FamilyLife Blended®

Rachel Faulkner Brown: I was left with a five-month-old little girl and a two-year-old little boy and widowed twice, but this time was insanely different. It was epic. It was so... if I thought Todd's death was seismic, this was like an earthquake around the world. This was like tectonic plates shifting in my life.

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. We are in the process of updating our Little Rock studio. So while we're doing that, we thought it would be fun to share some of our favorite episodes with you, ones that perhaps you missed the first time around. So let's get to it.

Rachel Faulkner Brown is an author, Bible teacher who speaks to women and widows through Be Still Ministries and Never Alone Ministries. Her husband Rod is the lead strategic consultant for Irresistible Church Network and he's been in ministry for over 25 years. Rachel brought two children into their marriage, Davis and Campbell. I am so pleased to have the two of you with me today. Rod and Rachel, thanks for joining me.

Rod: Thanks for having us. We're excited.

Rachel Faulkner Brown: Such an honor. Oh my gosh, we love you, Ron. We have such a long history with you.

Ron L. Deal: Well, speaking of which, I met the two of you at a WinShape Marriage Conference Center in Rome, Georgia. You guys came and attended a seminar I did a number of years ago for stepfamily couples. I have to start here. Rachel, as I recall, you told me once you really didn't like what I had to say. Is that right?

Rod: She did not like it at all. You ruined her entire weekend. Which ruined my weekend, Ron.

Rachel Faulkner Brown: It was special, let me just say that. I was so distraught. You said it would take five to seven years. I was like, "No, that is not our story. I refuse, I reject that." I was just so Pollyanna about the whole thing.

I was like, "No, we're not going to struggle like this." Five to seven years. Oh seven plus, yeah for sure. Every bit of it. You were all crockpotting and I'd already blended us in the Blendtec and it was over. We were blended.

Ron L. Deal: How long had you guys been married at that point?

Rod: I think we were in our first year. If we weren't, we were in our first 18 months.

Rachel Faulkner Brown: It was the first summer, I think.

Rod: Okay, fall. They only do them in the fall and the winter. It was early, really early. But I knew we needed you. I was like, "We need help. We don't know what we're doing." But in my head we had it done really well. It was over.

Ron L. Deal: The blending process, the integration of the family members was going to go quickly in your heart and mind. And when I suggested that maybe it wouldn't, that was so offensive.

Rod: She's fast on everything, Ron, because she's thought the oneness in marriage would happen before we made the... I think when we got engaged, she's thought, "That's going to start now."

Rachel Faulkner Brown: Oneness has always been our joke. We're one. We were one from the moment that we walked down the aisle in my head. Everything in my head is Mach 1 speed and it's not.

Rod: The oneness is going to take a little while. We've been married ten and a half years.

Ron L. Deal: Ten and a half years. And so looking back, what would you say about the crockpot approach now?

Rachel Faulkner Brown: Oh my gosh, yeah. I'm a real big fan of the InstaPot, so that says a lot about how I roll. I'm pressure cooker. Honestly, crockpot is the best description of what we've had to do.

I would say even the marination process, like we marinated for three and a half years and then we cooked. There was even more to that story because a lot of times you don't just throw the stuff in there. I wanted to just pressure cook it the day we got married. It's accurate. It's insanely accurate.

Honestly, Ron, you get a better flavor in a crockpot. Taking that a little bit further, but you do get more flavor when it takes longer. It's like cooking on a Big Green Egg. It just gets better and better. It does get better and better. Then you weather hard things. You learn how you weather hard things as a blended family.

I think that piece of it, you have just more experience under your belt. You know how he's going to react, I know how I'm going to react, and we can meet each other in that versus struggling through that because we struggled through hard things.

Rod: I think it's so important for people to know because based on your expectations, if you have high expectations and thinking we're going to blend really quick and we're going to be perfect right off, you're going to be frustrated for so long when that's not happening.

So to really understand, "Oh, that is going to take a while. We're not going to be where I want us to be for a while." If you can settle in there, I think everything is... the waves are smaller versus the waves being really big of having this expectation that everything is going to be smooth.

Ron L. Deal: That's good. Rod, I want to back up a second. Set the stage for our listeners if you would. What led up to you guys meeting? What came together? What's the backstory for you, for Rachel, and eventually what I want to do is wrap back to what you just said and ask how did you as a stepparent have to settle into this is going to take a while. But let's just start with what led to the two of you coming together.

Rod: I was single for a long time and never had been engaged. Dated quite a bit over the years. I've always traveled a lot in my job and never got to that place where I went and bought the ring and said, "Let's get married."

I met a friend of Rachel's probably a year and a half before she and I met. A couple times she was just like, I'd see her every now and then, and she'd say, "I have this woman I'd like for you to meet." Every time I was like, "Sure." I always took the approach if somebody knew me and loved me, why wouldn't I want to meet one of their friends?

Finally she made the introduction and I think it was over email. Rachel in the email back to me was like, "Did she tell you anything about my story?" I said, "No." She's like, "Well, watch this video." I was like, "Wow, I get to watch a video about her story. Who doesn't like to watch a video?" It was a video that her church did in Columbus, Mississippi, basically with her sharing about having lost two husbands, losing a husband at 23 and then being widowed again at 30.

I responded with, "Wow, that's a lot, but I'd still love to meet you." She likes to joke with me and I understand why. But I was like, "I don't want to do a lot of telephone." I had been in situations before where you got to know someone over email or phone and then you spend time with them and you're like, "Oh man, this is not a great match." So I kind of pushed that off and just like, "Let's wait till we meet each other."

