Duplication

I mentioned my thoughts last week about how our family is less than ideal. It's not bad. But never does a woman get married thinking, "Well, I'll be married for about eight years, then I'll get divorced and then I'll remarry to a nice man and we'll have a great big happy blended family, and that will be so much better than if I were to just get married and stay married to the father of my children for eternity!"

No, no, I'm pretty sure we don't think that way. In fact, from a young age, as Latter Day Saint children, we are taught that "The family is ordained of God." and "Children are entitled to... be reared by a father and mother who honor marital vows with complete fidelity." There is no mention in The Family: A Proclamation to the World of divorce, step parents, or blended families. Other than the admonition to "honor marital vows with complete fidelity" (which would imply not getting divorced) there is no talk of divorce to be found.

So, if I know what the ideal is, and I was striving for that ideal my entire life, and I am committed to that ideal, how to I reconcile my less-than-ideal circumstance with the prophet-directed ideal?

Elder D. Todd Christofferson's talk last October came at exactly the right time. My divorce was almost final, and I was feeling very brokenhearted about the idea of my "ideal" situation dissolving. I couldn't deny the truth of his statement that, "There is no better setting for rearing the rising generation than the traditional family, where a father and a mother work in harmony to provide for, teach, and nurture their children." But I am glad that he did not stop there. His words were a soothing balm to my aching newly-single-mother heart, "Where this ideal does not exist, people strive to duplicate its benefits as best they can in their particular circumstances."

And that, my friends, is where we are today.

Although our children are not being reared by a biological father and mother who honor marital vows with complete fidelity, they are being reared by a step mom and a step dad who honor marital vows with complete fidelity. And we focus on the next part of The Proclamation,

Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities. By divine design, fathers are to preside over their families in love and righteousness and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families. Mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children. In these sacred responsibilities, fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners. Disability, death, or other circumstances may necessitate individual adaptation. Extended families should lend support when needed.

I am convinced that the benefits can be duplicated if we focus on these things.

In our blended family and home, we try to be unrelenting about family scripture study and family prayer. We try to teach our children repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, and hard work. As much as possible, we try to duplicate the benefits of the best setting for rearing the rising generation.

I guess we won't know how successful we were until our children are gone, but I have faith that Heavenly Father will guide us as we try to do our best. And, as Elder Ballard said last October, "It is impossible for us to fail when we do our best when we are on the Lord’s errand."

How do you try to duplicate the benefits of the ideal situation in your less-than-ideal situation? We all have something less-than-ideal about our lives. What is your fix?

Less Than Ideal

It's Friday night, which is a pretty lonely night for me these days. Our kids all go with their other parent on Friday nights, and my husband works until 11, so it's just me, writing about our mixed up life.

I haven't had a lot of time to read or write - and I have felt like I haven't had very many interesting things to say.

But I am active on a Facebook group of LDS women who elicit tidbits from me every now and then when I have a minute to check in on what they are chatting about. I love those ladies - they keep me grounded in my faith, they remind me of the important things in life, and they help me keep my covenants. They are women from all over the world, from all walks of life, with one thing in common - they are faithful covenant keepers.

We've had a lot of conversations lately, and one of them in particular has been about the attack on family in society today. The attack comes in several different ways, and I don't want to debate about feminism, women in the church, same sex marriage, or any other hot topic. I want to talk about blended families.

I am a staunch advocate of traditional marriage - one man, one woman, raising their children together. We can get all sorts of specific with the types of families that don't fit this mold, but I want to get specific with only one...

Lately I have been mulling over the idea of our blended family. My children have two "fathers" now - their biological father, and their step father. Both fathers are very real fathers to them, and fill very important roles for my children. Similarly, my step children have two "mothers" now - their biological mother, and me - both also very important and very real to them, fulfilling much needed roles in their lives.

So it got me to thinking... how is my children have two "moms" and two "dads" different from a child being raised in a same-sex relationship by two moms, or two dads? This is an earnest question, and deep down I know that a mom and a step dad raising kids together is different than a dad and a step dad raising kids together, but the question is still rattling around in my brain - far from being satisfactorily answered.

And honestly, I have more questions than answers. Which is not unusual for me.

I read this article today about another type of blended family popping up around the world - the family where the step dad is married to the biological dad, rather than the biological mom. It is one of the most heartbreaking things I have ever read.

The thing is, divorce is heartbreaking for me. Remarriage is heartbreaking for me. Sure there are fantastic things about my life now - but in the back of my mind there is always that nagging reminder that we are not in an "ideal" family situation.  Which is why I keep thinking about less-than-ideal family situations, and what differentiates them from one another.

What are your thoughts?

