Perspective

It seems to me that we all face major life lessons at some point in our lives.  Some might be brief, one time lessons.  Others might be ongoing and span months or even years.  Whether you believe these are lessons placed before us by a higher power, the universe guiding us, or just part of growing up without any deeper meaning, we all go through them.  Currently I find myself facing two main life lessons which have been ongoing for some time now, and I strongly believe these have been lessons set before me by God.  These two lessons are patience and perspective.

Learning patience has been set before me for a long time now, and I feel I have come a long way with it, although I know there are some areas in my life where I still need to work on practicing patience.  Perspective, however, is either a new lesson or one that I have not recognized as being a lesson until more recently.  I have always realized that it is important to keep things in perspective and I have always tried to see all sides of the story and to put myself in others shoes, but lately I've realized that sometimes I let my emotions get in the way of doing so and find myself jumping to conclusions or making assumptions that could be adding to some of our struggles with blended family life.

When there's already tension or even animosity between the birth parents in a blended family, it can be easy to let your emotions get the best of you in situations that arise and we can become too focused on our own perspective of the situation to be able to work through things and problem solve currently.  It's also all too easy to forget that children have an entirely different perspective of things than we do as adults, and we can jump to conclusions based on what our children are telling us.  I'm embarrassed to admit that I don't always think of this and am probably guilty of jumping to conclusion or making assumptions based on things my stepdaughter tells me!

In my previous post, which I'm shocked to realize was made over a year ago!, I talked about how we were facing a custody battle with B's mother.  Unfortunately this is something we're still dealing with.  Due to family health issues that our lawyer is having to deal with everything has been on hold for the last year.  That in itself has proved to be extremely stressful, add on top of it planning a wedding and the stressed ended up being nearly unbearable at times.  Yet me made it through the year despite challenges with the custody battle, everyday blended family life, changes in employment and planning and paying for our wedding (we're officially Mr & Mrs now!), and I feel it has strengthened my relationship with J and has helped me to grow as a person.  Furthering the personal growth I've experience in the last year I realized that some of why we continually face such turmoil as a blended family is because we're not looking at things from the other sides perspective, or forgetting how our daughter may perceive things and in turn may explain things in a way that we could take out of context.  For example, we've known for a long time that our parenting style is much different than that of B's mom, something that shouldn't be a problem but has managed to cause a lot arguments.  It seems to have also warped B's idea as to how parents should parent.

Somehow along the way it seems that because of the difference in parenting styles B has decided that J and I are too strict and that I am rude and mean because of how I handle discipline as a stepmother. Because of B's perspective on parenting between the two families, I find myself suddenly donning the crooked crown of the evil stepmother.  At first I struggled with this.  I was angry, especially because it led to B acting out towards me and J and being very disrespectful, something I simply do not put up with.  We've had to really focus on addressing B's perspective of what's going on and explain to her that as parents, we are not here to be her friends and make her happy every moment of every day.  We're here to raise her to be a responsible and respectful young adult.  Recognizing her difference in perspective of the situation and helping her to understand things from a different perspective has helped for us to work through some extremely frustrating situations with her.

Another way that perspective has become an important lesson is realizing that mommy dearest has a very different perspective on the world in general than we do.  This simple fact could very well prove to be the most difficult life lesson I ever have to face, but now when we're faced with an argument I try to make a point of taking a moment to try to see things from her perspective before we even respond to anything she has to say to J.  This isn't easy but so far it seems to at least help us to keep us from jumping to conclusions or making assumptions and helps to avoid escalating things to an argument (she doesn't need any help with doing that!).  We'll see where this lesson takes me, and our crazy little blended family.  I am hopeful that in the long run it could help bring some semblance of peace to our lives but I won't be holding my breath.  At least it might make it easier for us to face difficult situations as they arise.