The first day we met, we probably spent six or seven hours together. We met near where I lived and did a walk and coffee and breakfast and another walk and another walk. That day I was just like, "I'd love to see this woman again. I'd like to get to know her better."

That began in October and in March we got engaged. Went pretty fast. At the point I was 45 when I met her, 46 when we got married. So it went really fast. We were in separate cities the entire all except for the last month.

We bought a house together and she moved into that house. Which was nice to at least start getting the familiarity of, "Okay, I'm going to be a dad. I've got two kids."

Ron L. Deal: And how old were the kids when you guys got married?

Rachel Faulkner Brown: Five and seven.

Rod: Just a little younger than that when you first met.

Rachel Faulkner Brown: Four and six, definitely.

Ron L. Deal: We'll definitely come back to that transition into oneness as Rachel would call it. But Rachel, expound a little bit on being widowed twice.

Rachel Faulkner Brown: It's one of those things where you never think this is how your life's going to turn out. I was starry-eyed dating my college sweetheart. He has a massive aneurysm when I'm 23. He's 27. Shocking doesn't even capture... that word is just so minuscule to what that is. It is just seismic. That's probably a better word.

And it was seismic. He was my everything. He was the only guy really I'd ever been serious with. His family was my family. We'd been together almost eight years when he died. I remarried two years later.

Fortunately Todd and I... and I say fortunately because I genuinely mean it, we didn't have kids. It was so different. It was so different just moving on. I just became the single girl at 24, 25.

I very much compartmentalized it as someone who's very emotionally unhealthy would do. Of course I had no idea that word even existed. I don't think Pete Scazzero had written the book yet.

Ron L. Deal: So you're saying when you were widowed the first time, you didn't have children and you just compartmentalized that, didn't grieve?

Rachel Faulkner Brown: Not really. Rod would probably say 100% you didn't grieve. I did. I missed him, but who knows how to grieve at 23? I'd lost a grandparent. That was the hardest thing that had ever happened to me at that point. She died when I was a junior in high school. We were very close.

So I had experienced loss of a grandparent. So that did help. I'd had my best friend lost her dad to cancer. He died six weeks after he was diagnosed. So I went through that with her. But again, it wasn't my inner world.

I didn't see my grandmother every day. So I let people off the hook who are young and... you don't know what you don't know. I was literally clueless. Also was a seven on the Enneagram, didn't know that either. I was just looking for the next fun thing to do. What's the next trip? My in-laws were very much travelers. They invited me. We just kind of kept planning the next thing.

Well, and I didn't have a counselor. There were two counselors in my city. One of them was a psychiatrist and I surely didn't need that yet. I think when you do have... I have a really large prefrontal cortex. My mom suffered with infertility. So when she got pregnant with me, she was taking Clomid.

It was the greatest joy of her life. So her entire pregnancy, she was so happy to be pregnant. It changed my brain. So I have a huge capacity for joy. Well, it's hard for people like me to grieve. It really is. And I hate to say it, but I think God knew that.

I think He knew the call on my life. He knew that I would implode at 35 after two deaths and all these other things that had happened to me. Because it will... there is a beach ball that we're all trying to push underwater and it doesn't work. And at some point...

Ron L. Deal: Especially when the beach ball keeps getting bigger.

Rachel Faulkner Brown: The beach ball just kept getting blown up more and more. So I was constantly in Christian circles trying to push that underwater to make it work. That just doesn't work for a long time. Then you just get tired and you're like, "Okay, well whatever. I'll just I guess I'll heal."

Something happens and you get to rock bottom. I didn't grieve Blair or Todd. I really didn't. Not until I was 35. Rod met me in that... I think 33 was the implosion. So anyway, bottom line I remarried two years later, still very unhealed, still carrying a secret. I just take all that stuff that had compiled into my marriage with Blair and he was a family friend.

Had two kids, Davis and Campbell. That new marriage starts and then what happens when you're 30? He goes out on a beautiful sunny day to fly his beloved T-38, which is a fighter trainer, and ready to go Mach 1, gorgeous blue sky day with a student pilot who was 22 and his wife was seven months pregnant in the back seat.

They took off with a full tank of gas and both were instantly killed because the cable in the wing broke. I was left with a five-month-old little girl and a two-year-old little boy and widowed twice. But this time was insanely different. It was epic. It was so... if I thought Todd's death was seismic, this was like an earthquake around the world. This was tectonic plates shifting in my life.

I think I did a lot of things well, I did a lot of things really wrong. That's why I started Never Alone. I was like, "Well, maybe I can help one or two widows to not make the same mistakes." I was so desperate to assuage those deaths by meeting someone who knew those husbands. I was so determined to marry Todd's best friend and just to keep a part of Todd a part of me.

I see that a lot with widows. We so want to take a part of what was into what could be. I did that with Todd and I did it with Blair. I'm just like, "Oh wow, I wish I wouldn't have done that." So really, I wish I wouldn't have done this and let me go help somebody else not do that and not make as I say red flags pink.

Ron L. Deal: Scaled down the significance of those things. So let me get the timing right. How old were you when Rod came into your world?

Rachel Faulkner Brown: I was 34.

Ron L. Deal: And so you've already hinted that at 35 you had your own crash. Were you already married or in the process?

Rachel Faulkner Brown: No. I was healing. 33 was when the wheels kind of came off the bus. It happened actually in a Kroger. It was horrible.

Ron L. Deal: Where else? That's a good place.

