FamilyLife Today®

Speaker 1

Okay, I got a question for you. When, like a struggle or a battle is coming into your life, how important do you think it is to hit it, like, right head on?

Speaker 2

I am all about the head on. I know, let's talk about it. Let's get into it. But some people aren't like that.

Speaker 1

That's me. I'm not that way. I want to dodge around it. I didn't want to ask you that question. I knew that's what you're going to say. And I'm always like, you got to chase me around the house to even talk about hard Stu.

Speaker 2

Welcome to family Life today where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Ann Wilson.

Speaker 1

And I'm Dave Wilson. And you can find us at familylifetoday.com. This is Family Life Today.

How important is it when a struggle or a battle happens to hit it head on? Well, today we're going to find out because we get to listen to a portion of a broadcast from our Family Life Blended podcast with Ron Deal.

They're going to sort of tackle how do you hit hard stuff straight on.

Speaker 2

And we're going to hear from a couple who had to face a few battles, including one within their own home. And that's true for many of us.

So before we introduce them, we want to remind you that Family Life's annual blended and blessed livestream is coming this Saturday, April 5th.

And you guys, it's a one-day event for blended family couples that you can stream from home, and it's not too late to register because it's livestream.

Speaker 1

It's going to be a great one. Familylife.com blended, so here's where we're going to go today. You may know this name if you're a sports fan. Devin and Asha Stills played in the NFL for a few years, but he actually stepped out of playing in the NFL and retired because his daughter was diagnosed with cancer. He felt like he should go home to take care of her, and so he did.

Ron sat down with the Stills and had an interesting conversation about facing battles, but also really just about how to live in a blended family. So you're going to love this conversation.

Speaker 3

During my interview for your podcast, Real Relationships, you guys said that the blended family dynamic has been one of your biggest challenges, I think is the way you put it in your marriage. Tell us, what did that look like for you guys?

Speaker 4

So I think going into our blended family, it was kind of a whirlwind because we were just coming off of Leah going into remission when we got married. And so it was a lot of mixed emotions. We were on a high because we were happy and excited that, you know, we were able to weather that storm and get through it, and we were able at that light at the end of the tunnel.

But then now we're forming a family and we're trying to, you know, get through the struggles that we have, but also understand what that looks like to be a blended family. So I think that's really when our challenges start to surface, in a sense, and we started to try to navigate what that looks like.

Speaker 5

Yeah, yeah, I agree. I think something that you said that really stuck out in our episode was after the marriage, everything changes, and that's exactly what happened during the dating phase. I wouldn't say it was easy because we were dealing with a lot of trauma and a lot of challenges from Leah's battle with cancer and the other household.

But it was definitely way easier before we got married. And then when Leah actually moved with us full time, that's when the challenges really started to arise.

Speaker 3

Yeah, there's a big word there. Full time.

And I think for a lot of people, you know, dating is sort of part time. It's sort of a buildup, and you're spending time together, but it's not full time.

And the other way we like to say it around here is it's not real until it's real.

Speaker 5

Right.

Speaker 3

And you know your podcast relationships. Right. That's what a lot of blended families experience is.

Speaker 5

Wow.

Speaker 3

It got real and it got real fast. And that realness brought something with it that we didn't anticipate, we didn't see coming. Did you feel like, wow, where did this come from? Blindsided Any of that?

Speaker 5

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. We had no idea what to expect from marriage, period, because we both came from broken homes. It wasn't just about being a blended family; we didn't get to see what a healthy and long-lasting marriage looks like. What was the role of a husband? What was the role of a spouse?

So we just started to experiment. Wherever there's ignorance, there's experimentation, and we were experimenting with something that's so precious and serious when it comes to marriage. We were trying to figure that out while also trying to understand what having a healthy and successful blended family looks like.

Trying to do those two things together, with a lack of resources and a lack of community that we could reach out to for support, was definitely hard.

