FamilyLife Today®

Speaker 1

My stepdad was great. The way he served my mom is, in many ways, a model for me and my brother in the way that we serve our wives.

We are so grateful for him instilling within us character, discipline, work ethic, and compassion. We were blessed.

Speaker 2

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

Speaker 3

And I'm Dave Wilson. And you can find us@familylife today.com. this is Family Life Today. Okay, I've got a question for you. Have you ever had, like, an unexpected person come into your life and be a huge blessing to you? Besides me, of course.

Speaker 2

I think most of us have. And when we were starting the women's ministry at our church, I don't have a great shepherding gift. And so I thought, who has a good shepherding gift?

And so I brought my friend Kathy Richardson in, thinking, like, oh, we'll just minister to these women. Well, honestly, the best thing that happened for me was she ministered to me. She wrote me letters. She always encouraged me. She prayed for me.

But then when I lost my sister to cancer, oh, she was the greatest gift in the world to me because she ministered to my heart and loved me unconditionally. And just when I was grieving, she picked me up.

Speaker 3

Yeah. Now they both become huge blessings in our life. John, her husband's one of my good friends. Just listened to him teach a men's Bible study two days ago on Romans 12. It's just amazing to watch their transformation, and they've really transformed us.

Well, today we're going to listen to a podcast with Ron Deal, our director of our blended family ministry. It's all about a couple friends of ours, Chris and Yodi Brooks, who had unexpected people come into their lives, actually their parents, and literally were a blessing to them.

Speaker 2

And if you're not in a blended family, listen for how this discussion could maybe encourage your family in your corner of the world.

And consider how your church might even minister to blended families.

Family Life Blended has so many reasons and resources for couples and church leaders, and we'll get you connected to Family Life Blended in the show notes.

Speaker 3

Chris is the pastor at Woodside Bible Church, just a mile from our church. He and his wife Yodi have authored a couple of books, *Kingdom Dreaming* and *Urban Apologetics*. Chris also hosts a national radio program on the Moody Network called *Equipped with Chris Brooks*.

They have been married for 26 years and have adopted three of their six kids. In 2010, Yodi founded Infinite Love Orphan Care Ministry.

This is episode 121 of the Family Life Blended podcast. Here’s part one of Ron’s conversation with Chris and Yodi.

Speaker 4

I'd love to hear a little bit about the families you guys grew up in. That'll kind of lay the groundwork for our conversation about adoption. Yodit, let's start with you. Tell us a little bit about the family you grew up in.

Speaker 5

Well, I grew up in a family. My brother and I, when we were about, probably when I was about 11 years old or so, my mom and dad were divorced. And so, you know, that was a really difficult time.

But my mom did later remarry, and so my stepdad came into the picture, and that was a really interesting season. He was a huge blessing. He was a huge blessing in so many ways. But I know what it's like to be that teenager who just wants to, you know, push against what is trying to be established here. I gave him a hard time for a few years, but then I came to appreciate him at a certain point when I was becoming closer to graduating high school.

And, yeah, so I'm grateful. I'm really grateful for him in our family's lives. He did pass away a few years after I graduated from high school, but it was a blessing to have had him, and I'm better for it.

Speaker 4

Well, that's great. I know somebody's listening right now, and they would love to know, okay, so what did he do to withstand your resistance? If I could put it that way.

When you. When he came into your life, what.

What tips would you give a step parent who's kind of struggling with a kid who's standing against him right now?

Speaker 5

Well, you know, honestly, he was a very patient person. He was very patient. And I think one of the things that he did is just continue to be consistent. He continues to be consistent with my brother and I. He really encouraged us to be able to see how, you know, those things were impacting our mom.

You know, he didn't so much say, treat me this way or I need to be, you know, held this way. He really was concerned about how those things were impacting her. And I think that was a blessing because it helped us to come outside of ourselves. And, of course, we loved our mom. We also knew that, you know, the other scenario was never going to happen, you know, again as it relates to our dad.

So, you know, after time, you just saw his continued perseverance with us, his patience with us, and then also his faithfulness to my mom, his faithfulness to my mom and to our family and the sacrifices that he would make. And, yeah, so that really softened us towards him as time went on.

Speaker 4

As time went on, I think that's one of the key things that we talk about a lot on this program.

And you just reflected one of the principles we tell stepparents: have patience, stay in the game, don't quit. Be stubbornly patient, maybe is a way to say that.

I'm curious, was your biological father in your life after your mom and dad divorced?

Speaker 5

Yes, he was. And, I mean, he was in my life, and we were kind of actually more adversarial just because of some of the circumstances, but he was there, and I'm grateful because my mother, despite the challenges of why they were divorced, there was a lot of abuse and things that were involved.