Rachel Faulkner Brown: I had an observer, my dearest friend from Columbus was there. This woman on a scooter... this is such an embarrassing story, but a woman on one of those little ride-along carts was in there.

I was buying microwave popcorn and she starts railing on me that I'm going to get cancer from microwave popcorn. I'm knee-deep in diapers and kids and I'm like, "I don't even care right now. Honestly, I just really want my microwave popcorn." I lost my cookies on this woman with an oxygen tank on a scooter in Kroger and my friend observed it. I just went postal on her. I really did.

Rod: I wish I had a video. Oh my gosh.

Rachel Faulkner Brown: Had you seen that video, you would have never gotten engaged. He would have not even touched me with a ten-foot pole. So my friend got in the car and she was like, "I think you might need a counselor." I was like, "Really? I'm fine. She's the problem." Rebecca was like, "Honestly, you're the problem." I was like, "Oh my gosh, really? I've never been a problem my whole life."

Ron L. Deal: Oh man, we all need friends to help us look in the mirror and see it.

Rachel Faulkner Brown: Oh so humbling. And I called Lisa Peck, who you know. Lisa and Karl Peck in Huntsville. So I called Lisa and spent two years on her couch trying to learn to feel again. That was really the problem. I just had not had an emotion that I acknowledged in 25 years.

I just shoved them all down and just kept on soldiering on. Onward Christian soldier. I was like a professional. I just thought doing the next Bible study and learning more about the gospel was the answer. And that's just not the answer.

Ron L. Deal: I'm 57 and I just now feel like I'm beginning to really know what I'm feeling. Put words on it, to be able to anticipate it, and actually know how it works within me. I know what emotion produces what action, and some of those actions are horrible. It is on me to constantly be putting on my new self and taking off my old self.

If we just don't even know how that works within us, if we don't even know how to put words on what we're feeling or experiencing, you can have all the knowledge in the world about the Bible and scripture and who Jesus was and wanting to be like Him, but when the chips are down, you won't be like Him because that stuff will take over and run your life. The old self rears its ugly head every single day.

So for you, that was a moment to renew your mind, which means you're going to have to do some work and look deep. Somebody's listening right now and you're going, "Yeah, and I'm already married, and I'm already knee-deep or up to my chin in this new family experience and I'm supposed to slow down and figure out me."

Well yeah, I mean that is always a good place to start. I'm sure there's other factors and other layers and different things you need to eventually work through, but that is always a really good place to start. So you guys meet, you start to date, you're on this journey of beginning to figure out grief and sadness and sorrow and all that.

Rod, I've got to turn to you and go, "Okay, so she brought all this to the table." I'm wondering what you saw, what you didn't see in hindsight, what did you miss? How was your attitude and heart about meeting her as it related to the grief that she was carrying?

Rod: Great question. I don't even know if I can answer that adequately. When I met her, I just saw a really strong, awesome woman. Survivor. Yeah. And I saw somebody who's super positive, loved adventure, loved surprises... maybe not surprises, but getting out there, just doing things she wasn't planning on doing, and just being open to the world.

I think for me what I always wanted was a partner. I'd dated women that I felt like that I kind of... for lack of a better term... took care of a little bit emotionally or this or that or whatever. And I met Rachel and she was just immediately partnering with me even in dating.

And I just was like, "Wow, this is something I always wanted." I knew that. I knew that in me that I want a partner. I'd verbalized that before. Partner in ministry, partner in life. So I think I just really saw all the positive things in her at that time.

I think we talked a little bit about the other things, but it just seemed most of the time she was just excited and ready to roll in life. Our relationship was fun and great and I enjoyed the children. I've always wanted to be a dad, so that was a huge bonus for me to get two beautiful awesome kids and I couldn't wait to be a father. So I think we were both probably looking at mostly the positives.

Looking back, what did I miss? I don't know what I'd say I missed this on her, but I think what we missed was sitting with a couple that had maybe been through what we were about to go through. Had a blended family and could sit down with us and say, "Hey, these are some things you might want to think about."

Maybe somebody who'd been single for a long time like me, somebody who'd been married before like her, and just walk through with us of what we could potentially expect because I think we had no idea what to expect. We both went in positively and believing like God has us for each other, so this is going to be great, this is going to be fine, we're going to work this out.

Rachel Faulkner Brown: Then you get into things that are like, "Whoa, okay, I didn't think about that." We were "us-ness". What is it, us-ness that you talk about and together and family-ness? We were professionals on that.

Early on, I had really limited how much Rod saw the kids because I had introduced the kids to another man that I was dating and it was like, "Ugh, I'm never doing that again unless I'm walking down the aisle."

But hindsight, living in two different cities, that was even hard. I was talking to Campbell last night. I said, "What would you have done differently?" She was like, "I wish we could have spent more time together before y'all got married. I wish we could have done more family dinners."

I'm like, "Me too." But he lived in Atlanta and we lived in Huntsville. There's things I wish. It's so tricky for widows especially because you don't want to commit and go move somewhere if you're just to try it out.

There is such a trust factor with blending. I trust God, I trust God financially, I trust God that this is who You've planned for me because you can doubt that upside one down the other. Once we committed to each other, and I will say for us, we were very committed from pretty much January on.

I never thought Rod was going to bail. I never doubted that. And at the same time, once we were engaged, it was as good as if we were married. Not that wasn't the truth, we were in different cities, but at the same time, we were... the ball was rolling. Engagement was really too late. It's kind of like once you're engaged, it's like, "We're on." Rod's like, "Oh, there was always an out."

Rod: She doesn't know what I did the day of. Drove my car a long way.