Speaker 3

Asha, a lot of people, when they find themselves in that little space where they're going, have all kinds of questions and no answers. They get discouraged sometimes and start rethinking whether or not this was a good idea.

I'm curious if that happened for you. I mean, here you were dating the single dad, and his daughter was not well, and then she got well. It seemed like things were just coming together.

And then all of a sudden, wow, lots of questions.

Speaker 4

Yes, that's for sure. It was a lot of questions, a lot of confusion. When we initially got married, we didn't have tough conversations that we should have.

We didn't really paint out what it would look like to have this blended family, what roles we would play, how we would parent. We didn't have those conversations and really go below the surface level conversation to really say, okay, well, what does this family look like?

How do we want to, you know, build together? And I think that caused a lot of confusion. A lot of unnecessary chaos, I would say, because we didn't have those tough conversations in the beginning.

Speaker 5

I would go even further and say pain. A lot of hurt as well. Yeah, a lot of hurt.

Speaker 3

Oh, yeah. Say a little bit more about that because I think a lot of people can relate to it.

Speaker 5

Yeah, I think it's easy to just say words like frustration or anger, but when you get beneath the surface and you really start to discover what emotions you were really feeling, I think on both ends, we were hurt. We were hurt because we didn't feel like the other person was protecting our heart and our mind and our spirit.

And it took for us to have really deep conversations, but from a place of empathy and understanding and trust. When we were able to create that environment, we were able to course correct our marriage and take the necessary steps. One even being reading your book; it was an eye opener for us.

It's like, no wonder why things weren't working. We're doing it wrong. We're doing it completely wrong. And then when we were able to develop a game plan, we're not where we want to be, but we're definitely not where we used to be.

Speaker 3

Yeah, that pain of discouragement. And I thought it was going to be this, but it turned out to be that. That's really common for a lot of blended families. And honestly, a lot of people just quit right there. They never, like you guys, to your credit, go looking for answers.

And the good news is, I think when you find those answers, you got to hope again. You can keep going. You make some course corrections and things start moving in a better direction.

Do you have a sense of how long that took for you guys? Tell us a little bit more about that journey. How long did it take, or how much work did it take for you to feel like, okay, we've made a few changes and we're headed in a better direction?

Speaker 4

I would say maybe six years. It seems like it's been the majority of our married life that we were trying to figure it out, because, like I said, we had a lot of changes. We had to go from, you know, Leah being sick, her going through that, getting better, Devin battling his injuries in the NFL, moving from cities, and not being around family. It would just seem like everything was piling on—custody battle, custody battle. So it was just a lot.

And it was all throughout the span of the beginning of our marriage and throughout our marriage. Adding that in with trying to make the blended family work, it was a lot that we had to peel back, like an onion, and kind of work through. We really had to understand, okay, well, this is an issue. We need to address this before we can go to this, because it all somewhat tied together. So it definitely seemed like it was the majority of our marriage.

I feel like the kind of turn of the corner that we feel just recently happened within the past, I want to say, year or two. We really dove into the resources that we had, had certain conversations, and tried to do things a lot differently than what we had to really turn that corner.

Speaker 5

I agree. I think two things allowed us the last six years, because people probably listen like, y'all went through six years of this. That's a long time. I can't do this. I think that we were caught up in the idea that things would get better as time goes on.

It wasn't until we started taking intentional action to make things better, because time doesn't heal all. It's what you do with that time that creates healing. So when we started to take accountability for the things that we were doing wrong in the relationship and the things that we can start doing better, things really started to change for us.

When we stopped avoiding conversation, we began to see progress. Because when you get married, you want it to be happy, you want it to be purposeful, and a lot of...

Speaker 3

Times you want it to be easy.

Speaker 5

Easy, exactly. So you avoid those tough conversations, and you live in this facade that, hey, my marriage is perfect, everything's going well. But you just keep sweeping things under the rug, and all it takes is just one mishap, and things may blow up.

We started to notice that a lot in our marriage, and we made a decision that we were going to do the work in order to fix that.

