Blended Families that Work

Voiceover: 

Welcome to The Table Podcast, where we discuss issues of God and culture brought to you by Dallas Theological Seminary. 

Darrell Bock: 

Welcome to The Table. We discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Darrell Bock, the Executive Director for Cultural Engagement for Hendricks Center at Dallas Theological Seminaries. And our topic today is blended families. And I'm going to be in conversation with Ron Deal, who we've had before and who we've asked back. He's president of Smart Stepfamilies, which is a really clear name for what blended family often is and directs the Blended Family Ministry at FamilyLife. He's the author of more than a dozen books. And in particular, there's a new one out that's kind of a guide to building a smart Stepfamily. In fact, the subtitle is, The Couple's Guide to Becoming a smart Stepfamily. 

Darrell Bock: 

And whenever I see a subtitle like this, I always think, well, what's the alternative? The couple's guide to becoming a stupid Stepfamily. So this is helpful. And then it's Ron Deal, Preparing to Blend. And it's thinking through the process from the time you decide, all right, I'm going to build a new family and we're going to have to put in effect two families together, thus the blend. And so we want the, I'll use an old brand name, the wearing blender, not to become the waring blender. And so in that sense, it's a way of thinking through the steps that are taken. So thank you, Ron, for being a part of The Table and for helping us with this topic. 

Ron Deal: 

Yeah. It's a pleasure to be back. Thanks for having me. 

Darrell Bock: 

Now, the initial observation to make, and this is kind of the preacher or homiletical idea in this book is that when you're dealing with a blended family, it's not just about you and your spouse to be. Is that a fair bottom line? 

Ron Deal: 

That is a huge bottom line. And anybody who even thinks about doing premarital counseling with couples that are forming blended families, they have a complex background. They're going to create a complex family. Premarital counseling just got more complex. If you only think coupleness, you're not helping them move toward familyness, which is the major objective. And honestly, Darrell, I had a friend who put it very poignantly one time, and I've never forgotten this, couples get married because they've fallen in love with a person, but couples in step families divorce because they don't know how to be a family. And it's so divorce prevention is about familyness when it comes to blended families. 

Darrell Bock: 

Yeah. I think that this book, by the way, is aimed not only at helping couples who are thinking about coming together on another time around for whatever reason, whether it's divorce or having become a widow or a widower or whatever, but it also is designed to help people who are thinking about counseling people in this situation and helping them think through. What I would consider to be the additional demands of a blended family that aren't a part of normal premarital counseling when you're dealing with two formerly single people who are coming together with no family background, other than what they bring in their own person. And so it really is to put it a different way, a different ballgame- 

Ron Deal: 

Yes. 

Darrell Bock: 

... all together. So let's talk about that a little bit. Let's start out, let's go through the sequence. So let's assume that someone is either looking for a counselor because they're thinking about forming a blended family, or they've made the decision that they're moving from a relationship to re-marriage. And what advice would you give beyond the fact that realize that you may not just be bringing together two people. What advice would you give to the couple that's going there and the kind of counseling that they ought to seek and the kind of relationship building they ought to pursue as they undertake this new path? 

Ron Deal: 

Yeah. Well, let's just build on what we've already said. We want to develop readiness, not just in the couple, but also in their children and potentially extended family, but it's a lot to bite off just to address the couple and the children. Keep in mind sometimes you have two single parents who come together and they've each got kids. I was involved in a media interview today and we had a woman call who said, I've got four and he's got five. We're going to have nine kids between the two of us when we get... That's a lot. And there are many things to think about there, developmental stages, kids' personalities, even the physical space, where you're going to live and who's going to have to share a room now and they never had to share a room before. So there's relational things. There's practical things. 

Ron Deal: 

There's financial things. Then there's spiritual elements to all of this as well. So it's trying to do premarital prep that addresses the heart of that because they're trying to become a family. And if we only address coupleness, we don't help them deal with familyness. And that's a setup, you know. I mean, here's my contention for the ministry, people that I work with and for pastors and leaders around the world, we give them yet an another unrealistic expectation going into this stepfamily marriage if all we address during premarital counseling is their coupleness matters. If we're so dyadic in our focus that we don't really even help them talk about parenting and step parenting and former spouses and kids moving between homes. And how is your ex-husband going to feel about your kids having a stepdad in their life? How's that going to change parenting? 

