God Never Intended for Families to be Broken

God never intended for families to be broken. But we still live in a world with a lot of broken families. I am familiar with this because I come from one. I am sure I don’t remember the struggles my mom/dad/step-dad had as I grew up with the intensity that they felt those struggles at the time, but I do know that it wasn’t easy. Now I am the stepparent and almost every day I tell myself “God never intended for families to be broken, and that is why this is so hard”. I repeat this so that maybe I will be a little easier on myself when, at the end of the day, I inevitably feel like I was a complete failure as a stepparent.

Today I am feeling like that because I read this incredible blog that a friend posted called 20 Things I Want My Daughters to Understand about Being a Woman. When I clicked on the link I fully expected to identify with all of the things and want to share the link myself because those would be the same things I wanted my stepdaughter to understand about being a woman. Instead I read the blog and thought, “how do I teach these incredibly important concepts to a child I barely get to know?” Parenting is hard work. It is the hardest and the most important work a person can do. It is made that much harder when you have limited amount of time to do it.

I could have shared the link and maybe everyone would read it and think that I was doing a great job investing time and wisdom into my step-daughter, but is that even right? The after math of reading this blog left me with a really uncomfortable feeling of not being enough as a step-mother.

Then I wondered if I was the only step-parent feeling this way. I thought about the hundreds of blogs that are likely out there dedicated to step-moms and step-dads who feel completely inadequate in the upbringing of their step-children… and then I thought – maybe someone can identify with what I am feeling and benefit from some of this truth.

As much as an encouragement to myself I want to share some of the things I feel like God is telling me through this situation.

1. The amount of time you spend with someone doesn’t matter as much as the amount of love you show them. Not the amount of love you have for them, but the amount of love you SHOW them. You might love your children immensely, but if you don’t show them they simply won’t know it. My step-daughter is a special case, because she has Williams Syndrome and emotions mean even more to her than they might to others. With that being said, this is a truth that I believe is true regardless of the child. The most important thing that I can do as a step-parent is to love well. No matter how much time we have together, and no matter how difficult it sometimes can be – the one thing she will remember is how I made her feel. If she walks away feeling anything but loved then I have not done my job as a stepparent.

“WE LOVE BECAUSE HE FIRST LOVED US” 1 John 4:19

We have a great example of the kind of love we are to give.

2. The amount of time you spend with someone doesn’t matter as much as the amount of time you spend praying for them. This is true for all of the people we love. 1 Timothy 2:1 urges us “that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people” and if we truly believe in what the Word tells us about our Father and our prayers to Him then wouldn’t we pray? Wouldn’t we earnestly pray without ceasing? Truthfully, that is how you know how much you genuinely love someone – by looking at the amount of time you spend praying for them. One of the keys to this, I think, is that we not only pray for our children, but we pray for their parents. We are fortunate to be in a co-parenting situation with someone we can have open communication with and who we know loves well. Not everyone is. In fact, I would venture to say most people who are trying to make parenting/step parenting/co-parenting work are trying to make it work with someone who doesn’t make it easy. Nevertheless, if we love our children we pray for them and we pray for their caregivers. We pray for health, wisdom, goodness, financial blessings, and peace over their lives. First, because that is how God has taught us to love; and second, because those prayers directly impact our children’s lives as well.  

These might be simple truths to many, but for me they made an impact on who I am and who I will be in the future to my step-daughter. God never intended for families to be broken – and it is incredibly hard. But if I make it a point to show her I love her and I earnestly pray over her life and the life of her mom, then I know I am making a difference. I might not be able to make the same impact as a mom, but I know God has placed me in her life for a reason and I don’t want to waste that. I want to be a good steward of my position as her step-mom and teach her those 20 Things, but more importantly I want her to know she is loved and I want God to continue to watch over her life. If that is all I can do, it is enough.