Speaker 2

You're listening to Family Life today, and we're listening to just a portion of the Family Life Blended podcast with Ron Deal and guests Devin and Asha Still.

Speaker 1

And, you know, you may not know this, but one of Ron's books, the *Smart Step Family Marriage*, which we've read as well, was a game changer for the Stills.

And you may not even know this. Our Family Life Blended department has the largest, do you hear me? The largest collection of audio, video, and book resources available for couples and church leaders.

So we really want to help you be intentional about your family, so you can find those resources at familylife.com/blended.

Okay, let's go back and hear some more from the Family Life Blended podcast with Devin and Asha Still.

Speaker 3

Devin, I want to ask you about worry. I don't know if you worried at all, but I'm just imagining maybe putting myself in your shoes coming in. So you're a single dad, your daughter's fighting cancer, and it's serious. You have this NFL football career, and you make a decision to turn away from that, to turn towards your daughter. A lot of change, a lot of transition.

You meet a beautiful woman, you fall in love. You really don't know what to expect about this whole family thing, but you want to give it a go, right? You have to be worried about your daughter. You had to be mindful of your wife. You had to be thinking about your daughter's biological mother. How is she feeling about all this stuff going on with her daughter?

I'm just curious, did you worry and how did you carry that as a husband and a dad as your family began?

Speaker 5

Yeah, I had a lot of different worries. Of course, the first worry was whether I was going to lose Leah or not, if I was going to be able to experience, you know, watching her grow up and being able to create certain moments with her. I was worried about the career transition I was going to have to make once I kind of realized that my football career was coming to an end. I was worried that I may fail at marriage like my parents failed at marriage. And I was going to just continue this cycle of broken homes and broken marriages.

So there was a lot of different worries that I had, but I decided to just focus on the controllables, you know, the things that were in my hands. I was going to do the work to try to fix the things that weren't in my hands, I would just give to God and let Him do it. He does, and take that off of my plate so I can be focused on the things that, you know, I had control over.

The moment that I did that, even opening up to my wife, was significant. I think a lot of times, like, even as an athlete or as a man, you don't want people to know what you're really going through internally. One of the major benefits of marriage to me is that you don't have to really go through life alone.

So my wife and I do a lot of pillow talking. I open up to her about everything that I'm going through because I know that she can, if not give me perspective on how I can do things better or how I can overcome a challenge. She's like a sounding board that I can just talk to and release all of that stress.

When I started to open up about the things that I was struggling with, and she didn't judge me for my shortcomings or the areas that I was failing in, it was a game changer for me. I knew I had somebody by my side who was just willing to go through whatever we had to go through in order to create a successful family.

Speaker 3

Sometimes I find that couples who get intentional, like you guys have, and start working on things after a while get tired of just having to keep pushing.

You know, it's just sort of like, again, maybe, when is this going to get back to easy?

Do you guys ever get tired, and what do you do to sort of keep yourself going?

Speaker 5

If you do well, when we're trying something new, of course you start to get tired because it takes a lot of energy in order to create new habits. But when you persevere, you keep pushing, you keep breaking down those walls; eventually, those habits become second nature. So I don't really get tired of the things that we started implementing a few years ago.

But when there are changes that we're making right now, it takes a lot more energy. It's a little bit more exhausting. However, understanding that we'll soon turn that corner and create those habits where it doesn't take a lot of energy for us to sit down and connect is important. It doesn't take a lot of energy for us to have tough conversations because we know how to properly communicate.

So right now, I'm energized. I'm not tired by anything that's in our relationship. But that wasn't always the case. For a couple of years, it took a lot of energy and a lot of mental focus in order to reach this point. I don't know if Asha got the same answer, so she's going to have to answer that.

Speaker 4

No, I think. I think the season of tiredness has passed. I think for us now just having a clearer vision of what we want for our future and a better understanding has alleviated that. Because in the beginning, we didn't, and everything was cloudy.