Ron Deal: 

Oh, it's not going to change anything. Oh yeah. It changes a lot. If we don't help them with that stuff, then they get blindsided by the stress of merging as I like to call it and they don't know do about it. And then they begin to unwind the whole narrative around getting married. Maybe we shouldn't have gotten married. That's not a helpful narrative. That divorce is looming when that's the dialogue in somebody's head, but it's more like, how do we do this? Not whether or not we should have. It's how do we do this going forward? Well, if we can layer that into the Premarital preparation, before they ever walk down the aisle, then we just give them such a better running start into becoming a family. 

Darrell Bock: 

So I'm going to use some geometry to try and get at this. And that is what risk being a straight line couple picture actually for, and I'm going to put the child in the equation here, for every child it's actually a triangle if there's a divorce involved. 

Ron Deal: 

That's right. 

Darrell Bock: 

It's actually a triangle, even if there's a death involved, because there's still that lingering relationship with the former parent. And so one of the tricks here is this change that comes in the relationship because although there's a pair that's being wetted together and being made one, I'll be theological for a second. There's a big spectator crowd that are actually participating in the ballgame as this couple comes together. 

Ron Deal: 

Yes. That's exactly right. I'm just pondering all the things that you just shared and we could go theological on all of this. Some people would say, there's no such thing as just dyadic relationships that every two person relationship has a third something connected to it. I mean the universe did start with a Trinity, let's just go there. But even husband and wife are United in God. There's a triangle of sorts, but you're absolutely right from a child's emotional experience of a parent, their single mom, let's say who now marries their stepdad. This is a huge triangle. And actually when we talk about, when I do step family therapy training with clinicians, what I say is step families are a series of interlocking triangles. So from this child's point of view, now I've got in one triangle with my mom and my step, but then I'm also in one with my stepdad and my biological dad. 

Ron Deal: 

And I'm in one with my mom and my biological dad. Now I'm in one with my mom and my new step sibling, my mom's new stepchild that came with my stepdad. I mean, how many interlocking triangles is this one child having to deal with? You want to talk math. The average biological family of five has about 20 relationships they have to manage. The average stepfamily of five has 240 relationships that each person has to manage. Why? Because of these triangles and the nature of biological relationships versus step relationships, the ones that I know and understand is clearly defined versus the ones that are new and I'm trying to figure out who are you to me in my life now part of my family. 

Ron Deal: 

That sort of complexity takes time, takes emotional energy and some wherewithal in order to navigate that when the adults are better informed and when kids, what we're trying to do in preparing to blend is when we bring them together around moving into this complex dynamic, and they're more informed about it and more intentional, that's the word I was looking for, when they're more intentional about it, they just have an easier time. And anytime you diminish the stress of a major transition at which marriage is, you make it easier for everybody to bond, begin to like each other. And that's the big first step to learning how to love each other. 

Darrell Bock: 

Yeah. And you have a way of diagramming this for people that you mentioned in the book. I think it's called, I may have the name wrong, a genealogical map and- 

Ron Deal: 

Yeah. We kind of combined some things. Many people may have heard of a genogram before. It's a tool we use in family therapy. I have some friends who have been working long and hard on creating with this book we're launching their website that creates what they're calling a blended family map. But it's a genogram. It's essentially the same thing, but people create a digital genogram of their family, what their family is going to look like. And it is an amazing tool, costs 10 bucks, 10 bucks. And with the discount in the book, it's less than that, but very insightful. You can imagine being a minister or a counselor leading a couple through this conversation, and it provides you information and them, you can explore what their life is going to be like. That's chapter one in the book. 

Darrell Bock: 

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. And and it strikes me as being a very important chapter because what it does is it visualizes this move from whatever it was, the number in the 20s to the number in the 240s and the managing of all the relationships. And of course another thing that's in the background is if the excluded parent, I'm going to define it that way for the excluded parent in your relationship also remarries, your map gets more complicated. 

Ron Deal: 

That's right. And that's essentially what happens. In that chapter I talk about, you're helping the couple open their eyes. That's one of the purposes of them doing this digital genogram blended family map, because here's what happens. And I've taken lots of couples through the process. Let's draw your genogram. Here's what your family's going to look like. If you were to ask the couple, all right, you got two kids. He's got one. So what's your family going to look like? Oh, well, it's going to be the five of us. Yeah. There's the math, there's three kids, two adults, the five of us. And then you say, okay, let's just start filling in some other spaces and all of a sudden, well, there's a former spouse over here and grandparents who want to continue to be a part of the kid's life. 