Ron L. Deal: I just want to add a little comment there for our listener and viewer is when your kids are really young, as yours were, Rachel, it really is wise to go slowly in introducing them to a dating partner. Because they can fall in love with that person deeper and wider and with more intensity than you are or have. And so that's important.

If they're over the age of five, then there's this gradual general recommendation of a gradual introduction, building relationship, but spending more time. More time they can spend together, the more everyone has confidence that there's something here we have to work with. Not that we've got everything formed before the wedding. That never happens because crockpotting doesn't start until the wedding.

I'm a firm believer in that. Whatever time you've invested is beneficial. It's adding some heat to the pot itself. It's readying everybody to begin to cook. But the cooking doesn't really start until it's real.

Here's the thing. We all do the best we can with what we know and what we know to do, and there's always hindsight. There's always looking back. There's always in some regard some regret will come along with that. Okay, but what do we do with it now?

I'm sure everybody listening has thought, "Yeah, there were things in me I didn't know before I got married again. There's things in you I definitely didn't see before we got married again. I had no idea, for example, how that grief was going to come out of you in different moments or how grief was going to come out of the kids."

Let's talk about that for a second. I'm curious. Now they were really young, but that doesn't mean they're not grieving. Number two, the way children grieve is over time. So when they're 10 and when they're 16, new layers of life and new things pop up in their mind. They have to think back about how life was or would have been.

I'm just curious as you guys have looked over the last ten years, what have you seen in the children that you would just say, "Yeah, that was grieving. That was transition. That was adjustment"?

Rod: With Davis, I think we saw it early on. I have traveled our whole marriage, and he was... they both were so excited to have a father. I'll get emotional even thinking about what Davis was saying as we're getting married.

Rachel Faulkner Brown: He's five? Seven. Seven when we got married.

Rod: He's just like, "Thank you Mr. Rod, thank you Mr. Rod" as we're praying and doing our vows. So it's overwhelming thinking about that, much less being there. It was really overwhelming in a beautiful way.

But it seemed like when I would leave town, he would miss his dad. And we started realizing it was only happening when I would leave. So we were thinking maybe that is him in this in-between space, grieving his dad and then somehow me in there because he grieved a ton growing up from what Rachel has told me. A lot.

Rachel Faulkner Brown: Well when we moved, moves are set up by God to upset your routine, upset your utopia. And that happened when we moved to Huntsville from Columbus. We left the house that Blair and I owned and we moved to Huntsville. Davis was four, so he really grieved moving, leaving his friends. So he went through this initial grief, had not really grieved before that, but that move really... and then of course marrying Rod, which was a good bit later.

Rod: And then never saw Campbell really grieve or talk about any of that until she was probably around 10 or 11. I began to sense a little anger in her towards me and towards anything that was related to me. I just didn't know what was happening. I probably felt it for three or four months.

Then one day Rachel said, I don't know if it was through a counseling session or them just talking, I can't remember, but she's like, "Hey, she's just really... she's grieving. She's grieving her dad, trying to figure out, 'Okay, now I have this dad,' and now grieving her real dad for the first time."

I'll never forget. I was in Rhode Island and she called me after a counseling session and just said, "Hey, I got some things to tell you." I'm like, "Okay." This is a 10 or 11-year-old, she's a tiny little thing. And she said, "I realized I'm not going to probably call you Dad because I have a dad. And even though he's dead, I still think of him. I'm not sure how I can love him and love you."

She just told me all these things that were obviously heartbreaking, but at the same point I was like, "Hey, whatever you need." At the end of it, I said, "Man, whatever you need, Cam. That's fine. If you don't need to call me Dad, I love you and I'm here for you and that's okay."

I just... God put me in a place... I honestly, Ron, was so excited that she got it out and told me. I was just so grateful. I got off that phone and I literally was going, "Thank you God, thank you God, thank you God that she is getting this out of her into me so now it's no longer a secret between her and I. It's out there."

Ron L. Deal: Hold on, dude. There's a lot in there. So here she is afraid to say this and unpacking and getting it out there, and it had to be a sliver of your heart that was sad, grieving over... but there was another part of your heart that was happy and joyful for her.

Rod: I think prior it wasn't between the two of them anymore. I feel like more than anything, now she has told me. So this thing that's been between us that's been unsaid is no longer unsaid between us. It's like a splinter causing an infection. So now she shared this and I was just so grateful. I remember exactly where I was in the parking lot I was in and just thanking God for that.

Well then five minutes later I get a call and she's like, "Hey, I wasn't emotionally satisfied with your response." Again, 11-year-old. I said, "Well, you said you weren't going to call me Dad for a while and I was like, 'Hey, I want to support you. I mean I just want to be what you need. I'm okay with what you need to do as you grieve this and as you figure this out.'" At some point she abruptly hung up the phone and then I tanked.

So I went from in ten minutes really praising God to tanked. I was tanked for 24 hours. I wasn't coming home for three more days. So there was a big part of me was kind of dreading coming home.

Ron L. Deal: So what was it she didn't get from you that she needed?

Rod: Good question. I don't know. Maybe she needed me to fight for her a little bit more.

Rachel Faulkner Brown: I think she was mad that he wasn't mad that she was mad. I think she wanted him to kind of fight back and like reject me calling you Rod. And I will tell you, she's about to start her period. I'm sure her estrogen was out of control. She was very pre-pubescent. I think that is a really... knowing the times and seasons of your kids.

