FamilyLife Blended®

Jim Burns: In the Bible, it's the story of Moses and the Israelites battling the Amalekites. Moses got weary and he got tired. He had had the rod up, and the Israelites were winning. He put it down, and then the Amalekites started to win the battle.

What Moses did was he pulled people around him, and his weariness was there as we feel that with adult children sometimes. He had these other people hold his arms up. It’s a beautiful story in the Bible, and Israel won the day.

We need that. We’ve got to find that place where we can be authentic and where we can be open and honest. If we don't do that, we're trying to fight a battle that's too big for us to do alone.

Ron L. Deal: 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. Why do we do that? Because we think there's great joy in loving God and loving others, and it makes the world a better place.

We got an email from a listener who needed help with finances. I told her that stepfamily finances can be really tricky and problematic, especially when feelings of insecurity and loyalty rise to the surface. I reminded her that we've done some podcasts around this. Episode 19 and 136 come to mind, and I think there's more than that.

We wrote an entire book on this subject, *The Smart Stepfamily Guide to Financial Planning*. We don't talk about it a lot, but we should because this is very real for a lot of folks. Then that got me thinking. We've addressed a lot of blended family topics on this podcast over time, dozens and dozens of different topics. We have online articles, multiple video series, and multiple books that address all of these in depth.

If you're looking for something in particular, just browse around. Just scroll through our topics. Whether you're watching on YouTube, they're all right there. Just keep scrolling. Or you can search on your podcast app. Just like we helped this woman, we want to help you. Let us know. If you can't find what you're looking for, you can always email us, blended@familylife.com. Tell us what you need. We'll try to help.

My dear friend, Dr. Jim Burns, is back with us again on the FamilyLife Blended podcast. Jim is the founder of HomeWord. He's an author, speaker, and host of HomeWord with Jim Burns. He and his wife Kathy live in Southern California. They have three married daughters and four grandchildren. Welcome back, Jim. It's good to see you.

Jim Burns: Ron, it's good to be with you. I tell you all the time that at our seminars when somebody comes to me and talks about blended families, I say two words: Ron Deal. Move on. Those are the two words. I am your fan.

Ron L. Deal: I appreciate that. I’ve followed your work for so long and we have worked together so many times. I never get tired of it. I just so appreciate your life wisdom, the experience, and all the work that you put in.

This latest book, *When Your Adult Child Strays*, is important. I was thinking the other day, I don't know if you have any stats. I think the last stat I saw from Barna said 64% of youth leave the faith after high school. I know there's lots of different ways of looking at that. Do they come back later? It seems to me this book on when your adult child strays is really important for this day and time.

Jim Burns: You're so right. I wrote a book six or seven years ago called *Doing Life with Your Adult Children*, and I had six pages talking about your adult child straying. That was it. I never dreamed I would spend the rest of my life answering questions about adult children straying, adult children being estranged from their parents, and ones who are violating values.

These were kids who were raised in the church. They were raised in Sunday school. They were youth group leaders. Then they did what you said. I think the Barna statistic is right. There are two parallel tracks, though. It's really interesting. Good news is you've got kids who are straying and then you've got a Gen Z who's coming back.

The last time I would have talked to you about something like this, I was saying that there are twice as many Gen Z atheists, which is true. You've got that parallel track going that way. Then you have this new group that's really coming back, and they're coming back because they're dying for community. These were COVID kids who didn't have friendships and they got on social media and they didn't spend as much time.

There's a positive side to this. Parents need to hear that too because so many parents feel so much shame. If we only would have. If we wouldn't have gotten that divorce. If I would have married somebody else. It’s not all blended family issues, but if I would have married somebody else instead of that guy that I thought was going to be so great and he's not good with my adult kids. Some of these adult children are moving in really good directions.

Ron L. Deal: It’s interesting. I know for the parent who is staring down a situation that's real in their world, this is really painful. Let me just say a quick word to our listener and viewer. We're going to cover a lot in this conversation. I just want you to hang on. We're going to be talking about maintaining influence with your adult child at some point. We're going to be talking about what if your child deconstructs their faith? What do you do? What do you say? What do you not say?