Ron Deal: 

And then we have maybe another former spouse over here who's deceased, let's say, but still lives on in the heart and mind and soul of everybody, because that person's always your parent your whole life. And so they're kind of the ghost parent, if you will. And so that's a dynamic that's at play and we have grandparents over there. You start drawing it. When you get three generations done, all of a sudden people are going, it's not the five of us. It's three households, or it's two households. And it's this many adults parenting these three kids and this many sets of grandparents trying to influence these kids. Darrell, I interviewed for the FamilyLife blended podcast, my podcast, not too long ago, I interviewed a couple and the day they got married, there were 22 grandparents connected to their children. 

Darrell Bock: 

Wow. 

Ron Deal: 

22, I can't even begin to tell you how they got that many, but that just goes to show you how complex it can become. And what happens when couples see this on paper, as their eyes get open and they go, wow. And then you just point to one of the children and say, now tell me what you think it's like to be this person between these relationships and this relationship and this triangle over here and moving between homes. And what's the climate like there versus the climate like that you want to create in your home. And all of a sudden parents go, this is a lot. And I need to think more deeply and more carefully and compassionately about what my child is experiencing and will experience as a result of our wedding. This is not a guilt trip. Sometimes people feel that, but that's not the point. What we're trying to do is help them see it from another person's point of view and begin to anticipate what it means to them. 

Ron Deal: 

And all of a sudden, it's just amazing the insights that begin to roll out. And this is a tool by the way, that you can refer back to much later in the book, when you're covering other subjects. You can come back to it and you can say, no, that gives me more insight into this relationship for your child. For child A, child B, child C, and all of a sudden you're moving. It makes me think so much about the passage, moving the hearts of fathers towards their children. We always want to help parents move toward their children. And if they can't even have compassion for what their child is going to experience, then they really can't enter that space very well. 

Darrell Bock: 

Yeah. I thought one of the more sensitive parts of the book that I thought was really beautifully done was the discussion about how a stepmom or a stepdad should view the hesitation of a child to call them mom or dad, and to flip the script, if you will, and have them think through where the child is coming from, as the child is wrestling with that, with that challenge and your emphasis on not putting pressure on that child to respond in a certain way, et cetera, accordingly. And the reason I thought that was so significant is because I do think and some of this obviously is very connected to the age of the child in question and what their previous experience with the original parent has been. 

Darrell Bock: 

And because I imagine that the dynamics are somewhat different if a divorce took place in a very young age, in which there wasn't a long term family unit versus say a teenager or a college age kid for whom that original parent was the parent when they grew up in the home. So and I'm assuming that some of the dynamics that we're talking about, isn't just the fact of the relationship, but the circumstances around those relationships that form the different reactions that you're seeing in the child. 

Ron Deal: 

You have said it very, very well. That whole section, that chapter is about coming up with terms and labels. How are you going to refer to one another in private, in person, in your own home, in public? And what we're doing there is negotiating relationship. Like it's the old DTR, define the relationship. Well, I'm going to be your stepdad. What does that mean? What do you want to call me? And, oh, by the way, what you decide to call me in private might change if your biological dad is in the room, if he were to overhear it. Might that change how you refer to me? Yeah. Because the child is concerned about dad's feelings and doesn't want to hurt that relationship with her father. And so of course, that is a dynamic there. 

Ron Deal: 

And so rather than meandering around, trying to figure out what to call each other and making each other feel awkward, I wish I could tell you how many stories I've heard people say, we don't have any steps in our home. I hear this from adults a lot. We don't have any steps in our home. Everybody's the same. My children, his children, I love them all the same. Well, that's great. I love that heart and that attitude. But guess what? To your stepchildren, there are steps in the home. Your definition of the relationship is not necessarily their definition of the relationship. And so if you introduce them in public as this is my son, and he's your stepson, that may be offensive to him. 

Ron Deal: 

So instead of making those inadvertent mistakes, even though you're big heart well intended, but it's a mistake. You have a conversation around it and you co-create the right answer. People ask me all the time, what's the right term to refer. I have no idea. You've got to co-create that in a form of conversation with your stepchildren, they with you find each other's permission, feel what's comfortable and say, this is where we start. The labels will change as the relationship grows and evolves over time. We'll worry about that later. How will we start? Let's start with this. And now everybody goes, okay, I'm good with that. You're good with that. I now know what to do. So very important. 

Darrell Bock: 

Yeah. And in the midst of those conversations, I'm sure things can potentially come out that are actually worth knowing. And so in that sense, it becomes an important step. Here's another subtlety of this situation that the book handled very, very well. And that is what I'll call parenting style. That one couple will parent in one way, and another couple will parent in another way. There's a death or divorce, whatever causes it. The blended couple comes together. That new unit is not the same unit as the old unit. And which means rules have changed for everybody. It changes for the parents and it changes for the kids. 

