In between blending

The common term, or the politically correct term, for a family that is formed by divorced people with children is a blended family. It's what I  normally use to describe our family as everyone knows what it means. Deep down, I don't care for the term as I believe it is not the best description of what a blended family really is.

I guess in the technicalities of language are where this word become fitting. The definition of blending is to mix together to form a mass. Yes, we mix our kids and we are a mass of space and chaos and noise and bodies. Okay, I'll give you that. Another definition is a mixture of different things. Okay, okay we are a mixture of many different things/people. But the artist in me pushes aside this term because when you see blending techniques you don't notice where one color stops and the other begins. It is a gradual, beautiful, graceful process. The blue slowly darkens into purple which morphs magically into black. It is a process from point a to point b and you take it all in.

Blended families are not graceful, sure we have a lot of beautiful little people we created between the two of us, but that's not what we are talking about. We are talking about 2 people exploding into almost a dozen people within a few year's time. We are talking about quiet solitude that the single dad trades in for the near constant chaos, movement, and cycle of a family with eight children, 2 adults, and the various parents each child comes with, all the kid activities and every other little thing in between. We are talking about the single mom having life laid out just so, with a routine and schedule and the children she solely parents on her own without the influences of others resulting in each of those children and herself knowing pretty much how to navigate most every situation they walk into because she knows her children better than she knows herself!

But a blended family is not routine, it is not predictable, it is not quiet, and it isn't 'blended'. It is ever so messy - maybe not physically as both my husband and myself are neat freaks and our home is clean aside from the splash of toys the children have out throughout the day. We are talking messy emotionally, mentally, financially, and organically. 1 + 1 always equaled 2 before the two fell in love. Then suddenly it became a whole new equation of exes and children. Blending a family is a messy intention of love. Everything you do for your children is intentional. All the way down to how you fall in love with another woman's children. It begins with intent and thought, learning about those little (and not so little) beings and intentionally carving out space to get to know them for who they are. Not for what their father loves in them or what reminds you of their mother. And with that intention comes a depth of humanity you never before were graced to experience because suddenly you feel inches closer to the type of love God must hold for us - children of mere mortals who sin and mess up and create intentional divides for these beautiful, innocent, pure and perfect babies. This is what God intended for us to feel, to reach into our humanity for each other and love in this manner. All too often the world has us far too busy to actually do so.

And so our family is really much more of an in between family than a blended family. We are in between children dependent on the day of the month. Six days a month we have one child and parent an only. We get to enjoy the world through the eyes of just one small child and teach him and focus on him in ways we haven't been able to do since each of us became a parent for the very first time. Other times we have four kids bouncing off the walls and we are doing homework, going over schedules, prepping for school, playing, tickling, laughing, yelling and everything else that revolves around those four kids. Half the month we get five to six kids at once and we are full metal jacket on top of life and keeping them active, alive, refereeing the fighting and looking at each other with big eyes full of love and amazement at how we are doing it. Our favorite times of the month are when we have all eight under our roof, as we walk into a new stage of life with the oldest ones out on their own and they stop in for family dinners. A recent engagement brings to our table 11 heads, and we bow to pray and I look up just to look at each of these heads and say an extra prayer of thanks for each of them. Soon enough we will have a son-in-law and I'm sure the pitter-patter of little feet eventually. And little feet that will be calling us some form of Grandma and Grandpa names, something that brings great joy to my heart as we settle our own thoughts and feelings around adding to our family or not.

Every day brings a moment of being between something or somewhere- between drop-off or pick-ups with one of the children's parents, between school and soccer, between puberty and toddler-hood, between our home and their other homes. I take many pauses in between, reminding myself we are doing something wonderful and powerful because we are doing it intentionally. We are doing it with love. We are doing it praying to our Father to guide us and help us to become a bit better at our humanity and see these beautiful souls' other parents as partners and to raise up these children together in ways these children look back with joy at what we could give them. We are doing the best we can, with ALL that we have.

I always have felt that I was meant to be a mother, it is the one thing that ultimately squashed my ego. From the pain of pregnancy and childbirth created in me someone who could finally put all of my want and need aside for the betterment of another person. I couldn't do that in my first spouse. I was too damaged, too unsettled and unable to create and maintain healthy boundaries, too needy for love above all else. It led me to choose poorly in my life's mate and multiple times a month I now pay the price for that as I kiss my children's heads and send them off with a smile to their father's home. It isn't easy being away from your children a quarter of the time. It isn't easy missing out on things and firsts and sharing in important moments after school. But it is what it is because of my life choices and it is messy. It is intentional. It is purposeful. And I pray it is forgiving.

This is the side of a blended family nobody will talk about. I think everyone is too afraid to admit to the fear of failure. To own up to their faults that led them down this path. Instead people insist on painting a picture of perfection. Mind you, we still look at each other and wonder when the honeymoon will wear off with our children. The youngest six get along incredibly. At any give time I can walk into the six year old's room and see the 14 year old down on the rug playing legos together. The 3 year old and 11 year old are like Peter Pan and his shadow, she never lags far behind her and the older sister does well with allowing it and loving on her. The 2 year old is Tasmanian dirtdevil of sound and energy and movement and every single sibling runs to him the minute they get home and wraps him up in their arms, commenting how adorable he is and how much they missed him. When the oldest two come home, they interact with the kids as if they had never been gone. They laugh, they smile, they watch each other and the little's will climb into the big's lap or pull on their shirts to show them something. We have been blessed with gentle, tender, kind-hearted children and it is apparent in their interactions and love of each other. But we are messy and a work in progress. There is so much more to our family than just how our kids get along. We fight, we cry, we make-up, we love fiercely, we stress, we hope, we dream, we get tired. Just like every other couple out there, we have our messy parts just as much as the rest. We go from moment to moment, clinging to our love for each other.

And so, it leaves us in between. In between here and there. In between babies and weddings. In between exhaustion and exhilaration. In between chaos and serenity. In between birth and death. In between the past and the future. All of it swirls around us and we look to each other, clasp our hands together and set out to carry this beautiful, intentional, messy family of ours through every day the best we can. We accept that we are in between and that is just fine. We accept we don't always know what we are doing but we know we are doing as much as we can, the best way that we can for these kids and each other. We grab onto the bits of happiness, love, forgiveness and joy swirling in and out of our lives. We capture those moments with intentional focus and leave behind the bits of sadness, anger, frustration and ugliness for God to wipe away.  It allows us to live in between, which really is living in the moment. Maybe there is some wisdom to figuring out that being in between is really just taking nothing for granted and accepting each and every moment we have been given. It is accepting that this in-between family is really just living in the moment and simply a big, intentional, messy, hope of creating a beautifully blended picture that is real and honest.