FamilyLife Today®

Speaker 1

Their first week of marriage, when they came home from their honeymoon and we all moved in together, I was terrible.

I said to him, "I don't trust you. I don't like you. You're not my dad. I don't want anything to do with you. Don't look at me. Don't talk to me. You can't tell me what to do. Stay away from me."

Speaker 2

Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Shelby Abbot, and your hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson. You can find us@familylifetoday.com this is Family Life Today.

Speaker 3

So you're a pastor for 30 years. You've preached almost every Sunday since we've been married that I've known you. Not every Sunday, but a lot of them.

So let me ask you this. When the average churchgoer looks at a worship leader who's singing and praising God, do you think most people assume that they have a pristine life?

Speaker 4

Yeah, I actually do. I mean, I know they don't. You know, a lot of times I've been in the band and I'm with those worship leaders. I've been a worship leader, and you know better than anybody. Do I have a pristine life?

Speaker 1

No.

Speaker 3

I think none of us have a pristine, perfect life.

Speaker 4

Yeah, but I think anybody on a stage or even on a screen, we tend to do that in the spiritual realm. We think they're there because their life's so much better than ours and so much cleaner than ours.

But the truth is, a lot of worship leaders, just like everybody else, come from homes where they struggle and had difficult upbringings.

Speaker 3

Well, I think today is going to be interesting because we're going to hear a portion of the Family Life Blended podcast, which many of you know is hosted by Ron Deal.

And he's talking with someone we love, Kim Walker Smith, who's a singer, songwriter, worship leader, and recording artist, but is best known as the worship leader for the group Jesus Culture.

Speaker 4

You want me to. You want me to sing something by Kim Walker Smith?

Speaker 3

She's so good, isn't she?

Speaker 4

Spirit breakout. Yep.

Speaker 3

But her music has touched millions around the world. But her life growing up in a blended family was really hard. But even then, this is so good for us to be reminded of. Even then, God's grace showed up in some really unexpected ways.

Speaker 4

And let me remind you, if you're not in a blended family, keep listening anyway, because we all have had an imperfect childhood.

Speaker 3

Yes.

Speaker 4

That is so true. And I'm sure there's something in Kim's story that you can relate to.

Plus, you might listen to know how to encourage a friend about their most important relationship.

So here's a portion of our Family Life blended podcast: Ron Deal with Kim Walker Smith.

Speaker 1

I was four years old when my parents divorced. My mom got married at 18, really young. She turned 19 the next month and had me, you know, a few months after that. She turned 19 in March and had me in December.

My dad had been in a really tragic motorcycle wreck. He lived through that, but he was never really the same person after that. He was recovering from very, very serious head trauma back in that time. It wasn't required in Oregon, where I grew up, to wear a helmet when you ride a motorcycle. He wasn't wearing a helmet and sustained a really bad brain injury.

I think just in her being very young, it was just more than what she could cope with. I don't think she felt safe with him. I think it was just more than she could handle. And so they ended up divorcing. I was 4. I had a sister, and she was 2 at the time.

Speaker 5

Wow. Did you have other siblings?

Speaker 1

Eventually, yes. So I had a total of three stepfathers after that. And my second stepfather, my mom and him, had a little boy, my little brother, and eventually later my third stepfather adopted him.

He was really young and he actually grew up so different from me and my sister with a mom and a dad who are married, who love each other, who have this really beautiful marriage. And that was just kind of all he knew.

There's a nine year age gap between us, so he had kind of a different upbringing than us, which I was actually really thankful for. Really.

Speaker 4

Wow.

Speaker 5

Okay. So I gotta tell you, my head's going in a lot of different directions. There's so much I wanna ask you about, so I'm gonna try to get to little pieces of it.

I want to go back to your dad. You were four. He had an accident. It changed him. That changed your home. It changed the stability in the home. I know you were really young. Do you remember any of that?

And really what I'm particularly wondering about is how did that tragedy, if I could use that word, how did that impact you? How did you try to make sense of what was going on?

Speaker 1

I know this might be kind of hard for a lot of people to grapple with, but my earliest memory that I have is actually at 2 years old going in to see him in the hospital when he was in a coma. And I know that it seems wild to think that you could remember as early as 2 years old, but I think because it was a little bit traumatic. At 2, I didn't understand what was going on. My dad is in this hospital room. He's lying in a hospital bed. I'm talking to him and I'm trying to get him to talk to me, and he's not responding; he's not opening his eyes; he's just laying there. I couldn't make sense of that.