Ron Deal: 

Yeah. So expectation. And it's not just one change. Let's remember, this is the change on top of change on top of change on top of change, most of which is unwanted for adults and children, especially kids. And this is true, whether they're at 25, 30 or 15 or eight, when all of this takes place. Doesn't matter how old the children are. There is more change taking place. 

Darrell Bock: 

So there's been a relationship. There's been a separation of one kind or another. And now there's a new relationship that has to be built. That's at least three changes. 

Ron Deal: 

Yes. And the parent mom was when she was married to dad is different than the parent mom was as a single mom who had to carry all the load and was super tired all the time. Exhausted, bless her heart. And sometimes just didn't care about, draw on a line or setting a boundary and let things slide a little bit just because she didn't have all the energy she needed. It's true of single dads as well. And now she slides into mom with stepdad as partner and she may parent yet even differently there. Or she may assume that stepdad, her new husband's going to fill all the gaps that bio dad left. And so she slides back into who she was in the first marriage. Well guess what? 

Darrell Bock: 

That doesn't work necessarily. 

Ron Deal: 

It doesn't work. Yeah. Yeah. It might. It might not. It depends on the kind of person the step dad is and what role he can play and whether the kids want him to have a big role in their life where they don't. I mean, lots of factors there. I'm so glad you brought that up because again, let's just point out traditional premarital counseling. 

Darrell Bock: 

Doesn't go there. 

Ron Deal: 

But I'm here to tell you one of the major conflict creators and stress inducers in blended families is parenting. 

Darrell Bock: 

Oh, sure. I mean, just think about the... I mean, I think about the premarital counseling I do when I'm dealing with two single people coming out of college or maybe they've had a career for a while, et cetera. The closest I can get to their parenting style is for them to speculate on what it's going to be. 

Ron Deal: 

Exactly. That's right. Talk about how you were parented, that's about all they've got. 

Darrell Bock: 

Yeah. And I tend to get into, how would you define your anticipated parenting style, which is one thing. And then there's the dynamic of how they do that. And I try and have them discuss at least what their expectations are with regard to parenting because most young couples don't talk about that. They don't even think about it. They aren't there yet. And yet this is part of the journey that they're entering into that they need to give at least a little bit of have initial. I say, have an initial conversation about what your expectations are in this regard. 

Ron Deal: 

Yeah. And that's good. You're helping them to start being proactive and trying to anticipate those kinds of things. Yeah. It's totally different when there's already kids in the picture. And again, you have so many different combinations. I think you've heard me say before. We figured it out. There's 67 different step family configurations. So you might have a divorced mom who has four kids and she's raised them until they're late teens in early 20. And she has lots of experience marrying a man who's never parented a child ever in his life. Or somebody who's divorced and kids are moving between households. They have a co-parent relationship with this former spouse. And so you not only have two new parents or parent and stepparent in this home. 

Ron Deal: 

But you have former spouses perhaps in other two homes who have three homes we're dealing with all kinds of moving parts related to parenting and parenting create stress in the marriage. When we can't come together around parenting Johnny, Johnny won't get out of bed in the morning and we're all late because of it. Your child. Well, wait a minute. My child, wait a wait, are you telling me I've done a bad job in parenting? Guess what? We just went from a parenting dilemma to a marital dilemma in about a millisecond. That's what happens over and over and over. I've seen that destroy more blended family marriages than really anything. 

Darrell Bock: 

And then of course, one of the challenges of parenting is that each child is their own person in and of themselves. The parenting that works with one child may not work with the other. So if you've got multiple children in the house and then there's how the siblings interact with each other, that's also a factor in the equation and you're off and running. 

Ron Deal: 

That's right. And one of the big things that we try to inform stepparents about future stepparents is look, your experience of being a stepparent can be very different than your experience of being a parent. It's so easy to assume. Well, I got three kids. I've raised them for the most part and we're doing really well. I know how to be a parent. That's true. But you don't necessarily know how to be a stepparent. I mean, it's one thing to say, even this couple, this young couple, you're helping them anticipate their parenting style. There's a big assumption built into that conversation. And that is that my kid will love me. 

Darrell Bock: 

Yeah. Right. 

Ron Deal: 

And that they'll actually want me to be in their life and parent that. What if the kid doesn't? What if they don't need you? What if I've got a dad, thank you very much. I don't need another one. Now how do I parent? When I don't even get in the foot in the door, it changes everything. So stepparenting is a different animal. We inform people about that. We educate them about that. We help the stepparent and the bio parent figure out how they're going to work together, play to one another strengths and set each other up for success. That's a whole little team, notion there that when they get it, it's awesome. It's amazing. And it not only supports their parenting, it helps support their marriage. 