We're going to talk about how the other home sometimes plays a role or did play a role in the experience of your child growing up and now you see that demonstrating itself in them as an adult moving away from faith. We're going to talk about when your child cancels you because that's a big thing going on right now.

I want to start with this pain thing. Proverbs 10:1 says a wise son brings joy to his father, but a foolish son heartache to the mother. That's not gender specific, it’s to both. It’s hard. It is so hard. It weighs heavy on a parent's heart when their child steps away from the faith. It's a grief, it’s a sadness, and that pain is so palpable and it really clouds our judgment as parents. Do you think?

Jim Burns: I do think so. I’ve worked with families for my adult years and I’ve never seen the pain until I start talking about adult children. I’ve never seen the depth of pain. It combines, what's even harder is it combines with shame because a lot of times as parents, we take the blame.

If we would have prayed more. If we only would have done this or I wouldn't have yelled, or maybe I shouldn't have worked so hard. If we wouldn't have gotten that divorce. You have this depth of pain where you're watching your kids go a direction that you never dreamed they would go.

Even with Kathy and me, we have three daughters and they're great. They bumped a bit in college, but I don't have a horrible horror story, so I'm not writing out of my own personal depth of pain. I remember Kathy saying, 'Didn't see it going this way,' when our kids started going, 'Wait, I'm an adult. Treat me like an adult.' We're going, 'Well then act like an adult. We're still paying for your cell phone, we're still paying for insurance, and we're paying for your college. We want something in there.' The kids are going, 'No, we don't want to hear that.'

There is a tension there. That's very real for people. It’s one thing when it's paying over a cell phone, it’s another thing when they're making life choices that just pains your heart. I often say you have to stay in the story. There are some messes out there. I just said to somebody last week, God is okay with messes. He's saying to you, 'I'm okay with this mess. I specialize in messes.' If you want, I can help you clean this mess up, but it's not going to be a marathon sometimes with adult kids.

Ron L. Deal: Nancy and I in our book, *The Mindful Marriage*, talk about how the pain and difficulty spawns reactivity in us. For parents, I’ve spent some time with some folks as well talking and listening and hearing their story. Sometimes the pain over their child's choices leads that parent to become argumentative, angry, withdrawn sometimes from their child.

It takes different forms. Sometimes I move towards you with anger, sometimes I move away from you in desperation. None of those things are really helpful when you're trying to bring your child back. That's the crazy thing, that's what the parent is doing when they get argumentative or angry at their kid. They're trying to bring their child back.

Jim Burns: They have the right intent. I say to them, you've got to be the adult in the room here. Jesus led with love. He didn't agree with people. He didn't agree with the woman who was a prostitute. He didn't agree with the tax collector. He didn't agree with different people, but he still led with love and he practiced kindness.

The hard thing is we've got to learn to zip the mouth sometimes and show love. They know how you feel. They know what you believe. As long as they know that, then we've got to keep the relationship and we can still love them but not agree with how they're living. That's a hard discipline. That's why people who are struggling in that, they've got to have what I call the circle of support around them.

Things change, people change, experiences happen. I see these people coming back when they get married, coming back when they make babies, coming back when they need community. They're coming back to the church, and that's a good thing. Maybe they're coming back with some bruises or they've got a cast on their arm. Not a literal cast, but a cast meaning they're coming with something because of some poor choices. It’s hard for parents. I identify with their pain. It’s a tough thing.

Ron L. Deal: Let’s press into lead with love. I love that. At the same time, the devil's in the details. I don't want to be approving of life choices and decisions or somehow send the message that we're okay with you just never going to church ever again or worshiping Jesus or having any faith expression. I don't want to communicate that, but at the same time, I do want to be in their lives. I do want to move toward them. I still want to engage, talk, dialogue about other things in life, what we do agree on. That is a tightrope.

Jim Burns: It is. Yet at the same time, there's something called tough love. A lot of times we think of tough love meaning that we're supposed to be mean to our kids or all that stuff that you had just mentioned. Tough love just simply means allowing the circumstances of their choices to take place because experience is a better teacher than advice.