Then, when he did come home, he was not the same person, and that's when the instability was there. I think that there's something now that I couldn't have verbalized at the time, but looking back, I think there was just something in my personality that said, "I'm going to figure this out." During that time, the instability in the home and what my mom was dealing with, watching how she was coping, left an impression on me. I do have memories of seeing my mom cry. I don't feel like my mom necessarily tried to hide her emotions from us regarding what she was feeling and dealing with.

But again, being so young and not being able to understand exactly what was going on, I think this is where it kind of started inside of me. I wanted to help fix this, or I wanted to do something to make this better. From a very young age, I kind of took it upon myself that I needed to take care of my mom. It didn't feel upsetting to me; I actually wanted to do that. I think, in just my love for her, I wanted to take care of her. So, I think that actually started all the way back then, with me trying to make sense of what I was seeing and just thinking, "I should help; I should do something." I knew things weren't quite right, I knew things were hard, and I should do something to help.

Speaker 5

This, you know, that is such a common experience for kids actually. I would want our listener to recognize that kids will fill the gaps. They look around and they care for mom, dad, they care about younger sister and whatever is going on, and they want to try to make it better.

And in part that's about them. In part it's about their well-being and them being seen and recognized and affirmed. But in part it's about them just being sacrificial with whom they are.

And did that sort of become just something in you that hey, if there's a problem, I can help?

Speaker 1

Yeah, I would say that that only grew into me kind of assuming this identity of this is my job to take care of my mom. And you know, as an adult, as a mother myself, I look back and I know that that's not healthy. I know that that's not the job of the child to take care of their parent. And my mom never put that on me. I just assumed that role in my wanting to help and wanting to take care of the situation.

And I do think that there was an element of, you know, when she, the two men that she married after who were really abusive stepfathers, that role just became even more solidified in me of I want to take care of, I want to protect. Because I was looking at the situation feeling very out of control.

I developed a pretty high need for control. And so I thought, well, if I can take care of my mom, if I can take care of my sister, if I can protect, if I can again do something to make this better, that also was kind of helping me feel a little sense of control in my very out of control situation.

Speaker 4

You're listening to Family Life Today, and we've been listening to a portion of the Family Life Blended Podcast with Ron Deal, and his guest is Kim Walker Smith. We do want to mention that you're only listening to a small portion of that interview. So if you want to hear the entire thing, it's episode 135 of the Family Life Blended Podcast.

You know, we just heard Kim talk about how her identity became wrapped up in protecting and caring for her mom and her sister. In fact, her second stepdad was abusive, and she would put herself between him and her sister and take the brunt of the abuse.

Speaker 3

Oh, it's so sad. And here's what happened. We're kind of filling in some of these parts. But when her third stepfather came into her life, he provided the stability that she needed and he was trustworthy. He was a really good person in her life.

And listen to what happens. She lost her identity as a caretaker. In fact, in the beginning, she didn't even want him around. But then she eventually came to love him. But as you'll hear, it was not easy.

So let's pick up the conversation as they turn the corner to talk about her biological father. Here's more with Ron Deal and Kim Walker Smith.

Speaker 5

I want to go back and ask you about your biological father. Yeah, we sort of lost him in the conversation around all the transitions.

And I'm going to make an observation to our listeners and then ask you a question. My observation is, yeah, that's exactly what happens sometimes when all the transition for kids in and out of a parent's new marriage, a divorce, a breakup, living together, now apart, whatever that story is. Death of a parent, you know, new household, single parent home, all kinds of transitions.

It's easy for a parent relationship to sort of get lost, but it's never really lost. I mean, in your heart of hearts, I can only imagine that you still wanted a relationship with dad and maybe you had a good one. I'm just curious, how did that go for you?

Speaker 1

My relationship with him has always been very complicated, partly because he was never the same after the brain injury. So we may back up and say that through their divorce agreement, it was decided that my sister and I would see him every other weekend. They were real consistent with that. We were with him every other weekend and sometimes maybe a little bit longer in the summer, like a week or whatever, camping, something like that.

There were unhealthy and upsetting things when we were with him, and it always feels unfair. I never really talk about some of those dynamics because it feels unfair to him, who doesn't even remember so much of it. Later on, when I was a teenager, he got in another motorcycle wreck and had another brain injury and again was in a coma, this time even longer. The doctor said there was so much deterioration in his brain from the first one that we didn't have much hope of him waking up from this coma. If he did, he would most likely not speak or walk and not really have much of a life.