Ron L. Deal: Guys, this is so important for our listener. I just want to add a little commentary. I don't know what was going for Campbell in that moment. I can't even begin to jump inside that and explain that for her, but here's what I think I can say on behalf of many children. And that is that her back and forth, her hot and cold, her "I need to not call you Dad but I need you to fight and want me to call you Dad" is so exemplary of the confusion that children feel about biological parents and stepparents.

I've had kids sit in my counseling room and say, "I like my stepdad, that's my problem. I don't know what to do with him. I don't know where to put him. If I love him too much, it feels like I'm moving my dad out of my heart and I can't stand that idea and I feel guilty and sad about that."

And so liking you is part of the problem. They're drawn to you and at the same time they don't know what that means for the other caregivers in their world that they appreciate and value. And so you can be thoroughly confused on the receiving end of that as a stepparent, going, "What in the world's going on? I don't understand this messaging." What you just need to know is it's confusion trying to work itself out of a heart of a child who's 11.

Rachel Faulkner Brown: I did a little interview with Campbell just preparing for this last night. We sat at the dinner table and I was like, "Let me just ask you some questions." And she said to me, she said, "I was afraid that you loved Rod more than me." Meaning Rod. And she said, "I think that was the problem."

Rod: So yeah, it was a moment, that 36 hours was like this beautiful thing happened and then now I'm in the tank just like, "Gosh, I really thought I was... my heart towards her was like, 'Hey, I'm patient. I love you. I'll wait. I'll be here with you grieving.'"

Rachel Faulkner Brown: And pause. This is five years into our marriage. She's been calling him Dad for five years. She started calling me Dad way before we got married. So I was on the trip, I knew I wasn't going to go home for three days, so I was kind of really nervous about coming home.

Rod: And I think within two days of getting home, I was taking her to school or taking her somewhere, just her and I, and we just started talking. And she just kind of revisited that call, not in a negative way, but just in a way, just sharing it.

And we talked about it and then talked again the next day, had another chance to talk, and then it just seemed like all of a sudden we started ramping up, having the best relationship we've ever had over the next years. But it was just really obviously very important for her to process all that, very important for her to grieve, and really important for her to tell me those things. I'm glad she did and I'm glad that we're quickly back to calling me Dad and all that.

Ron L. Deal: I want to point out some things you did right, buddy. You didn't pull away from her. You moved toward her. You kind of got back into the routine, driving her to school, the simple little rhythms of life, and yet emotionally available and connected and not afraid of her anger or rejection. I think that's mistake number one. "You don't love me? Then fine. I'm not giving you whatever." That's... no. Especially adults got to manage their pain a lot better than that. You're unknowing could have made you vulnerable to rejecting her, and it didn't. So way to go, that's the right move.

I'm also imagining somebody's listening right now going, "Yeah, so Ron, what do I do? My kids confused and they're saying I don't want you to be my dad anymore. How do I respond to that?" Well, I don't think there's a way to cut the baby in half and satisfy everybody and have this magic moment where you do exactly the right thing.

I think what's most important is that you can try to talk to both little parts of their heart. Something like, "You know what? If I were you, I get it. I can see how calling me Dad just feels weird, and if you need a break from that, that's okay." So you give permission to that child needing to use a different term, which you did by the way.

And then you try to talk to the other half of the heart and say, "But I want you to know that I love you like crazy and this doesn't affect our relationship and you're my daughter and in my life and I am going to continue to be family with you. Nothing's changed as far as I'm concerned. I'm still just as crazy about you as I was before and will be no matter what you call me."

So you're sort of talking to both sides of their confusion, if that makes any sense. And you're giving permission to what they need to do, and at the same time you're pursuing and affirming their worth and value to you. Now, I'm not saying... please don't anybody write me and go, "Ron, that didn't satisfy my 11-year-old." I'm not saying it's going to make an 11-year-old okay. I'm just saying it's messaging that eventually I think they can hold on to and find their way through with. But no, it doesn't fix, but it does represent your heart and move you toward them.

Rachel Faulkner Brown: Any conversation I'm having, Ron, it doesn't matter if it's my kids or anybody, in the back of my mind, if I'm feeling rejected or alone or whatever I'm feeling, it's never about flesh and blood, meaning it's not about this person. It's about this pain that happened to them when they were little.

There's just all there's you know, there's a lot of things in the spiritual realm that are going on that you can't see and it's really not about... it's not about us as a receiver of that pain and it's not about the flesh and blood in front... there's just such a bigger story at play. Remembering that in my head always helps me when I'm talking to the kids. Even when I'm dealing with Campbell today, I'm like, "It's not about her essentially. It's about things that have happened to her and you're just getting the result of that."

Ron L. Deal: And again, the message is grief goes on. We walk with it, we carry it with us into the sweet new family, there is also bitter. They come side by side, there's no way around it. This is what we have to do. And so as parent and stepparent, you're constantly, when you see that little bitter, sadness, sorrow thing coming out, chase it. Give room for it, make space for it because it's not going to go away on its own.

Rod: I rented a basement apartment from a widow in my early 20s who had three daughters. One of the daughters came home... I got to know all of them and one of them came home and just was really down. I said, "What's up?" She said, "Man, I was at school today and one of my good friends was like, 'What's wrong with you?'" And she's like, "I'm just missing my dad" who had died seven years earlier. And she's like, "Well, I thought you'd be over that by now."

I'll never forget that conversation because I don't think I'd ever thought about... I mean I was even thinking in that, "Well, shouldn't you be or not?" but now I've realized in life, losing my own father 20-something years ago and other friends and all, you grieve the rest of your life. It looks different and it's probably smaller grief, but you grieve the rest of your life.