When your kids are five and they fall off the bike or they put their hand on the burner, they experience pain and they're going, 'I'm not going to do that again.' The harder part with adults is that adult kids are a lot of times making poor choices with bigger stuff because you're now talking about their faith, but you're also talking about drugs or alcohol or different things that we just disagree on.

We can't be that one-topic parent, and that is really hard. We have to allow the tough love. You even see this in the Bible. In the story of the Prodigal Son that Jesus talked about and it’s just such an incredible story in the book of Luke. The father was waiting. He showed love to the prodigal who had left. In the Living Bible, it talks about how he wasted his money, the dad's inheritance that he had given him, on parties and prostitutes. I love the Living Bible. I'm not sure that's exactly the Greek, but there you go.

When his elder son confronted the dad and said, 'What are you doing? He's wasted all of our money.' He said, 'All that I have is yours.' In other words, he didn't change the rules. He didn't say, 'Now I'm going to give half of your money to this prodigal son.' He said, 'But this son,' he still called him his son.

That was tough love because he was saying, 'I'm not going to give him this money again. He's going to have to now change the arrangements.' We miss that in the story. It’s the beauty of the father welcoming the prodigal, but he didn't give him back his money. That one sentence is a pretty interesting sentence to the elder son: all that I have is yours.

That's a sense of more of a tough love. We become one-topic parents because we're so frustrated that our daughter moved in with her boyfriend or we're so frustrated that the guy seems to be with lots of girls or he's left school or he's experimenting with weed. Those are concerns, but to stay in the story means that we've still got to be that safe person.

If we don't stay in the story, then when they want help, they're not going to come to us because all they've gotten is lecturey, preachy stuff. This is where it has to be so careful. I was sitting with a woman not too long ago who had written her son a horrible text. It was all probably true, but it was a horrible way to communicate.

I said, 'How did that work for you?' She said, 'He dropped me from getting any more mail from him, and he's not speaking to me.' In reality, she gave him truth, but she didn't do it in the right way.

Ron L. Deal: I want to push in on tough love. I don't know how I missed it, but recently I discovered that when some people say tough love, what they really mean is not what you said. It’s not just allowing consequence to be the teacher. It’s that you need to make your child suffer so they will change and be different. Again, that's an approach some people take to parenting when a kid is five or 35.

I don't agree with that at all. For you to say, 'Okay, what I need to do is emotionally withdraw myself from my adult child because they've done this thing, made these decisions, stepped away from the faith.' What will happen is they will suffer because they don't have access to me, because I don't talk to them anymore, because I give them the silent treatment, and then they will come back to Jesus. First of all, let's just say that's just another control tactic and that diminishes your influence. It does not increase your influence.

Jim Burns: Exactly. You can do that without approving of their behavior. That's the big deal. I'll give you an illustration. It’s actually somebody that we both know. The guy is an incredible ministry guy, and he's had trouble with his daughter. She was dating some guy, and then it kind of went quiet. She called Dad and she said, 'I want you to sit down. I'm going to get married. I'm marrying somebody who's 42, and it happens to be the same sex.'

The dad didn't know what to do and called me and said, 'What would you do?' I said, 'This is where you've got to really listen.' He said, 'If I shun her, she'll never talk to me again.' I said, 'The truth is she's 22, this person's 42, it’s the same sex, the odds of them staying together are pretty slim.'

If you don't stay in that story, when they crash, and they will, they're not going to come back to you. Three months later, the girl calls and says Dad stayed in the story, and it was a hard story. It was terrible, and he wanted to do all the things that we just said. He wanted to shun, he wanted to lecture, he wanted to preach.

He didn't agree and she knew it obviously, but three months later she comes back and she starts living at home. She gets involved in Celebrate Recovery and some other things because there's usually other things that go with that. Today, I'm not telling you that she's ready to be on your podcast.

What I'm saying is she's working through it. She actually has a boyfriend. She's working through a lot of that stuff. She's getting wise counsel, she's going to church, she's involved in a more or less a 12-step program at the church. There's hope for her. I agree with my friend that if he would have shunned her and just ignored her and yelled at her and did all the things that he wanted to do, I don't know that she would have come back to him.