So being able to say, you know what? This is the goal we're working toward. This is the type of family that we want to have. This is the love that we want to exhibit. We're clear on that.

So it's not as tiring to say, okay, how do I get there? Because we know how to get there. We just have to get there. So we put in the work every day, and it doesn't feel tiring.

I think now because we're moving through life differently, and the love that we exhibit for each other is not the way that we exhibited before.

Speaker 5

We're moving towards something rather than running in place. It gets tiresome when you're exhausting all this energy. You're trying to work to fix your marriage, but when you look up, it's like you're on the treadmill. You're in the same place, but when you have that goal in mind and when you look up, you're actually closer to that goal than you were before.

You don't get tired; you get excited because you finally found that breakthrough where you're not running in place anymore, that you're not just wasting your time and your energy, but you're moving to a collective goal.

Speaker 3

Well, I imagine somebody listening right now is really encouraged by that because they feel like they've been running in place. But yet intentionality will take you somewhere eventually. It may not be immediately, but eventually you're going to get there.

I can't help but think there's some parallels between the battles you guys faced with Leah's cancer and then just the battle of becoming a family. You didn't quit. You stuck with it. You did what you had to do. You listened to a few people who had something to offer and pointed in a common direction, and you did what you had to do.

And I'm thinking, yeah, wow, good for you. Way to go. Is there anything else you would offer anybody who's maybe a little discouraged right now as they're listening to us? What would you say?

Speaker 5

I would say the main things that help us through the tough times is impertinent understanding that nothing in life is permanent. Nothing in your marriage is permanent. And what that does is it makes you savor the good times and hold on to them as long as possible. Use them as energy to push yourself through the tough times. But it also allows you to endure those tough times because you realize the seasons will pass, that one day the struggles and the challenges you're dealing with will pass if you're intentional about putting forth the effort and resources in order to overcome the challenges.

And the moment that we realized that was the moment that things changed, because there were times we talked about on our podcast before. One of the things that really hurt in the beginning of our relationship or our marriage was that D word, when things weren't going right. That divorce word would be thrown around a lot because we felt like we were stuck, that we weren't going to be able to move forward. But the moment we made a commitment to each other, that we're not going to use that word anymore, that we're not going to think about getting a divorce, but we're going to think about ways that we can increase our relationship satisfaction and our stability was the moment that I felt like we really made a commitment.

And another thing that I think helped with that is understanding that our marriage wasn't just a contract, but it was a covenant. We didn't get into this marriage to see what we can get out of it from each other. We went into it understanding that we made a commitment in front of God and that we were going to submit our marriage to him and understand that the purpose of our marriage was for his glory. We take that approach every single day. When things get tough, we lean on him and we realize that this is for a bigger purpose, like the work that we do right now, the lives that we impact.

I understand why we're together. I understand, like, I don't need our marriage to be easy. I need it to be purposeful. And every day I wake up and I understand the purpose of this marriage. So I'm willing to do the work. I'm willing to work through whatever struggles that we have to work through, because I know that we're here for a reason. And that wasn't always the case. I didn't understand the purpose of marriage.

Now I tell people this. Even I had the best woman that I could ever meet right in front of my face. But I didn't understand the gift that she was until I started to go to church and the pastor said to me, if you're not going to take Asha serious, stop wasting her time. That was the first time that any man had held me accountable for the things that I was doing, how I was treating a woman, and I realized that I had been doing things wrong this whole time, and I had made a commitment that day to do things the right way.

But I felt like God was just. He had his hand on this the whole time. Because from the moment that I said I do to Asha, it's like I understood. My life finally felt purposeful outside of football because I realized that regardless of how my life went when it came to career, that as long as I had Asha by my side, that we would be able to overcome anything and really build a life and really break generational curses that have been going on in our family for a very long time.

Speaker 3

It's beautiful. Covenant commitment. Stick it out. Keep going. Hold yourself accountable. Self discipline. Guys, thanks for being with me today. I sure appreciate you joining us and sharing with our audience. Thank you.