And it's like you forgive somebody for the rest of your life, right? That pops up again too. Grief pops up, you deal... you grieve. Forgiveness, you need to forgive because you've remembered that thing that somebody did to you and it's rising up in you again so you've got to forgive. And so that's... I just remember that really impacting me and making me really think through grief and think about how things have impacted me.

Ron L. Deal: I'm curious, let's talk about Campbell's sibling Davis. Older brother. Has he had some similar back and forth stuff or has it been different?

Rachel Faulkner Brown: No. It is crazy. Davis is really fascinating. Rod is his dad as if he were the sperm donor. I'm not even kidding. It's very odd how he... he said, "It throws me off when people call Rod my stepdad." He was like, "He is not my stepdad."

It almost makes him angry that people refer to him that way. So it's really interesting. Davis was... Rod was Dad pretty much from the beginning, but Rod was Dad in his heart and in his mind. Where Campbell kind of in her mind you were Dad, but in her heart she was still... and it's really interesting because you would think Davis would have maybe struggled more with that male to male... I miss my dad. But anyway, Davis is such an anomaly.

Rod: He was actually angry at Campbell during that time when she was kind of rejecting me and I had to talk to him through that. "Hey buddy, you grieved back here. She never did. So this is her time of grieving" because he'd be like, "You're the best thing that's ever happened to us, you're..." all this stuff. I'd be like, "Hey buddy, just relax, it's okay. She just needs to go through this. It's okay. And she's going to work through it and you grieved a lot. She never got to do that. And so here's her grieving."

Ron L. Deal: Again, another attaboy, Rod, because something in you would have been tempted at that point to say, "Davis, say that again. A little bit louder. Preach it for the people in the back." The reason I brought this up is because I sort of suspected that it might be like that. There's something about stepsons and stepdads, that bondedness can really fill a gap for a young boy.

But you can't narrow it down to just gender. It's just within a sibling group you can have one child that's on this journey and another child that's on a different journey. Sometimes they're walking side by side, sometimes they've parted ways and there's conflict between them because of that, just like that happened there with Davis.

So to our listener and our viewer, each child is an individual and they're going to be on their own path and you just can't make any assumptions about where any particular child is going to be. And we always teach: go with that child. Pace with each child. Not pace with the sibling group as a whole. No, pace with that child.

So Campbell says, "I need a pull back." Okay, that's what we'll do. I'm still loving you, I'm still here, taking you to school a couple days, but you can use a different term for me right now. But Davis is like, "Nope, 100 miles an hour forward, we're not slowing down. Hit the accelerator, no brake." Okay, pace with that child and go with that. It can be confusing as a stepparent because some days you don't know whether you're coming or going depending on who's in the room, but that is the journey.

Rachel Faulkner Brown: And as a biological parent, you're a little upset that he's not... but it's also like he was two. You don't know anything at two. You don't even have any memories. So it's almost like, "But you're the boy and you should miss your dad more. He was such a hero." It's like I kind of get like I almost feel guilty that he doesn't miss him. And I'm like, "Rachel, oh my gosh, let yourself off the hook. You are not the maker of grief. You are not the author of how they grieve." But that's just from my own heart. Some people are like, "I wish my kids would grieve less" and I was like, "Gosh, is he grieving enough?" Then you start to... it's so bizarre. The things that go through our head.

Ron L. Deal: I can so relate to that, Rachel. You guys may or may not know, we lost our middle son Connor when he was 12. And so as we have journeyed now for almost 15 years without Connor, we've watched our other two boys. They each have their path. They each have their way, their style, their personality, their expression of their sadness and grief.

And there have been plenty of moments where I had an anxiety about how they were doing it. And you do, you have to talk to yourself. You have to go, "Now wait a minute, is this my need or their need or how do I meet them where they are?" Sometimes I do want to offer a little perspective and guidance, but yet at the same time it's got to be their journey, not mine.

It's all hard, right? At the end of the day, you feel like you're shooting at a target that's moving and you're just unsure. So lots of prayer, lots of prayer. Talking to other people, getting community around you with folks that maybe have a little more experience with it than you do and just trying to find your way.

Rachel Faulkner Brown: And I don't create opportunities for my kids to feel sad. And I see that happen a lot with widows though. They want to manufacture things to help their kids grieve and I'm like, "Y'all, they are going to grieve. They are." I just... I don't... some of that maybe good, I don't know, that's just not my personality. I'm like, "The last thing I want for people to do is feel sad."

And so that's part of my personality, but I have seen people manufacture things. Like for instance, we went and did a balloon release and both the kids lost their mind because they lost the balloon. It had nothing to do with we're sending a letter to Dad on the card and all these grief things they try and make these moments. And I'm like, "Oh my gosh, we're never doing balloon releases again because y'all missed the whole point."

So I'm just kind of like, "Why do I need to go manufacture something for them to be sad about? If they're okay, they're okay. And that's okay."

Rod: I think the most important thing in those things is just providing space when they are, right? And not trying to talk them out of the grief when they're grieving. "But your life is so good now." I think it's just getting in the well with them and being that grieving with them as best we can.

I unfortunately don't know how much role I can play in that over the years except for just be okay when they are. It was like these two points coming together when Rachel said, "I wanted them at some points to miss their dad more and talk about him more."