He's pretty courageous and pretty brave because again, he's a public figure and it’s not a well-known story because for her sake they didn't make it a huge deal. He's a public figure and he probably had to take a hit or two from somebody for what took place. Good job for him. He stayed in it and he showed love. Even she really, really liked baseball, and so he would take her to Major League Baseball games.

They went to a couple of different places during this time. They would just eat and have fun and watch the game. He said, 'I had such an agenda and I never brought the agenda up.' I went, 'That would be hard for me.' He said, 'It was hard for me, but what he was doing was saying even though I don't agree with you, I still love you and I still want to spend time with you and you are my child.' I think God does that.

Ron L. Deal: You brought up the story of the Prodigal Son. It’s a really good illustration. We've talked before on this podcast. We think influence is about direction, distance, and how much stress or anxiety there is in your relationship. Direction, this father, your great story, he kept his face pointed toward his daughter. To turn about-face and show her his back and walk away means he is diminishing his amount of his influence.

The distance thing has to do with are you moving toward them or are you moving away from them? Are you closing the gap that may be there and doing what you can? Sometimes our kids won't let us close that gap, but at least you're available. Like the story in the Prodigal Son, the father's moving toward his son initially. Once the son leaves, we've got a big distance problem. The son's in a far-off country.

But the father remains on the edge of the property. He is ready and willing and open to closing the gap when his son wakes up and begins to close the distance. I think there's so many great images in that story that it’s ultimately about this is how we keep our influence. We may not have much, but we've got to keep what we have. If we just add to the distance or turn our direction, then we've got nothing.

Jim Burns: Right. That's why we need to work on our own stuff. We've got to rise above these circumstances. You do that by literally having what I call a circle of support, but you do that with people who are around you who are going to lift you up, hold you up. Because you're not going to get the kind of support from your kids. Sometimes even when you're in a thing like this, you go, 'Wait, I want support from you.' That's not going to happen.

We need outside help. This is where we can go to the church and be honest and blunt and open. I find a lot of times people find they don't feel comfortable in the church because they've got a story or there are things going on. Yet the church should be the place where they feel most loved and most welcomed and most supported so that they can go on with this.

Even in a blended family, it’s even harder because let's say one of the children—and we're talking about adult children in a blended family—sometimes they say really bad things about the new step-parent or whoever. Now you've got everybody's angry at everybody. This is where we have to rise above it. We kind of can't do that on our own.

This is where we need counsel. The Bible says where there's no counsel, the people fall; multitude of counselors is safety. We've got to bring counsel. We've got to have wisdom and then we also need a replenishing relationship, a support system who's going to help us through that. Maybe even a mentor. There's people out there who can help us. It’s not easy, but you guys have an amazing amount of resources and that's a good start.

Ron L. Deal: You mentioned your previous book, which is so great. We quote that often around here. I want to push in on something. One of the things you say is keep your mouth shut as a parent and the welcome mat out with your adult children. It’s a great strategy. I get it. Are there limits? What if you see your child walking towards the edge of a cliff? When do you not keep your mouth shut and go ahead and try to say something?

Jim Burns: People ask me that a lot. I don't mean that we don't do something. Like I said to a woman not too long ago who was talking about her daughter and I said, 'Does she know how you feel? Yes. Does she know what you believe? Yes.' Okay, you've done that. You've taken the hit. The daughter doesn't roll her eyes and didn't go, 'Mom, you're amazing.' The daughter was mad.

That's okay because you've built enough of a relationship that you can do that. If you have an adult child who's going to that cliff, and it could be abuse, it could be addiction, it could be mental health issues—there's tons of things like that—for goodness sakes, don't just keep your mouth shut. Do it in a welcoming way. Now you've told them what you think. You've told them what you believe. Don't be a one-topic parent.

Now broaden the relationship to safety because you want to be the person that if they do go to that cliff, you want to be that safety spot or the safe person. You don't do that by just pounding on them. You don't have to do it every day or tell them how bad they are and how right you are. That's with every issue with adult children. That could be from deconstruction of their faith or that could be from something that they're doing very toxic.

Talk to them about it. They know how you feel. Broaden the relationship. I think it puts adult kids in disequilibrium where they're like, 'You know what? I know my mom and dad don't agree with what I'm doing, but they still are showing me love.'