He shocked all of the doctors. Again, he woke up, learned to walk, and learned to talk, but he was just not the same person. His short-term and long-term memory were very affected. One of the good things, probably the only good thing that came out of the second motorcycle wreck, was that he kind of did a turn and suddenly became a more tender person. A lot of things that were not good before that, which were hard and upsetting, weren't so anymore.

The one thing that I can say, though, is that as frustrating as the relationship was with my dad, I never doubted his love for me. Years later, after I got married and had kids, he married a woman who is just the most incredible godsend for our family. She has a way of balancing him and has actually helped us to have a better relationship with him now, allowing him to have a relationship with his grandchildren.

So, actually, she has brought a lot of redemption to that relationship since that time. The past and the stuff from my childhood is hard and confusing, but there's a lot of redemption now simply because of this woman who came in and said, "Let's fight for this." So that's actually been awesome.

Speaker 5

Okay, so your journey with your dad, I gotta make this observation. When he loved you and you knew it, but you didn't know if you could rely on him, he wasn't trustworthy in the sense of, will you treat me well? Is there something here that I can depend on? So love, yes. But trustworthiness, no.

Until after the second accident, oddly enough. And all of that, part of him softened and changed. But then there was another grace brought into the picture, and that was your stepmom.

And so now the trustworthiness seems to be there with her help and the addition of her guidance. If I should say it that way.

Speaker 1

Mm. I would say it's still growing.

Speaker 5

Still growing. Okay.

Speaker 3

Yes.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Speaker 5

And so I'm sitting here going, okay, you had two really, really, really hard step parents that brought a lot of pain. And you've had two redemptive stepparents.

Speaker 1

Yes.

Speaker 5

That have brought peace. Wow.

Speaker 1

Yeah. So George, my third stepfather, he passed away about eight years ago from Parkinson's disease. He was this very handsome, very stable man with a good job, no issues with alcohol or anything like that. He had been a Christian his whole life, very consistent in going to church. He chose my mom with all her baggage and her wild children, who were kind of a mess with a lot of trust issues.

Their first week of marriage, when they came home from their honeymoon and we all moved in together, I was terrible. I said to him, "I don't trust you. I don't like you. You're not my dad. I don't want anything to do with you. Don't look at me, don't talk to me. You can't tell me what to do. Stay away from me." This was what I said to him. At this point, I was a teenager, 13 years old, and I thought, "I'm not going to put up with this anymore. I'm not going to let these men do it anymore. I'm a big girl now. I'm just going to say what I want to say." I kind of felt like this is how all men are: they hurt you and they leave you. I expected that this was what he was going to do. This was all I knew and all I had experienced.

George just kept loving me. He never even got flustered at my flat-out hatred towards him. He would get up every morning with the sun, and I would be getting ready for school. He would be out in the living room, so out in the open, it wasn't even private, which offended me so much. He would turn on worship music, and I would hear him worshiping God and praying. He would pray his prayers out loud, saying, "God, show me how to love my girls. Teach me how to love my girls. Help me to see what my girls need." And I'd be from the kitchen yelling, "I'm not your girl." I knew he was praying for me; I heard him praying out loud for me. I was so hurt, but I was also just so scared to let him love me. I was so hungry for that love, but I was so scared that it wasn't real or that it wouldn't last or it wouldn't stay. So I just kept rejecting him over and over and over.

He brought such incredible stability to our home. We never went hungry; we never went without. He always took care of us. He put me in sports and cheered me on. I mean, he just did all the things that no one had ever done. And I still was so angry and so hurt. It wasn't until I was 18, when I gave my life to Jesus and began my journey of getting healing and help, that I began to see what an incredible gift he was. I saw that he was actually showing me the love of Jesus before I even knew who Jesus was.

The way that God loves us, how he loves us even when we're rejecting him, was being shown to me through George. I felt like God said to me, "I sent him for you." That just broke me again, realizing that God would love us enough to work out a plan and send someone to our family that changed our whole family and changed our lives. It maybe took longer than I wanted it to take, but we got there.

Speaker 3

We've been listening to a portion of the Family Life Blended podcast with Ron Deal and Kim Walker Smith, and Ron joins us now in studio. Ron, welcome. It's always great to have you in studio with us.

Speaker 5

Hey, Ann. Hey, Dave. It's good to be with you.

Speaker 4

Kim Walker Smith is someone we've listened to for decades. We didn't know her story and the impact of her stepdad on her coming to Christ and even becoming a worship leader, that had to blow you away.