Speaker 5

Thanks for having us.

Speaker 1

Well, we've been listening to a portion of the Family Life Blended podcast with the Stills and Ron Deal, and guess what? Ron Deal's in the studio with us. Welcome in, Ron.

Speaker 3

Hey, guys. Always good to be with you. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1

Yeah, you know, one of the things that Devin and Asha said is they didn't have any models, which we can relate to.

Speaker 2

Oh, we didn't either.

Speaker 1

Yeah. Especially in the blended area, you know. Is that pretty common?

Speaker 3

It is very common. And, you know, I want to say generationally, I think it's increasingly common that younger generations today are having less and less role models for them to look at. When I travel, when I speak, I get in front of an audience, and then the questions come at the end. As you guys deal with this on a regular basis, the questions seem so basic, and I just want to encourage people out there.

Look, we have lots of basic training, if I could say it that way, materials at Family Life. This is what we do. The art of marriage, the weekend, remember, the Smart Step family curriculum, all of those things and more give you those elementary principles that you need. And, of course, church leaders need to know that we have those available for people as well.

One of the reasons I love Blended and Blessed that you guys mentioned earlier is because it is fundamental, foundational, basic training and beyond for blended family couples. So let me just remind everybody again. Saturday, April 5th. It's coming up soon. The content this year is gonna be based on Nana and I's new book, the Mindful Marriage, but we're doing it blended, family style.

All right, so it's gonna be marriage stuff that applies to parenting, step parenting, co-parenting, all the complications that blended families face. Yeah.

Speaker 1

And even, you know, we've read your book. We endorsed your book. It's incredible stuff.

I mean, even as you think about, you know, Devin and Asha, how does that, you know, the concepts of the mindful marriage that you'll be talking about on Saturday, how does that impact a couple like them?

Speaker 3

Yeah. I love their remark about being intentional and making intentional decisions and changes that were going to improve their family.

How they came together, you know, in the beginning of their marriage and their journey, they said, you know, we just kind of thought that time would help and we would figure it out and we'd get better.

Speaker 1

Don't we all?

Speaker 3

Yeah, exactly. Like, we sort of have this naivete about that. But they discovered what most of us have discovered is that, yeah, time doesn't necessarily make your relationship stronger. They had to get intentional.

But of course, when they did, started reading, started studying, started talking, that made all the difference. We obviously believe in that here at Family Life. That's why we're doing the things that we're doing.

And we just want to invite those listening and those of you that are church leaders, help people be intentional.

Speaker 2

Last question, Ron. Why do some of us just assume that it's gonna be easy? You know, because I think we do. Like, oh, this is not gonna be hard. Cause we love each other.

Speaker 3

Well, you guys said, you know, you didn't really have the role models to help you come into marriage. Some people have really good role models. They're on the flip side of this, and they just sort of naively think, wow, they were happy for 50 years. I'm gonna be happy. Marriage is gonna be easy. Right?

And so they've just seen the outcome. Their mom and dad struggled for 20 years and then figured it out. So life has been pretty easy for some people.

Yeah, it's like Amazon. We just expect things are going to show up tomorrow. And no, that's not really the way life works. We all have to be intentional.

Speaker 1

Yeah. Well, that was a great conversation. I would encourage our listeners. You know, if you want more of that, it's @familylife.com blended again resources there.

Hopefully you're signing up for Blended and Blessed on this Saturday in Franklin, Tennessee. And I know it's short notice, but if you want, you could actually go to the conference. That would be awesome. Or you can watch it from your home or host a group at your church.

So if you want to get more information, go online to familylifetoday.com/blended. You'll find the link in the show notes or give us a call at 800-358-6329. That's 800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today.

Speaker 2

Hey. And if you need more help, you can go to family life.com we've put together some of our best material in one place. It's free. And you can go to familylife.com marriage help and get it.

Speaker 1

Family Life today is a donor supported production of Family Life, a crew ministry helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.