Ron L. Deal: That is such a powerful paradox right there that you just pointed out. That should be our goal as parents. It’s delicate and sometimes we overstep and got to step back. Sometimes we don't do enough, I think. But that's the goal, that's what we're shooting for: for them to have this clear sense of even though my parent doesn't agree with whatever, they're still here. They're not going away. They still love me. They're still committed. That's really crucial.

Jim Burns: That speaks volumes to them because they think of when you don't like something, you walk away and they don't see that. That's a great story just in terms of a blended family, too. Sometimes you just go, 'Look, we're going to work through this.' I have a friend who has a book coming out and she calls it her smoothie family. Their name is Franklin and the Franklin Smoothie Family.

She goes, 'There are some rocks in the smoothie family. When we blended, there are still some rocks.' Okay, that's life. When did we start thinking that there was going to be perfection in all this stuff? There's not. When you accept that and you build around it, it’s going to work through. I'm not saying every kid who's strayed from their faith comes back or every kid who's violating your values is going to come back in the way you want them to be.

They still may vote different than you. I’ve got a daughter who we cancel each other's votes out in many ways. I just laugh at it because I go, 'Man, we're getting our votes canceled here because she votes this way and I vote that way.' Yet, move on. I love this kid. I go to church with her. We sit next to each other. We worship Jesus together. She trusts us with her children as grandparents and things like that. We disagree on stuff. We just can move on through it.

Ron L. Deal: I like that. Don't be a one-topic parent. Speaking of cancel, cancel culture is alive and well. It is with adult children big time. When your child moves away for whatever reason, then that happens. Parents get canceled. What do we do? First of all, I just want to say emotional cutoff is such a harmful strategy. We shouldn't cut ourselves off from our kids, our kids shouldn't cut themselves off from us. But when it happens, it’s painful and difficult.

Jim Burns: I actually think we as parents take the lead to come back and I don't think we take the lead by letting them even take the lead on the timing and things like that. When you talk about cancel culture, there's an amazing amount of counselors who say to Gen Zers and millennials, 'Walk away from your family. Walk away from your parent.' I totally think they're wrong on that.

I think that's going to damage family relationships for decades, generations, the trajectory of where families are going. I don't think it’s a wise idea. I do think you lean in, but I think the parents have to say, 'Help me understand,' if they're talking. If you're in deep estrangement, you're not even talking. Help me understand and then be empathetic.

Be empathetic to whatever they're saying. Say, 'You know what? I kind of don't agree with everything, but I do understand your pain.' Because when you begin to understand the pain of whatever the child's going through, even if you think it’s wrong, you are now welcoming them to have some dialogue. You want to get to that dialogue, but you don't start by saying, 'Here's how right I am and how wrong you are. Now let's talk about me getting canceled. Why did I get canceled? I wiped your nose.'

We get too defensive. I think we kind of tiptoe back into the relationship. I know some people disagree with that, but that is what works. That is what the authorities on estrangement are saying today. They're saying whether they're Christian or not, they're saying, 'No, you take the lead as a parent, but be very delicate.' If your child says, 'I don't want to talk to you,' say, 'Well, can I text you in three months and just see if there's any way we could have coffee or whatever?'

Leave it open enough. Estrangements don't last forever if you do this thing right. I really believe that a lot of times what we have to do is just let them at their pace. How hurtful for a parent that you want to just make it all back and get it together, and you're waiting three months and then you text and you say, 'Any chance we could have a cup of coffee?' When you have that coffee, this is not the time for you to talk, it’s the time for you to listen and hear their pain because there's deep pain going on with them for them to do that estrangement.

By the way, if any of your people are in an estrangement and through the cancel culture and other things, 27% of families in America have at least one person who's estranged. That's the latest report. I looked at it yesterday. That's remarkable when you start thinking about it. 27%, that's one out of four people who come to your amazing conferences or who are reading your books. I'm looking at the world differently today.

