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BLENDING FAMILIES Blending families is one of the major tasks of adulthood. The need to blend can occur in a number of ways. When we hear the term we most often think of divorce and remarriage, and of course this is a significant way the need to blend families can happen. However, there are other significant ways. When a son or daughter marries, there is the immediate need to redefine the coordination of family activities. Where will the new family spend the holidays? If the faith backgrounds are different, will the grandchildren be brought up in the Baptist or Presbyterian Church or maybe in an even more difficult situation, the Catholic or the Jewish faith? Maybe this results in the children attending no church at all! This may also affect areas of education, profession (Will son enter the family business or work for his father-in-law?), or health (How do we feel about ending life support?). There are blending issues when Dad decides to remarry after the death of a spouse. There are blending issues when an open adoption takes place. Often the need to blend families can occur when siblings need to coordinate family reunions or funerals. It is a central factor in settling estates or determining inheritances (Does the second wife who only lived with Dad two years have a right to inherit the house the children grew up in?) It is very seldom that a nuclear family can live in a vacuum apart from other relations. No doubt at some time in your life this challenge has crossed your path. Another way blending may occur is when older parents move in with married children or older single children move back home with their parents. Both situations require blending to make them work. In biblical times, there were many more women than men and the answer to the problem was for one man to have more than one wife. As we look at Jacob we can see how difficult it was to blend such a family. In a future lesson, we will look more specifically at the siblings, but in this lesson we will look at Jacob and his interactions with his wives more closely. This lesson is presented in order for you to think about how these challenges to blend families has shaped your life. Where has God been in the process? Is there some part of the blending task that is still unfinished? SCRIPTURE Read Genesis 29-31 STUDY QUESTIONS: Why was it important for Jacob to visit Laban and take a wife from his family? Compare what we know about Rachel and Leah? How did Laban manipulate the circumstances for his family? What were his hopes and expectations for his family? Write about the importance of child-bearing to a Jewish woman of this time and place. How did child-bearing become a competition between Rachel and Leah? How might the fact that Jacob was cheated into taking Leah as a wife, affect his feelings toward her? How might the fact that Jacob had to wait for and work twice as hard for Rachel influence his feelings toward her? What must it have been like for Jacob to keep peace in the family? How do you imagine the difference in the joy that Jacob felt at the birth of his sons by Leah or the servant women in comparison to the joy he felt at the birth of Joseph? Do you believe that Jacob was successful in blending the various parts of his family into a cohesive whole? Why or why not? Jump ahead to chapter 33:16. Write about the wisdom of Jacob’s decision to set out on his own and choosing not to live close to his own family of origin. A PERSONAL STORY As a young person I entered the Peace Corps straight out of college. I met and fell in love with a fellow volunteer who was from a radically different background. He was a Catholic Hispanic, born and raised in El Paso, Texas, while I was a Wesleyan Methodist Anglo, born in New York and raised in the Midwest. Because we were in an isolated work area (Guatemala) and all our activities were centered on our volunteer work, it was not apparent to me the challenges that lay ahead. Others tried to tell me, but I was too much in love to hear them. Upon return to the United States these challenges hit us full in the face, the first of which was the decision of where to live. For twenty-five years both my husband and I tried very hard to adapt and fit together. We truly did care for one another and we had a child together to consider. But with both of us trying so hard to accommodate, we ended up with something that made neither of us happy. We were dying a slow death. The marriage sadly ended in divorce. I had to face many issues of blending and they had many significant results. Here is a small example to give you a flavor. When my son was born he had an umbilical hernia. As “modern educated” young parents we took him to the pediatrician and he assured us it was the result of his being born several weeks early. His muscles had not developed their full strength and with time they would strengthen and the gap would close with the herniated part back inside where it belonged. We went away from his office reassured. When Mike told his mother what the doctor had said, she threw a fit! In the Hispanic tradition, a child with a herniated intestinal area was treated with herbs and bound with cloths so that the area would not be damaged. Once again we called the doctor who told us that if we were to bind him, the muscles would not develop and other kinds of damage could occur. So, we went back to my mother-in-law with this information. She literally screamed that we were trying to kill our own child. While some of it was about who had the greatest influence on her eldest son, most of it was a genuine concern for her grandchild. She vowed at that time she was going to have nothing to do with a child that was going to die. So for the first year and a half of his life this grandmother would have nothing to do with him. She never visited, and when we visited, she would go into the other room and refuse to see him. As time passed, the healing occurred as the doctor said it would. The area closed and with time it was impossible to tell that the area had ever been affected. Later when she finally accepted the fact that he was not going to die, she came by the house to visit and see her grandson. While her interactions with him changed, her feelings about me did not. She continued to see me as a callous Anglo woman who would coldly put her own son’s life in danger. This influenced many of our future interactions. PERSONAL QUESTIONS List some of your own blended family situations (i.e. in-laws, extend families, step-children, multigenerational families, etc.) What are some of the issues that have arisen? Describe the process of how these issues were addressed? Were solutions found? What were they? Were there compromises that had to be made? Were these compromises on your side, their side, or both? How did you feel about the compromises? How did the rest of the participants feel about the outcome? Are their issues that continue to be a problem with no apparent solution? Are there people in your family you avoid because of wounds left unhealed? Is there past history that influences present behavior? Has that behavior become a bad habit? How has your faith helped you to deal with issues of blending? Are there specific steps that you can take at this time in your life, to bring additional healing and peace to your family? GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS Without mentioning name or disclosing confidential information, tell some issues blended-families you know have faced. Using the same guidelines above, tell of some family who has faced blended family issues and managed it well. Was faith a defining factor in the families ability to blend the family? If so in what ways? If not, what resources did they use? Discuss how and why this is becoming more of an issue in our society. How might a church be an example of a blended family? How has your church dealt with issues arising between different cultures, tastes in music, and traditions? Would you consider it successful? What would it take for it to be more successful? Give some constructive hints for bring harmony into the process of blending.
READING, VIDEO, WEB RESOURCES Books and articles: Chedekel, David S., and O’Connell, Karen O. The Blended Family Sourcebook, McGraw Hill Publishers, 2002. This book addresses situations beyond divorce and remarriage. Not written from a specifically Christian standpoint, it gives guidelines for establishing successful blended families. Video: Jacob, The Bible Collection, staring Matthew Modine. This is a WarnerBros. film previously shown on TNT. Copyright 1994. Web Resources: www.troublewith.com is a website for blended families produced by Focus on the Family. While it deals mainly with younger families, there are some helpful articles (i.e. one on combining holidays) that would apply to latter age experiences. It might also bring to mind some of the issues that you faced earlier in your life and give some ways of thinking about them. Fran C Dickson, Ph.D. and Allison Christian and Clyde J. Remmo, An Exploration of Marital and Family Issues among the Later-Life Adult, University of Denver. Chapter submitted to Handbook of Family Communication edited by Anita Vangelisti. This article is available online at www.allisoneditorial.com/allisoneditorial3.pdf It does a terrific job of setting out the issues based on recent research. It would be a good introduction for any pastor or Christian Education Director. It has an extensive list of Resources ADDITIONAL ACTIVITIES
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