diagnosed with all of this other stuff. So same kind of trajectory. His was far more dangerous than mine, but I just remember those years for us, and I thought—and he’s a professor in theology right now, and I thought, I need to reach out to him and just say, “Hey, as a Christian now, as a father—you have family, you have children, you know what it’s like to go through these kind of scary medical things—what has just your faith journey been like and all these things?”

I was expecting us to talk the whole time about anxiety and medicine and tragedy. And I said, what did you feel when you were sixth grade, seventh grade when we were kind of going through all of this? And he said, honestly, the whole time. And he started crying. He said, the whole time I was trying to keep my mom and dad together because they were in the middle of a divorce. And he’s like, I don’t remember as much about being afraid to die. I remember being afraid of losing my family. I did not expect at all for that conversation to take that hard left turn. And I thought, this is the first time I don’t feel crazy. I feel—

Ron: I was going to say, you felt validated.

Blake: Yeah. I thought “I know exactly how that feels, and I would agree with you.” And this is a guy who was looking at a way worse diagnosis than I was when I was in sixth, seventh grade. So I would tell parents, don’t shy away from acknowledging something that your child’s already feeling. And when the more my parents did that as an adult, it depressurized everything. It was such a good way to depressurize things.

Ron: Again, it created emotional safety. It created a space where you can move toward them in this. We don’t have to pretend, “You’re over there. I’m over here.” You’re denying this truth about, that’s true. So I’m hearing from you, as you read The Smart Stepfamily, what I’m hearing is you had tears of gratitude for what they did right.

Blake: One hundred percent.

Ron: But you also had tears of loss for your own life and your own emotions of what you experienced. And so wow, what a journey. Did it help give you some perspective about, put words on some of the things you lived through?

Blake: Yeah, a hundred percent. It helped me put some words on things that they did well; of going, “Oh, that’s a principle.” I wouldn’t have known how to say it that way, and I wouldn’t have known how to incorporate that like they did, but that’s what was going on. And also it gave some handles for validating, acknowledging, putting some good boundaries in place in your home, just some good foundational things that I thought some of these were present and some of these weren’t. And it gave me hope for blended families. The Lord can redeem all of this stuff even though every relationship’s different and every blended family is different, and every member of a blended family’s relationship is different. It still can be redemptive.

Ron: You’re in ministry now.

Blake: I am.

Ron: You’re walking around, you’re talking to families, you’re seeing couples, single people, parents, children, teens. You’re connected to all of that in the life of your local church. What do you think church is doing well when it comes to being a blessing to blended families, and what do you think we should be doing?

Blake: So what my local church did well—so I’m actually a pastor at the same church that I grew up at, which is—what I love to tell people is I don’t have a lot of—empathy is the wrong word. I don’t understand when someone explains church hurt to me, “My church hurt me,” and all of that. I can understand from a sense of like, “I bet that’s true. That sounds terrible,” but I can’t understand it from a sense of that’s what I experienced.

In fact, whenever I became a pastor—I’ve been a pastor for about 17 years, and I got to go behind the curtain and really see how it’s all done. It actually was sweeter. I realized I actually liked it better than I even did as a member of the church. So I want to say first my local church loved me really, really well. I think one of the things that they probably missed was they probably saw Blake as Dale and Holly’s son. And so it was as if they only knew 50 percent of Blake.

Ron: Your identity was not necessarily only limited to Blake and Holly.

Blake: It was. And so as they got to know me, I’m like, I have a whole family in Dewitt, Arkansas that is a farm that’s been in my family for over a century. And that’s like I used to tell people when we turn back into dust, that’s the dirt I’m turning into is the soil in Arkansas County. That’s who I am, and my bones is that. And so there is a separation that—it’s not like the whole church needs to know everything going on down there, but it was in their minds, this is their nuclear family.

Ron: Because that’s all they saw.

Blake: That’s all they saw. So just to be aware of that, be aware that—

Ron: I think that’s so good.

Blake: —that stepfamilies just have lots of different dynamics and kids can feel a little disoriented in those situations. I never felt like my parents, in either case, had scarlet letters put on them by people that they were treated with grace and kindness. I know that that’s not true of everywhere, and I just know that if it can be true in my sense, it can be true in other people’s sense too. They can experience that as well.