Because there was some points in our marriage where she's like, "I want you to get to know more about Blair and tell them about Blair." And I was like, "Gosh, I don't know how to do that." I feel like it's grandfathers and all that kind of thing, but that was probably your just desire for them to do that. And that makes total sense to me. I would want them... I want them to know all they can about Blair, their dad. But I was just... I knew that I wasn't the person that was probably the best to do that with them. But now I get it, like you were feeling that and you were like, "Oh, this is a way I can tie that together and they can maybe miss him more is knowing more about him" or something. But yeah, I think just creating space for them.

Ron L. Deal: I want to turn a quick corner. I know that Campbell has had a season struggling with an eating disorder. If you could just give us maybe a 30-second quick overview of that story and where it sits for you today, but what I really want to talk through is how did that stressor with one of your children ripple itself out in terms of your blended family?

Rachel Faulkner Brown: Well, the enemy planted a lie in fifth grade, we had no idea. She got wet at a friend's house, she had to put on new clothes, and her friend's clothes didn't fit. She had to go upsize to the sister's clothes. And it planted this little lie that we knew nothing about. Fifth grade, ten years old, and she became the fat girl in her head. She was overweight, couldn't run as fast, not as athletic, and it just perpetuated. She looked just like I did in fifth grade. It was all that pre-pubescent normal stuff.

And yet at the same time, the world is loud. Kids who have phones... we didn't give them a phone until they were almost in ninth grade. We thought we were doing everything right according to Tim Elmore and all the people that were trying to help us parent. At the end of the day, this was just part of her story and she ended up in eighth grade restricting. She went gluten-free. It just transpired into orthorexia and anorexia.

And I own part of that. I was just trying to educate them on health and wellness. Sissy Goff and I were together a few weeks ago and she was like, "You know, parent, I always tell parents: just don't talk about food." And I didn't do that. I was trying to limit their sugar. Because oh my gosh, everywhere you turn, it's like they're offering cupcakes and candy for rewards. And I'm like, "Y'all, just try and limit to one."

In my what I thought was helpful was really making someone who had that switch turned on... which we don't know which kid has it turned on... then you got trauma on top of it. Campbell read a statistic that before 18 months when there's massive trauma with one or more parent, the exponential statistic with eating disorders, if it's pre-18 months, somehow that switch gets turned on. I don't even know what the statistic is, but I was like, "Wow."

She said, "Mom, that was definitely my story." When someone is removed from the home or there's divorce or trauma... all those kinds of things. It just clearly affected our kids very differently. So bottom line is she ended up in the hospital, which she said is the day that she felt the most loved, which is so ironic because she got to let go and heal.

And she didn't know that was happening. But I asked her probably not even six months ago, I said, "What's the time in your life when you felt the most loved by us?" She said, "The day you took me to the hospital." And I'm like, "What? That was like the most traumatic day of our entire life."

She ended up staying for two weeks, came out with a feeding tube, and ended up in a treatment center for three months. Was not in our home from October of last year until December 14th. So we're just coming out of recovery and the fog. And man, did we ever see how blended of a family we were during that time.

Ron L. Deal: Tell me what you mean by that, Rod. Do you have a sense of what Rachel's referring to?

Rod: I just thought we were one going through it. Her and I. I think there was one moment where we weren't one, which was the night before she was coming home about a phone, and it like scared me to death because I was like, "We were one all the way through this."

Which my friends would ask and I was always just like, "Man, I'm just praising God Rachel and I are one. We're on the same decisions." I praise God that in the very beginning of this, we didn't know what we were doing, and so all the options came to one option. Because of the feeding tube, we didn't even have any options without.

So it was like we were so overwhelmed with having to make so many decisions in a place with a illness that we have no idea about and how to do this. But fortunately we just had some really great people come alongside us at the right time, just really at the right time, and that really helped guide us. But I thought her and I were together, which I'm so grateful for because I got frozen out by Campbell during that whole time.

So she never wanted to talk to me on the phone. We'd go visit and we would interact, but it wasn't like the others. I just got the frozen treatment. I spent the night with her two nights in the hospital, and that's just out of desperation for Rachel, like, "I've got to be out of here, I need a break."

I would have loved to have been there more, but it just was where she was at and just really wanting Rachel to be there and not me. And so it was hard. We'd listen to a lot of phone conversations together. I really wouldn't say hardly anything. I'd just be there listening with Rachel. She'd have it on speakerphone and we'd go through it together. And I'd encourage her through that or whatever we could to help each other. But I think we faced it really, really well together as best we can. If not, we're in the 90s, we get a 95 grade. I thought it just went really well.

Ron L. Deal: And so how did your heart handle her freezing you out?

Rod: Devastating. Still devastating. Oh yeah. I mean, I cried so much during those months. Number one because of her illness. Because of the pain she was in and I could see it. If you had even spent a few hours with her in the hospital, it was horrible. And so I was grieving for that and then just grieving the relationship because we had such a sweet relationship leading up to that. We would go for a walk five out of seven days a week. We would always spend time together. So it was about probably ten days before she went in the hospital that it just kind of was like, "Whoop, you're out."

Rachel Faulkner Brown: And I think it was just her heart... it's that whole thing when you're sick, you want your mom. It was blown up 100x. And I think she was just like, "I just need you to make this better. And I'm not sure that he can really fix it." In her head, it was like, "You can fix this and you can help." We've never really broached it because we're still coming out of it.

I think everybody can relate to when we're in our most frightening moments in life, we want to zero in on the absolute safest people or person in our world. For whatever reason, whatever adds up to safety, emotional safety. That's who we zero in on. Life and death situations, that's who we zero in on. When the chips are down and life is hard, that's who we zero in on.