She was very adamant about encouraging us to always consider our father, to call our father, to reach out to our father. And she was intentional about not speaking ill of our father to us, even though we knew, you know, so many different things.

And so that also laid a good foundation for us to eventually reconcile our hearts with our father some years down the road. That made a huge difference in many ways, including spiritual, and us being able to really understand our relationship with God, you know, and let him in, in ways we had closed off because of our relationship with our biological father.

Speaker 4

You just made, I think, a very interesting connection.

I want to make sure our audience heard, and that is that the way your mother talked about your dad, encouraged your relationship with your father, made a difference eventually in you being able to forgive him?

Speaker 5

Yes, absolutely. Because there wasn't all these additional years of vitriol and, you know, frustration and things that were being compounded, you know, after the divorce, at least at my mother's hand.

So she was able to really, in some ways, be a person of peace when it came to that opportunity to reconcile with him, even though she herself had been hurt.

Obviously, she made a very mature choice for us, to not put that upon us. So it was huge.

Speaker 4

Yeah, it is. That's great. Chris, I believe your parents divorced when you were young and you eventually had two stepparents. I'm curious, some similarities or differences from your wife's experience there?

Speaker 1

Yeah, I think my parents just both loved the Lord. Father was a kind of itinerant preacher. Just had a hard time navigating the ins and outs of relationships with one another. I will just say, from a young boy's perspective, active, the father figure is so important and so.

One of my earliest childhood memories, unfortunately, was the night my dad left. I still remember me and my brother, who's about three and a half years older than I am, standing in the driveway saying, "Dad, don't go, don't go," as he, after a big argument between my parents, was pulling out of the driveway saying, "Sorry, I gotta go." You know, that definitely marked me and my brother, albeit in different ways. I think with me there were the insecurities that came from family instability. With my brother, I think there was a more hardening of heart that came with his departure.

Much like Yodi's story, my stepdad stepped in, and we were, yeah, we were hard; we were jerks. We were not happy that he was there originally and gave him a really hard time. But he was the type to let us know, "Although you're kicking and screaming now, you're really going to look up one day and be super grateful that you had a father present, that you had a dad present." He never tried to compete with my biological father. As a matter of fact, much like Yodi, my mom never poisoned my perspective of my dad. I found out much later in life that she certainly could have, but she didn't.

My stepdad encouraged my relationship with my dad in some pretty extraordinary ways. Now, being a father myself, he was tremendously gracious with my dad and gave him space to be able to still be in my life in a non-competitive way. Certainly, that helped with the healing process. Again, much like my wife, there was a long period where my father and I were estranged from one another just out of inconsistencies in his parenting. But later on, towards the end of his life, we were able to reconcile, and for the last three years of his life, we were able to have a restored relationship and be super close.

For guys, the relationship with your biological father in particular is kind of the final frontier. You need to be able to have some healing, some reconciliation within that relationship, and there are ways to do it even when the father is not present. But you need to be able to get some sense of closure, or it's going to plague and impact every other relationship you have, including your relationship with God.

My stepdad was great, and all the things that he prophetically said in those moments where we were kicking and screaming were right. We look up now and we are so grateful for him instilling within us character, discipline, work ethic, and compassion. The way he served my mom became, in many ways, a model for me and my brother in the way that we serve our wives and our kids. And so, we were blessed.

Speaker 4

We have said so many times on this podcast that stepfamilies done well are redemptive in the life of the next generation. And you guys have both just demonstrated that. Talking about your stepparents and the role that they have played in your life and how a stepparent who comes in and patiently with a non-compete clause, like you guys, who says not competing with the other biological parents in this scenario or, you know, anybody else in the other home, that just creates this opportunity for emotional safety and trust.

Eventually, it sounds like, at least for the two of you, that helped soften your hard hearts.

Speaker 1

Yes, certainly. Yeah, I would say for sure. I mean, if they would have taken, I mean, just think about, we were young. We were both pretty young.

So the vulnerability that is there, if they would have taken a hardened approach, if they would have taken more of a combative or competitive approach, we certainly could have been swayed.

And the difficulties that come along with co-parenting.

Speaker 4

Yes.

Speaker 1

Would have been more complicated and more difficult. And so there's a lot of grace, a lot of patience, a lot of wisdom that's needed if it's going to be redemptive.

So I know that it's easier to talk about than it is to live out. Yes.

But I would 100% agree with you that we were blessed to have those parents that were in it for the long term.