You helped me years and years ago look at the world differently, that when I'm looking at an audience, it’s a blended family audience in terms of the statistics and things. It really helped me how I frame certain things. Now even with estrangement, I'm so aware that if I was at a church this last weekend and I was speaking on complicated families, I realized some of that complicated family thing is they're estranged. It could be Dad, it could be the adult children. Those are the two biggies. Dads and adult children get the estrangement thing the most.

Ron L. Deal: That is really something. It’s a high percentage. Pressing in on looking past their external behavior and trying to listen and empathize with their pain, that is such a good thing. Not long ago, I had a conversation with one of my adult children and it was similar to that. It wasn't estrangement, it wasn't loss of faith. It wasn't any of that. But it was something's going on with this kid. Right now he's a pain in the butt and not very likable.

Jim Burns: Every parent just identified with that phrase right there.

Ron L. Deal: What is so tempting—and by the way, this occurs to me, this is marriage too. When your spouse gets to be a pain, what is so tempting is you want to focus in on their behavior, the externals, the stuff we're seeing, and go, 'What are you doing? Why are you doing that? That's ugly. Knock it off.' You're saying look past that. Go, 'Man, what is underneath this? What is this kid hurting over that's leading to these externals?'

Jim Burns: You're right. I think the bottom line when our kids violate values or stray from faith, the bottom line for them is: do you still love me, Mom? Do you still love me, Dad? Actually, a lot of the conflict stuff that you're talking about in marriage, I think you could just move that over to learning how to do conflict with your adult children.

It’s very different to do conflict with a 28-year-old or a 30-year-old, 35-year-old, 40-year-old than it is with a 12-year-old. We sometimes try to do conflict with the 38-year-old the same way as we do with the 12-year-old. We get parental with a 38-year-old and we shouldn't. We have to understand their pain and we have to understand where they're coming from.

You guys have some really good illustrations in the book, *The Mindful Marriage*. It’s so authentic but it’s also talking about getting into the feelings and the pain of them. If we're being preachy and lecturey, we're not going to get into the feelings and pain because they're going to close up. I do that with Kathy. We've been married 51 years. When Kathy says something where she's trying to correct me or do that, I back away. When she says, 'Man, I just feel for you right now,' I move toward her.

Ron L. Deal: That is exactly right. It’s just so hard to put on that self-control, that discipline to say no, don't react to the externals. Look past it, look beyond it, look underneath it and try to respond to that. You’ve got a phrase in your book, live above your circumstances. Is this kind of what you're talking about?

Jim Burns: It is. What I say is that your circumstances may not change, but your attitude can change, and that makes all the difference in the world. For me, the way I work on my attitude toward my kids is doing a reset with my mind, prayer, being thankful. I had a daughter who kind of bumped along the road. She was at a Christian school and got involved with all these pastors' kids.

Ron L. Deal: We're the worst. I'm a PK. It’s all your fault.

Jim Burns: What I realized was I had to with her because her circumstances were just driving me nuts. I had to still practice what I call thank therapy. God, I'm so thankful that she knows Jesus. I'm so thankful that she's going to school. I'm so thankful. I was just so thankful that she was doing some of these kind of things and about her. It caused me my circumstance didn't change at the moment, but my attitude did and I think it helped me stay in the story with her.

It’s really important that we understand we have to rise above our circumstances. That’s a spiritual discipline. Paul said to Timothy, discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness. It’s kind of a metaphor of exercise. That's true with us with our adult children. Sometimes I have to discipline myself. For me, you can't see it as you and I are talking, but I have a scar on my tongue from biting my tongue so much with my adult kids.

Some of it’s not the worst stuff. Like even the way our we have two daughters who have our four grandkids and one not yet. I'll go, 'I can't believe they let them eat that much sugar. I can't believe that they're using a screen again.' I just have to as Papa Jay, I just have to kind of go, 'Okay, I'm going to love on these kids. If they ask, great, I'll be their mentor, but if not, I am not going to go.'

Ron L. Deal: I want to extend what you just said about your daughter's friends being that influence because a lot of the blended family couples listening right now know that your child's other home is that influence in your child's world. Or they were during the growing-up years and now as an adult you're seeing the outcome of that. You just know in your soul that there was a negative influence on your adult child's faith because of the other home.

