Our Blended Family

When you hear someone talk about a blended family you usually think about a widow or someone who has experienced a divorce, then gets married again and with that, brings to this second marriage maybe children, or an ex.

In our case our blended family is from adoption......open adoptions. Our family is comprised of three sets of biological siblings all tied together through us, the "real" parents. This has been a challenge for us from the very beginning to unite them into one family, instead of it becoming an "us verses them" kind of thing.

At first this was a daily problem. We heard things like, "You can do that to MY brother" or "Don't you say that about MY sister!" This just broke my heart, because as the Mom I truly loved each one of them and couldn't stand seeing this separation.

After five years of all 10 of us living under one roof, I am happy to say that this is not a daily issue for us anymore. We, most of the time, function as one big family. But then there are times, like birthdays and holidays, when we see or hear from the birth families and it starts again.

This past weekend we celebrated the birthday of our youngest child and invited his birth mom and two older birth siblings to the party. They are so grateful to be able to be a part of his life and to share times like this with him. I am glad that he knows his birth family and is able to get a sense of his heritage, yet it is hard. Hard on both of his moms; hard on all of his sibs (bio and adopted) and hard on the extended family.

About a week before the party we start with snide remarks about the birth family from the other kids. Questions about why this birth family does this and why doesn't his birth family do that. By the time the party was here there were a few hurt feelings. I wish there was a way to avoid this but I haven't figured it out yet.

Today my son asked me a question about his birth mom but he called her "my mom." I immediately corrected him and told him "I am his Mom." Maybe it shouldn't have been such a big deal but it hurt just a little. He said, "You know what I mean....my birthday mom."

I wish there were an easier way to blend this family but the fact that there has to be a blending is a sign that we are on plan B. Plan A is how God intended families to be.......one man with one wife raising their children. But God is such an awesome God. He knew there would be death and divorce, so he came up with a way to have a family even when things weren't perfect...plan B. As wonderful as adoption is you can't have it without having a loss. For the adoptive child, loss of the birth parent. For the adoptive parents, loss of the birth experience and prenatal bonding. For us the loss of many years of childhood with some of our children.

As hard as plan B is; I praise God that he created it! You see, that's how I got into His family. God had only one "birth child"..........Jesus. The rest of us all enter the family through adoption. So, we could look at the church as a type of blended family as well. And sometimes it's just as hard to get the church to work together as one family as it is for our special blended family.