Speaker 3

Foreign you're listening to Family Life today and we're listening to a portion of the Family Life Blended podcast with Ron Deal and guest Chris and Yodi Brooks. And he's got the best voice ever in the world.

Speaker 2

And we can only share a portion of their conversation, but if you want to hear the rest of it, pull up the Family Life Blended podcast and then just scroll to episode 121, Lessons from Adoptive Parents.

Speaker 3

I mean, this is some great stuff. And let me just say, if you want help in your marriage—and we all need help—we have put together some of our best material just for you.

It's @familylife.com marriage help, and it's free. We just want to help you.

Go there now and get help.

Speaker 2

Familylife.com marriage help. Check it out because we'll probably have something there that will meet your needs.

Speaker 3

Okay, let's get back to the conversation.

Speaker 4

Chris, I think I heard you refer to your stepdad once as Jethro. You want to tell people what's behind that?

Speaker 1

I do. You got a good memory. Well, you know if you know the story of Jethro and Moses, yeah. Moses marries this Midian wife, and he is a man trying to lead, and he is in leadership, over his head in a lot of ways. And he needs wisdom beyond his years. It’s Jethro, his father-in-law, who comes. We don't know much about the religious background of the Midianites. We know they're not Israelites. We know they're not worshipers of Yahweh, Jehovah, but clearly there was some wisdom there and some moral law that was at work in his heart.

My dad's spiritual journey is a complicated one. He would firmly profess faith in God and faith in Christ, but he was estranged from the church. I wouldn't put him in a typical category of your normal churchgoer, but yet there was a lot of wisdom there and the moral law of God ingrained. I jokingly say I have a proverbial dad. There’s a proverb about everything. There’s a story about everything. Sometimes we wish we would have gotten put on punishment instead of the lecture. But you grow up with these stories ingrained in your heart.

For me, being called to leadership at a young age, I was pastoring in my 20s and married at a young age. In many ways, his wisdom, much like Jethro to Moses, I look back and I say, man, I'm not sure if I would have survived in leadership or in marriage if it wasn't for his wisdom.

Speaker 4

Man, what a blessing. What a gift that is a grace from God right there. To any step parent listening to me right now, if you think, is it worth all of the time and energy, the late nights, the sweat, and the blood, sweat and tears, and not getting sleep while wrestling over your relationship with your stepchild—Is it worth it? Well, I think maybe you can hear it is.

Hey, guys, I'm curious. Coming out of the families that you grew up in, complex family environments, did you have a good relationship with at least one step parent at some point in your life? I'm just curious, though. When it came time for the two of you to fall in love and get married, what were the blessings that you carried forward as you thought about family and what it would be like to create your own family and do marriage? At the same time, I'm wondering what the vulnerabilities were that you maybe had to work through or try to overcome.

Speaker 1

Yeah. I'll say one thing about your family that has been a blessing is that Yodi's mom was really, really strong in instilling between her and her brother a deep sense of commitment to each other.

Family was a priority, and that you care for family, you provide for family, and that was deeply instilled in you guys.

I think you carried that into our relationship and certainly even now with our kids.

Speaker 5

Yes, for sure. And your parents, you know, there were some things that your family experienced some years before I came into the picture, and just amazing, amazing commitment to one another is what they just demonstrated. And that, to me, was just admirable.

And what I wanted, I knew in our marriage. And so, you know, the great thing is that our parents were very supportive of us. Yes. When we were dating and when we were engaged, they were supportive of us.

And so, in fact, I think your mom just kind of called it out and said, that's your wife. She's gonna be your wife. Right.

Speaker 1

Your mom came around.

Speaker 5

My mom came around.

Speaker 1

But you. To get her on board.

Speaker 4

Your mom was a prophet, right? Prophet.

Speaker 1

My mom fell in love with Yi from the first time she met her. That's really great. Yeah, she loved you from the beginning.

I think her mom had to warm up, but, yeah, we did come from similar backgrounds. Even though there are some similarities in our family structure, the dynamics of our families were different. I would describe it this way: Yodi's mom, for a number of different reasons, had to be very strong and had to demonstrate leadership in a way that was like a single mom.

In contrast, my dad was still the kind of dominant figure in our household. My mom is very strong, but my dad is still very much the head of the household. So, coming into marriage, I kind of came from a household where there was a dominant father figure, while she came from a household that I would describe as having a more dominant mother figure.

I think we had to learn how to work that out.

Speaker 5

Sure, there was a little bit of that. My mom was. It was a little bit more matriarchal, just kind of in the way that things, you know, shaped up in our family. But one of the things that was very present for both Chris and I was the commitment to be married and to make sure that we built a marriage that would last.