Boy, is that frustrating. It adds so many layers because you have a connection to these other people. You have a co-parent there. There's old pain and resentments perhaps that are lingering. It’s so hard not to want to try to fix everybody. Your adult child is one thing, your ex-spouse is another. All of those layers just add to the level of complexity in it all. Bite your tongue more often than not and zero in on your influence with your child. Don't try to fix, negate, control the other household or the parents in that household.

Jim Burns: I agree with you 100%. I tell people this all the time because I think it’s one of the number one things. I always get asked what about that other home? The kids are doing okay, but the dad is living with the girlfriend or they're watching porn. What I say is stay in, stay strong, build the foundation. The kids might even be enticed by money or enticed by some of the crazy things for a while.

As they mature, then they're going to come back to what's steady and what's right. This may be years in the making, especially if you have younger kids. But I’ve seen over the years that the children who become adults tend to gravitate toward the family that's firm, the family that's doing well. This may be the family that had more discipline in it when the kids were younger.

You can't just react in a blended family and all of a sudden be the harsh parent who doesn't do any fun because the other parent is the Disneyland dad or Disneyland mom. They've got to make sure that they have serious fun in their family as well because we tend to sometimes react and go, 'Okay, we're not going to do any of that stuff because that's all you get over at that house. At this house, we're going to do the law.' It’s kind of law and grace. We've got to make sure that we're a fun place to come to, too.

Ron L. Deal: That is such a good word because I think it’s easy for people to just do reactive parenting. No, you've got to have some balance. You can't talk about it as so much. You can't say your dad is a complete yo-yo. They will learn that as it goes, but you can't tell a 12-year-old boy how bad the dad is because he's still kind of a hero even if he's made some really poor choices.

You just let that run out. You be the steady person. You be the person who's safer. You be the person who gives them that kind of guidance and it’s going to pay off. That's when in the adult children thing it’s a good deal because you kind of go, 'I didn't have a good relationship with them when they were teens because really they wanted to go with the other family because it was a lot more fun. Now they're coming back to some of that structure, they're coming back to that really true north love, they're coming back to the faith because they can see by the time they're adults, they understand the other family's a little bit crazy here.'

Ron L. Deal: Life in perspective really helps. I also want to acknowledge a lot of time passes before you see that happening. That is a long, lonely road for a parent who's deeply worried about their child. That reminds me, what do you call it, a circle of support. If that's your situation, you absolutely have to have a circle of support somewhere where you can go to just vomit all the pain that you're experiencing so it’s not coming out on your kid, and find prayer and people who will come alongside you.

Jim Burns: I’ve been in a small group for 24 years with these men. There's six of us. When our Becca especially, when she took a bump in the road and she had ended up now she was a missionary, she traveled with me for four years. It’s a different story today, but back when she was, it was very trying. I went to those men immediately and I just opened up my kimono and said, 'Here's what's going on.'

I write books on parenting, as you do. I write books on marriage. The guy who writes the books is going, 'What in the world is going on?' I needed those guys. None of those guys went, 'Well, how shameful. You're the expert, you're supposed to pull this together.' No, they came along, they even then opened up.

We were just talking, it’s been years, and we were just talking about that season in our life as a group and how important that was. Kathy and I can remember going to dinner one night with one of the guys in my group and his wife who we adore and they're we just see them almost as mentors. They were so helpful to us.

Their help was like, 'Oh, we understand.' They didn't give us advice. We didn't walk out with more insight, we walked out with empathy and we walked out with understanding. I remember Kathy was saying something about what Becca had said to her and Susan a tear welled up in Susan's eye and she goes, 'Oh, that would be so hurtful, Kathy.'

We get in the car and Kathy just goes, 'I love Randy, I love Susan.' They didn't give us advice. We were looking for advice because we knew that they'd had a son who'd kind of strayed a bit. We didn't get that advice. What we got was more, and that's what you get when you have a circle of support. Who are your mentors? Who are your peer support?

It’s the story in the Bible of Moses and the Israelites battling the Amalekites. Moses, and how they battled in those days was so interesting because they’d be on two hills and they’d just duke it out in the middle in the valley. Moses got weary and he got tired. He had had the rod up and the Israelites were winning and he put it down and then the Amalekites started to win the battle.