And I think she knew like she could be as mean to me as possible. I mean she had a hate wall for me when she was in treatment. She was ripping pages out of the Bible. I just want to say to any parent who's like, "My kids have just lost their way," I'm like, "Oh, ours had lost her way." She was like, "God has just done this to me." She had this wrong view of God and ripping pages out of the Bible, flushing them down the toilet. Hate wall for me because she knew I can't go anywhere. But he could. In her head, I think she knew, "Well, you can't detach from me. We're blood. He can run."

Rod: Ninety percent of the time she's tougher than I am. I mean I say that in a positive way. I am Nurse Ratched. So I think maybe Campbell's needed that.

At the end of the day, we're just guessing, right? We don't really know. There's a part of me that thinks, "Yeah, this is same song, second verse when she was 11." She's just sort of seeing whether or not you'll stay. She'll feel fight for... who knows? We have no idea.

And in the midst of really hard things, I get goofy when I'm super stressed and depressed and upset and can't see my way through life. I get really goofy. That's a clinical term by the way, goofy. And I kind of think most people do get a little goofy and we do things that are nonsensical. But here's the thing, Rod, I just want to say to you as you were talking and telling this story a minute ago, my heart went out to you.

Didn't you know I'd be in my Father's house? The moment where Joseph has been panicked for three days looking for his son, only to have Jesus remind him, "You're not my dad." And I just thought, "Yeah, wow, that's hard. Those are hard moments." And like Joseph, I think you're doing a fabulous job with the assignment you've been given.

Rod: He's amazing.

Rachel Faulkner Brown: Tell Ron just to put a... I mean we're not there. We don't claim to be there. We're still in recovery. And yet at the same time, I think the redemption in it is a month ago we were sitting on the couch and Campbell looks over at Rod. She's like, "I want you to adopt me." And I'm like, "Well, where did that come from?" Like out of thin air. "I want you to adopt me and I want to change my name."

Rod: Now whenever she gets cuts up about it, if I don't give her something she wants, she goes, "I don't adopt me, you can't adopt me." She laughs every time. But it's not something we... I just early on was like, "Hey, I want that to be the kids' decision, not mine."

When we start talking to Davis about it after Campbell brought it up, he's like, "Why do we need that? We're good. You're my dad." But yeah, that was really beautiful and super thankful for that. That's something that she brought up and wanted.

Ron L. Deal: Rachel, I've got one last question for you. You work a lot with widows. That's part of the ministry that you do, which I think is just fabulous. I'm just curious, as you've worked with widows, walked it yourself, are there some themes that you see regarding remarriage and blending that you kind of wish widows understood a little better?

Rachel Faulkner Brown: Yeah. I think for sure, I think one is if you aren't healed, you're not going to attract the right people. That's the bottom line. You attract who you are. And so we always tell the widows: you can't give away what you don't have. And so you attract what you are and so go after your own healing.

As Rod says, look to your right and see who's standing there and those are the people that you probably want to be with. Because I love online dating. I think it's great. I think it's a way to help find people.

But I'm not sure that a lot of those people are going after the same things that you are. I feel like you're going to probably meet them through other friends, especially if you're really going after it and you're like, "I want to heal. I want to be the best version of myself."

Because here's the reality: your first and foremost is what you're giving to those kids. So ultimately what you get, they get too. And so that's our whole ministry is go headlong after healing before you even think about dating somebody else because you don't want to repeat history.

You know you had things in your marriage that you're like, "Wish we wouldn't have struggled with that." But you have a part to play in that. Nobody's getting let off the hook here just because you're grieving. It's like, "Hey, we have a responsibility in this widowhood to go after our salvation" which is healed, whole, and delivered. It's not just that ticket to heaven. Salvation is just it's so much bigger than ourselves.

The theme is we want a quick fix. The whole world wants a quick fix. And so do widows. We want to make it better, we want, we desire companionship, we've known that companionship, and we do some goofy things a lot of times. I'm kind of like, "Can we share with y'all some of our goofy things so you don't do goofy things?"

Widows really struggle with trusting the plan. Who wouldn't? This doesn't feel like a good plan. I mean are you kidding me? Jeremiah 29:11? I'm exempt from that. And the reality is that you're not. And if the story isn't good, the story isn't over. The pen is not in your hand. And we love control. We just love it. We crave it. Widows aren't exempt from that. We might be chief of all.

Ron L. Deal: Well Rachel, I've just got to jump in and say there's some parallels there for blended family couples. You don't always understand what's happening or why it's happening, and we fall back and trust God and do the best we can and continue to respond and be the person He's called us to be. That is always, always, always a great place to start.

I've often thought in my marriage, in my parenting journey, when I don't know what else to do, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control's a pretty good place to start. And that's what we do. We try to lean in and trust that as best we can. Rachel, Rod, thank you so much for being with me today. Appreciate you guys sharing your life with us.

I hope you enjoyed this podcast flashback. We should have our new studio up and running soon, so stay tuned for new content. Please remember there are a couple hundred episodes available for you to browse and be sure to subscribe if you haven't already. We don't want you to miss a thing.

The third edition of my bestselling book, *The Smart Stepfamily*, is coming out in January. And yeah, it includes all new research on what works and what doesn't in blended families. You can pre-order now wherever books are sold.

If you're new to this podcast or FamilyLife Blended, you've stumbled onto the largest blended family equipping ministry in the world. We're a donor-supported division of FamilyLife. We've got multiple resources that you can read, watch, listen to, or attend. Just start browsing at familylifeblended.com and find what serves you best.

I'm Ron Deal. Thanks for listening or watching. And 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.