Speaker 5

It was amazing. I told you guys before we started recording, there were a couple of times where I teared up listening to her tell the story and how beautiful it was, how redeeming it was when her stepmother and her stepfather, both of whom were loving people, persistent, hung in there when they came into her life and changed everything for them.

And it's just one of those stories you just love to hear.

Speaker 4

I mean, you sort of got the.

Speaker 5

Best of the best and the worst of the worst. She had them both, didn't she?

Speaker 4

Yeah.

Speaker 5

That narrative of people can come into your life that do a lot of damage and a lot of hurt. She had so much pain from the accident with her biological dad, and he was still in her life, but he just was never the same man. Those first two stepfathers did a lot of damage.

But then comes the game changer, and we got to slow down and just say what was the key to who he was. He was persistent. He did not give up. She tried to chase him away intentionally in the beginning, and he didn't give up. He hung in there. He was going to be that loving presence in her life.

I often tell stepparents, you know, one of the keys to being successful is to just be stubborn. And I don't mean stubborn as in you don't ever budge in your attitudes or opinions, but stubborn as in you're not going away. Even if you feel the walls are up with these kids, and they won't let you in their life, you should remain close enough that if they ever step out from behind the wall, you can have a relationship. And that's what this guy did, and it changed everything.

Speaker 4

You work with blended families all the time. How many stepdads or moms don't? They just sort of. It's so hard. It's not. Feels like it's not getting anywhere, and they just sort of quit.

Speaker 5

I do think it's easy to be tempted in that direction. Remember that sometimes somebody walks into a stepparent role, and they've already been through some hard times in their life.

Maybe they were widowed, or now they're marrying somebody who has kids, or they were divorced, or something's in the background.

And so when you've already experienced some loss, it's hard to take more of it, and you just sort of feel fragile and quitting. There's a temptation there.

Speaker 3

Well, I also thought it was inspiring that on one occasion, her stepdad, her third stepfather, apologized to her over something he did. And wasn't it interesting that no man had ever done that before in her life.

Speaker 5

So here he was, humbling down in front of her in a way she'd never seen before. And she had a hard time trusting men, authorities in her life, and rightfully so.

But here he comes and he goes, you know what? I messed up and I apologize. Game changer for their relationship. It moved her toward him and eventually his influence helped bring her to Jesus.

And think about the millions of people that she has influenced as a result.

Speaker 3

Oh, yeah, yeah. So many people.

Speaker 4

Yeah, it's pretty cool. I mean, it's just like anything else when you hear the story behind a performer, whether it's an athlete, an actor, now a worship leader. I mean, I have teared up at her songs because her voice is so.

Speaker 3

Powerful and her message is powerful.

Speaker 4

Yeah. And now to know I didn't know any of this, and now to know this, it's like, look at, you're not just hearing a voice, you're hearing a story.

Speaker 5

That's right.

Speaker 4

The redemptive work of God through a blended family. Family and a man and a dad who said, I will stay in it till the end.

Speaker 5

Another example of God working through imperfect people to bring about his perfect purposes.

Speaker 3

Well, again, to hear the entire episode, listen to episode number 135 of the Family Life Blended podcast and be sure to share it with a friend or a family member.

Speaker 4

And if you're not familiar with the Family Life Blended resources, they have the most widely used video curriculum, books, and church live stream ministry training available.

You can check them out at familylife.com.

Blended Ron, always great to have you with us. Thanks.

Speaker 5

Thanks, guys.

Speaker 2

I'm Shelby Abbott and you've been listening to David Ann Wilson with Ron Deal and Kim Walkersmith on Family Life Today. We've heard a lot today about a blended experience. If you're a stepparent and wondering what you can do to start building relationships in your family, I want to encourage you to grab our free download of Building Love with the five P's of Stepparenting. This is going to give you practical steps and really just completely doable advice that we're going to help you with. They're really four ideas to build love between you and your stepchild, if that sounds appealing to you.

Again, this is a free download you can get; just go to familylife.com/buildinglove or you can find a link for it in the show notes. Again, that's familylife.com/buildinglove. Do you follow us on social media? Well, head over to Instagram and find us at Family Life Insta if you don't. Or you could look us up on Facebook. Just search for Family Life for more regular encouragement about marriage and parenting.

Now, coming up next week, Steve and Jennifer DeWitt are going to be here with the Wilsons to talk about loneliness, its implications, some biblical insights, and practical steps for overcoming feelings of isolation. That's next week. We hope you'll join us.

On behalf of David and Anne Wilson, I'm Shelby Abbott. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a donor-supported production of Family Life, a Cru ministry helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.