What Moses did was he pulled people around him and his weariness was there as we feel that with adult children sometimes. He had these other people hold his arms up. It’s a beautiful story in the Bible and Israel won the day. We need that. We have to go past shame. We have to go past the embarrassment of saying, 'Yeah, my kid isn't like your kid. My kid didn't finish college. My kid does smoke pot.'

Be okay with it in a private setting. I'm not saying you announce it or it becomes part of your voice because I think that hurts the kid big time. I think we do it in a smaller group setting, that circle of support. Typically, we're not going to get preached at, we're going to get loved on.

Ron L. Deal: We all want to have control when our kids make decisions that we don't feel like are good for them. We go in search of more control, and that need for control will also make us blame ourselves and feel ashamed and isolated. We won't allow others to come alongside us and hold our arms up because we're so afraid that this is all our fault. It's not. They're making choices. We care about them, we just can't isolate ourselves.

Jim Burns: That runs in every circle. It runs in the blended family too because you've got to be able to talk to people about what's going on in this blend and people tend to not want to talk about that. Then they don't get any help and they think they're alone out there when in fact there are tons of people, even in their local church, that are going through the same thing, they just don't know it.

We’ve got to find that place where we can be authentic and where we can be open and honest. If we don't do that, we're trying to fight a battle that's too big for us to do alone. It takes a lot of courage, but once you go first, other people are going to come alongside you and you'll help one another.

Ron L. Deal: Jim, thank you so much for being with me today. I appreciate you. Thanks for writing another book. You got another book in the works?

Jim Burns: I'm thinking about marriage. I haven't written a marriage book in a long time and I think I got another one in me. I don't know if it’s going to be as good as yours and Nan's because I loved your book. At HomeWord, we have these refreshing your marriage conferences. I speak on marriage regularly and I’ve been holding back on some content that I’ve been given. I don't know if anybody else is going to like the content, but I'm going to love it.

I just finished this book on adult children straying. I did this with sports. I would go, 'I don't want to throw a baseball again for,' and then I'd move on and then I'm like, 'Okay, I got to go throw a baseball.' It’s that way with me. I'm not sure when that's going to happen, but it’s going to happen. Writing is so emotional, it takes so much energy out of you and people don't think that. They think it’s easy for you. No, I want to vomit after I've written.

Ron L. Deal: I had somebody the other day say, 'Hey, we really need you to write another book.' I said the last one took five years. Give me a minute. Would you please just give me a minute? When you look at some of the books that you're writing, even what you and Kathy did, that didn't take you five years. That took your marriage life. 40 years.

People forget that when we're writing, we're writing out of our experience. Research is okay, but it’s more when you're ready. I wrote a book called *Understanding Your Teen* a number of years ago after my kids were teens because I had been a youth pastor and I went, 'This is easy. Why are parents having trouble?' We then had teens and I went, 'Oh, now I understand.' I wrote the book afterwards with deep empathy for what can be going on.

Jim Burns: When you write the marriage book, send it our way because I'm definitely going to want to see it. I'll send it and I'll be quoting you in it. It was good to see you.

Ron L. Deal: If you, our listener or viewer, want to learn more about Jim and HomeWord, check the show notes. If you haven't subscribed to this podcast, the YouTube version, the audio version, whichever works for you, I want to encourage you to do that. If you think of a friend right now that you could share this conversation with, why don't you do that?

A quick reminder that FamilyLife is a donor-supported ministry. All gifts are tax deductible. You can give directly to FamilyLife Blended, our division of FamilyLife. Just use the link in our show notes. If you want to know my speaking schedule, you can go to familylifeblended.com. Click the find events, and you'll see them on a map.

Next time, I'm going to be talking with Matthew and Joanna Rappsmith about restoring trust after sexual betrayal. trust whether that betrayal happened in a previous marriage or this current marriage. I have to tell you that was such a great conversation with Matthew and Joanna. Don't miss that. It's next time on FamilyLife Blended. I'm Ron Deal. Thank you to our production team and donors who make this podcast possible. FamilyLife Blended is part of the FamilyLife Podcast Network, helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.