And so for both of us, our moms were not our fathers' first wives, and they weren't their last. Our dads had been married a number of times. And so that fact for us was something that we just found, you know, wasn't—we didn't want that to be the goal. I mean, we wanted to start off with a mindset that we would do as much as we can to invest into our marriage so that our marriage could be sustained, you know, and so that's been a commitment that we continually have had to renew.

You know, it definitely affected how seriously we took our premarital counseling, because it was still very fresh to us in some ways. We recognized, because we had a great premarital counselor, that we began to recognize a lot of the things that we were carrying that would have been barriers to us being able to have a good foundation in our marriage.

And so that's the thing. You know, we had a goal in mind of what we wanted our marriage to look like, even though we didn't fully see that with our biological parents. But our mothers and our stepdads actually helped to give us a better picture of what that could look like for us.

Speaker 2

We've been listening to a portion of the Family Life Blended podcast with Chris and Yodi Brooks. Ron Deal, the host of that podcast, joins us now in the studio. Welcome, Ron.

Speaker 4

Hey, guys. Always good to be with you.

Speaker 3

Yeah, it's great, Ron. You know, we love Chris and Yodi. And, you know, we started talking about unexpected people, which obviously their story has that. Yeah. So, yeah, talk about that. I know that's a big part of blended.

Speaker 4

It is. And you know, let's face it, sometimes we talk about the negative things about step family members, you know, step parents that come into kids' lives. But listen to their story. Initially, neither one of them, Chris or Yodi, wanted to really have those people step into their life, especially after the loss that they experienced as children. And yet eventually, those people became highly influential in their life.

I mean, listen to how she just made that comment about these people helping them gain a vision for marriage and what it's supposed to look like. How many times have we said blended families done right are redemptive? It's often the next generation that gets a chance to see the beauty that the Lord has brought through those redemptive people in the blended family. That, in turn, helps the next generation walk with God.

I'll mention one of the things our listeners did not get to hear: how they reflected on watching their biological parents be loved by their stepparents and how that encouraged them to then have a heart to give and love. They were loved by somebody who stepped into their world, and then they decided to love someone not biological in their family. So they adopted three kids.

It's amazing how the generosity of God is poured out through unexpected people in our lives and how that turns around and becomes generosity paid forward. I just think it's a beautiful story. Yeah.

Speaker 3

And another part of their story that we've seen in the Detroit area, and a lot of people know, is when they lost their son.

And I mean, they've had to walk through tragedy as well.

And they modeled really beautifully for a whole city, I think, how to do that.

Speaker 4

Well, they have. You know, they're centered in God. They're centered in their walk with him and their ministry, even in great tragedy.

And Chris and I connected around that great tragedy because we share that similar story.

And I can just tell you, the Lord has been with them and has helped them in that grief journey, and now they're helping other people.

Speaker 3

Another thing I've never heard is the non compete clause. That is really interesting.

Speaker 4

Yeah. Wasn't that a great little phrase? His stepdad came in with a non-compete attitude toward Chris's biological dad, which made it easy for Chris to embrace his stepdad eventually.

We teach this all the time in Family Life Blended. If you come in as a stepparent and you're trying to move into that special place in a child's heart where they have their biological dad or mom, whichever the case may be, you're just going to get pushed out. Like, you cannot compete with that relationship.

But if you come in respecting it, honoring it, that just makes you likable. Children have to feel safe with a stepparent before they'll move into love for a stepparent. And so that's a wonderful move. Non-compete clause. It's a great attitude to have.

Speaker 3

Yeah. So I'm just going to tell you, if you want to listen to the whole conversation, go to the Family Life Blended podcast. It's episode 121 and we only gave you a little bit of it, so you're going to love the whole thing.

Speaker 2

Ron, you have another blended and blessed conference coming up soon. Remind our listeners what that's about.

Speaker 4

Yeah. So, Blended and Blessed is a Think Marriage seminar specifically for blended family couples. On April 5, 2025, we are going to be live from Franklin, Tennessee. If anybody's in that neck of the woods, you can still show up. We'd love to have you join us, but for everybody else, tap into the live stream. You can join us for the entire day.

It's brand new material springing out of Nan and my new book, *The Mindful Marriage*. We're going to be applying that to blended family living, parenting, and co-parenting. It's very easy. Just go to blendedandblessed.com, and you'll see all the registration information.

If you're a church and you get the church license, you'll have access to the entire day's video for up to a year. You can turn this into a small group study and gather couples at a later date. It is not too late to be a part of this.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Ron.

Speaker 4

Thank you.

Speaker 2

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