A Family in a Blender

With Peter Pan at Hale Center Theater Orem's production
From Right: Ryan, Vince, Cory, Joseline
(Bailey was standing with me and grandma RaNae, and
Seth was with his dad)

I'm sure the next question on your mind is the blending of the family. How do the kids get along? How do the kids get along with the step parents?

I would be lying if I said there was no conflict and we got along swimmingly. What non-blended family gets along without any conflict? There is always conflict. How you deal with that conflict demonstrates what kind of family you are. We try to deal with conflict between children as if the children are all full-blood siblings. There's no other way to do it, in my opinion. The kids are kids, no matter who their parents are, and they are siblings - whether biological or step.

We spend a lot of time talking about how families help us grow - so even if there is something we don't like about one of our family members, we can use that relationship to help us learn and grow rather than resent our family member because of it. We can also try to help the sibling who has a less-than-desirable behavior or personality trait learn how to overcome their weakness, without name calling, belittling, or being hard on the person. These are qualities I would teach my children even if they weren't step-siblings, so I don't see the relationship thing as much different than in a family with no blending.

We try to do a lot of things "together" so there isn't the "us against them" mentality. We also try to stress that our family is the Andrews/Rowley family, not just the "Andrews" family so that the Rowley kids don't feel pushed out of their own family. I try to remind all of the kids that even though my last name is Andrews now, I am still a Rowley because I will always be Vince and Joseline and Seth's mom. That is the only thing I worry about with the blended family - a division along "family" lines. But I think we're doing a pretty good job of creating an Andrews/Rowley family mentality, and so far there hasn't been much of that division.

Plus, look at these selfies the kids took with my phone when I wasn't looking! Those kids definitely get along!

 

the second part of the beginning

So after that first date with my (now) husband, I went on another date with the other guy. The one with the cool gospel discussions. We took our kids out to Trafalga, and the biggest thing that struck me was the kind of father he was. Not a bad father, but a little distant. I was positive that wasn't what I was looking for. I actually ended up texting Justin at one point during the "date" when my date was with his daughter in another part of the park and I was with mine on a different ride. Turns out Justin texted me back also on a date with another girl!

The Mid-Singles stake was hosting a fireside on media the next day, and I had already decided that I would go. I asked Justin if he wanted to come with me. He said he did, and so he picked me up Sunday evening and we went to the fireside. We sat and talked after the fireside until they started folding up the chairs and basically kicked us out.

Later that evening I was preparing some materials for my class the next day and I was making a PowerPoint presentation. It had been a while since I had messed around with the program, and I was stuck trying to figure out how to animate something. I texted Justin to see if he could tell me how to do it. As I was waiting for him to respond I figured it out. Long story short, he ended up over at my house that evening and helped me with my lesson for the next day.

By the time he went home we had decided that we want to date each other exclusively. We had plans to do Family Home Evening at the park the next day with the kids, and after that spent every single day together. After school I would pack up the kids and head to his house, or he would pick up his kids after work and bring them over to my house and we would do homework and dinner together every single night. That Thursday night we went to the temple together and we looked at each other and knew that we were going to get married.

As we were making plans to get married we thought about a good date. Because I am a school teacher we wanted to get married maybe on a Thursday evening or Friday morning so we could have a few days of honeymooning before going back to work. First, we prayed about it, and I got the distinct impression that we should pick a day and ask Heavenly Father about it. We looked at a holiday weekend in January and took the date to Heavenly Father. I didn't feel great about it, but I also didn't feel bad about it, so we proceeded with plans. Shortly after making that decision I felt an urgency. I kept feeling like we needed to move the marriage date closer. Honestly, we both wanted to skip the ceremony and just head down to the county office and have a judge marry us. But for the sake of the kids we decided a small ceremony would be appropriate.

Eventually we decided to get married the day before Thanksgiving to maximize our honeymoon time. Everything fell into place. We asked my bishop to marry us and had Justin's bishop and the Stake President there as witnesses. It was a small ceremony, just us and the kids, our bishops and the Stake President, and their wives. Justin's parents had planned to be out of town, and my parents lived too far away to get here for  last minute wedding. We plan on doing a big celebration when we get sealed in a year. That is more important to us than a wedding anyway!

Well, that basically sums up our "story". I want to write more about life since then, and I will later. But now you have the very beginning.

the first of many more

I'm not entirely sure how to begin. You know, they say it's best to start at the beginning, but at this point in my life there are so many. Beginnings, that is.