So there are churches that do that. What’s interesting is I feel like there may be better resources right now than have ever been in the local church for how to build a healthy stepfamily or a blended family. And I think it’s the least talked about thing right now. And so I think if the local church needs to do anything, it’s to talk about it more. And it might be out of fear that you’re promoting divorce and that’s not how it works. And blended families don’t always come from divorce and so—

Ron: What I’ve always responded to people who say, “Well, are we condoning or somehow promoting divorce?” I thought, “Who do you know who’s happily married, who you will convince to get divorced?” Because you talk about—

Blake: Absolutely.

Ron: —nobody is going to do that.

Blake: Nobody. That’s right. That’s right. And so I think just maybe even incorporating that in our language as we talk about just different types of families. It helps for me—me and our lead pastor, we both come from blended families, so it feels very natural for us to talk about that. For me, growing up, it was weird to see a family who had not been divorced. So I gravitate to kids. If you ask me as far as the local church, I just gravitate to their kids because I know what they’re going through.

Ron: Yeah, and I’m sure you do. You have a sensitivity to it that most people simply don’t have, and I love that.

One of the things we talk about at our Summit on Stepfamily Ministry is all the different ways that churches can be influenced and be a role player, if you will, in ministering to all the different members of a stepfamily. So children’s ministry programs and student ministry programs to ask about “So tell me about the other half of your family.” Just that simple little invite and interest in the child to say, “I know you got a dad who’s somewhere else and I’ve never met him. Tell me about him. What’s it like when you go over there?”

Just that level of what that would’ve done for you to open that up. Children’s programs that are mindful that sometimes parents are making their visitation swap at Sunday School or on Wednesday night or at the youth program, and that mindfulness goes a long way towards saying to children, “We see you. We love all of you, all the little parts of you. We don’t understand it all, but we at least care about it.” Those are little things that families can do.

I’m going to mention while I’m thinking of it; we have a tip sheet for leaders that on student ministry and children’s ministry as well as adult ed ministry, all of that’s free. We’ll put that in our show notes and make that accessible to people.

Blake: One of the things that I would encourage members, ministry leaders too is—I remember my pastor growing up. His name’s Bill Eliff, and he said something to me that’s always stuck when it’s come to families or any marriages that are kind of floating on choppy waters and not really sure, and especially blended families, I feel like almost feel looked at in ways that aren’t even true. I remember my dad talking about “I’m afraid to go to church and what they’re going to think of me.” And I was like, “Dad, go to church. It’s okay.”

But what Bill said to me early on in ministry is if I can help people believe that there is hope for whatever situation that they’re in, that their blended family actually could flourish, or their marriage could flourish, or that as a child that could flourish, if I can just get them to hope, the Lord can do so many different things with that hope. And I think if you know a family in your church that’s struggling or new or even recently divorced, of just not being afraid to wade into that awkward two seconds; to walk up to them and give them hope that they’re seen, they’re loved, that they’re wanted, that they belong, but then also that they have hope because a lot of them don’t believe it’s true.

Ron: That’s so important. Blake, thank you so much for your perspective, both looking back on your life and also as a pastor. It’s been really great. Appreciate it very much.

Well, speaking of ministry, we are gearing up for our next Summit on Stepfamily Ministry. It’s coming this October. We’re going to be in the Nashville, Tennessee area. It’s a two day, in-person event that equips leaders, lay couples, pastors, you name it, anybody who’s interested in local blended family ministry. We’re going to try to get you connected to some of the leading thinkers and authors and practitioners of stepfamily ministry. So come join us. It’s a great networking experience. It’s kind of like coming home.

We have so many people who come to this event who maybe have been teaching The Smart Stepfamily video series in their church. They’ve never met anybody else who’s doing that. This is an opportunity for you to just come and visit with people who have the same heart and same passion as you. You can look us up online to learn all about that event. SummitonStepfamilies.com for more information and to get registered. There’s a link in the show notes.

Finally, I want to just remind you that FamilyLife is a donor-supported ministry. Our department FamilyLife Blended lives and breathes on your tax-deductible gifts. So if this podcast or any of our resources has served you, please consider making a donation. Make sure you use the link in our show notes because that gets your support directly to us.

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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