Shanna, from Arkansas (submitted June, 2003)

Name: Shanna Berry
Home state or country: Arkansas

After teaching children for fourteen years, I don't suppose I ever imagined that I wouldn't know how to love children....what could be so different if they were stepchildren?  My children were six and nine when we married, my new son 13, and my new daughter 17.  They were moved to a new state, a new town, and a new family.  In some ways this became new ground for all of us, but for my daughter, it was a difficult senior year.  

I realized that at seventeen, my new daughter was going to be less than thrilled about a new stepmother.   She had already seen one harvest of a new marriage that failed in its early season.  She had a former stepmother who was closer to her age than mine, and ultimately wanted her to be her dress up play mate.  I was batter three with the bases loaded full of difficult experences.  What I wasn't prepared for was just how much she needed me to love her, to mother her...how each thing I loved and longed to do for her would also increase her pain as she realized that the "fairy tale" of mother's listening, loving, baking, shopping, and caring for her was not some school girls' tales, but something that other girls, not her...actually had.  For my stepdaughter, it was a bittersweet learning, for she finally had the mother role she longed to have in her life, but also the reality that the person who gave it to her was not her mother...and that her mother actively CHOSE not to give it to her. 

My stepson relished motherhood, even if from a stepmother, but I was not prepared for the pain of seeing him hurt each time his natural mother chose not to mother him too.

My son, age 9, felt that this new family had taken me from him.  Our very close survivor relationship was being interrupted a hundred times a day by the three new people in our home.  The smallest one, age 6, just tried to get used to three older siblings, thinking they were in charge of her.

It has always been my idea that no child will ever be harmed from more people loving them...stepparenting has deepened that feeling, but it has also raised my awareness that some hurts cannot be healed except by God.  In my classroom I reach out and love children every day that have had difficult or horrid experiences as children, and now I am working in my own family to heal the hurts divorce caused all four children.

Divorce is unfortunately a reality of many of our children and adults in our community.  It is not one I ever expected to be a part of, but there is nothing in my experience that doesn't encourage me to know that like other inequities in our walk, putting the past behind me is the first step in accepting God's grace to build this new family.  The children have a more difficult time of letting go of a past they only created a fantasy memory of, for none of the four have ease in facing the reality we did live through.  It is harder for them to trust this new experience as "real."

God teaches us that we are made anew with Him.  I believe as a stepparent, we must choose to embrace our new families and allow God to make us new as a family also.  Respect your children's need for tradition, establish routines to reduce stress and expectancy concerns, allow children to have new family experiences and times designed to be together in new situations.  Turn off the T.V., get out the game boards, and spend time learning one another.  Clearly define family rules of conduct and behavior, discipline and discuss concerns as a couple with the child or children.  Back each other up as parents and stepparents.  The devil is out there, and I promise you he has a whole department for messing up stepparent communications, so ask, repeat, and have the children explain to you what they understood you to say, then let them retreat to their corner or activity.  

It is a wonderful thing to birth a new family.  The labor is long, and difficult and often you're birthing multiples at one time that come in a shoe size 9.  But as they grow the wonder and delight of each small step becomes glorious for all.

Read Shanna's second entry that updates us on her family's growth.