So if you want to read the real beginning, you'll have to go back to our Rowleypoly blog. This is the beginning of the Andrewleys (Andrews/Rowleys). I can't just call us the "Andrews" because Vince, Joseline, and Seth are members of our family, and they are Rowleys. And the idea of hyphenating my last name has never appealed to me. Plus, I am now an Andrews rather than a Rowley. But my kids are, and the best way I could think of meshing the family name without hyphenating is Andrewleys. It's got kind of a crazy sound to it, which is perfect, because crazy definitely describes our family.

The year 2013 was a pretty big year for me. I had a baby, then I got divorced, and because of that I had to go back to work. That story is pretty miraculous in itself, and it deserves its own post, and so it shall get one.

Toward the end of September I was freshly divorced and received some counsel that I would get married again. Well, I wasn't even close to being ready to get married, and I was 100% sure that if I was going to get married again I would have to know the guy really really well, and have known him for several years. I also knew that if I was going to get married again I would certainly want to get married before I was past child bearing years, because I have always wanted a large family. After Joseline I thought I wasn't going to be able to have any more kids and my heart was broken. Then after Seth I got divorced, and I was completely devastated. I wanted a house full of kids!

Not really wanting to think about marriage, but being pragmatic, as always, I started thinking about my options. If I didn't have kids I would just go back to a Young Single Adult ward. After all, I was just barely 27. But with kids, being in a YSA ward would seem kind of weird... plus I didn't want to date a bunch of kids fresh off their missions. I wanted a guy with some life experience. Someone whose testimony had withstood trials, someone who was dedicated to the gospel through thick and thin. After a while I came to the conclusion that I was probably looking for a single dad. Either divorced or widowed.

Well, there is no "Single Parents' Ward" (although that might be a good idea! Ha ha), so I went to the only other place I knew of to meet a bunch of single people with kids. The internet. It's not as scary as it maybe once was, and I signed up for a popular LDS dating website. Within a few days I had a date set up with a single dad of 3 young kids, about the same ages as my kids. He was a little older, but after chatting a few times I felt like he fit the basic requirements - he had seen a lot of life and was true to the faith in spite of (or maybe because of) all the experiences he'd had. We seemed to have a lot in common, so I felt good about a date. He ended up being a lot more ready to jump into a relationship than I was. I wanted to meet lots of different guys, date around, and in a few years make a decision. I didn't stop seeing him, but I did continue to talk to other guys on the phone, via email and text, and eventually set up a few more dates.

The next guy I went out with was a single dad of only one kid, he had been divorced for a long time, but we enjoyed talking about the gospel and having some deep doctrinal discussions. He seemed like a really good guy, and I enjoyed spending time with him. He wasn't forward about being romantic, just friendly and we had a good time together.

Then I talked to Justin on the phone - same story, single dad who had seen life and was dedicated to the gospel in the face of anything, we had a lot in common - so we made a date. In the process of making our date we discovered that we lived about 2 minutes from each other, that our Stake President (who played a huge role in my starting to date) had been his bishop when he went on his mission. Of course, we hadn't met, but it felt like we had.

I had season tickets to the Utah Symphony and Opera still, and the next event was the Utah Opera's production of Salome. I asked him to go and he said yes. The next evening was the opera and he showed up on my doorstep. First impression at the doorstep was fantastic. He even brought me some charming flowers. If I remember (and I might not remember correctly) it was a combination of daisies and lilies. He had told me he was kind of old fashioned.

Then we walked out to his car. I almost turned around and went back inside. Okay, that's not entirely true, but my opinion of him went down just a hair. His car was a shiny red Dodge Charger with 22" rims and dark tinted windows, black leather interior, and a spoiler. I was certain I was not going to like this guy. Too concerned with image. I was shocked by the irony of his music choice. When I got in the car he was listening to Seminary video soundtracks. It almost balanced out the car.

The evening was fun. We had fun chatting about the opera, and I realized that despite his lack of exposure to classical music he caught on quick and was pretty intelligent. I like intelligent. My season tickets entitled me to after parties with the musicians, but we ended up being early to the after party and decided to take a stroll. We walked around the corner and passed The Melting Pot. I told him how my sister had gone there once and raved about it. He asked if I had been, I said no, and he said, "Let's go!" So in we went and we spent nearly 3 hours eating delicious food and having the best conversation of my life. I can't even entirely remember what we talked about, I just remember feeling comfortable and at home.

On the way to the symphony we kept trying to figure out if we knew each other from somewhere. We eventually decided that we couldn't have met before, even though we felt as if we had.

After our fantastic evening out I came home on cloud nine. I'd had a pretty good time with the other guys I had dated, but something felt different about Justin. I felt like I knew him already, even though I didn't know him, and I was euphoric. I hadn't felt that way in a long time.

(to be continued...)