Darrell Bock: 

It strikes me there's an irony in the conversation. And that is that in the process of trying to say, you're engaged in blended families, in multiple relationship building. That's really what you're saying. 

Ron Deal: 

That's right. 

Darrell Bock: 

And so that means that the template that you have for how you thought you might handle parenting and what might actually be demanded because of the personalities that are involved and the circumstances that they come with might be two very different things and require some flexibility in how you approach your take on parenting versus what your parenting may need. I sense a little bit of that in some of the guidelines that you gave to parents in this area. Am I reading that right? 

Ron Deal: 

Yeah. No, you're absolutely right. Be sensitive to the children, their personalities, who they are, what stage of life they're in, what they've been through. What's the back narrative, the law story. How did things come down? I mean, honestly, the circumstances around even the new union can exacerbate any pain that children feel. You can imagine, a quick turnaround is one of the things that I know catches kids off guard and especially adult kids, you know. I wish I could tell you how many 30 year olds I've had call me saying my dad's lost his mind. Mom died six months ago and he's met a woman and he's spending money and time on her in ways that he never did with our mother. We don't understand who this man is. I think he's lost his ever love and mind. The last thing I want to do is support his marriage to this woman whom we like, but how can this be rational? And it's so funny when our children start saying to us, you need to slow down and you're- 

Darrell Bock: 

I'm telling you what you told me when I was dating. 

Ron Deal: 

That's exactly right. The child becomes the teacher, you know. And it happens all the time. And so they can't be in favor of this new union. And so the manner in which it came about dramatically affects whether or not people get on board. And then that just creates distress within the couple. Kids won't come to see him anymore. Now he's not getting to see his grandchildren. His wife's saying, "I don't know what's wrong with your kids." "What do you mean my kids?" Now they're far arguing over parenting and step parenting again. It's such a sticky wicket, if I could say it that way. 

Darrell Bock: 

Yeah. Well, I can't commend this book too much. I mean, it does a wonderful job of kind of laying out the areas that get addressed, the dynamics that are in play to be sensitive to and aware of. It gives a lot of good, straightforward advice about how to approach this. I can't imagine how helpful it is to stepfamilies that are moving in that, to people who are moving in the direction of forming a step family, and it's also, I found terrifically beneficial to a person who's thinking about counseling. It really is a different kind of counseling to call it. It's premarital and postmarital counseling simultaneously if I can say it that way. 

Ron Deal: 

And I have to say, we've got a website. The book tells you go to the familylife.com/preparingtoblend and there's bonus material there. But the big thing is for leaders, pastors, there's a leader's guide, simple PDF free download helps you turn the book into 10 premarital counseling sessions. In effect it's built right into the whole system, because I want you to be as equipped as you can be. It's sort of like, I know you don't have to become the expert on this. You learn as the couple learn. So first time you take a couple through this, you're going to learn just like they're learning, but the activity that's built into each chapter is meant to help them start doing something based on what they've learned, not just reading about it, but actually doing something constructive. Most of those practical activities involve children. So it's an assignment. 

Ron Deal: 

They go and do, they come back, they share with you, this is what we learned. This is what happened. This is the wall that we hit. What do we do? And together you just walk through this. I really tried to put the cookies on the bottom shelf, Darrell, just to make this super easy for pastors, because we got to do a better job. 75% of pre blended family couples get no preparation whatsoever. And if they do get something, they get this traditional couple premarital counseling that really doesn't talk about being parents or stepparents or any of the dynamics around the blended family. 

Darrell Bock: 

This is about 85% of what's actually going on. 

Ron Deal: 

Exactly. And so this is your premarital program in a book. 

Darrell Bock: 

Yeah. The interesting thing for the person who's a counselor is, and I think this is a important thing to say as well, is that because of all the potential different dynamics that you get, each couple is going to be significantly different in how you approach the way in which their unit is going to blend. 

Ron Deal: 

67 different configurations. There's a whole lot of variables there. What works for one family may not work for another, the terms that one family co-creates and says, yeah, I'll call you mama this and you'll call me Charlie. It may not be the right answer. Probably won't be the right answer for the next family. And so this is a process oriented book. It really is not cookie cutter answers. It's really designed to help the family and the couple come together in a way that is uniquely about them and helps you counsel in a way that builds who they are. 

Darrell Bock: 

Well, Ryan, I want to thank you for taking the time to kind of introduce this area to us and for helping us to blend well. And I really do commend your ministry. I just think it plugs a wonderful hole in what's going on. I think you gave me a statistic the last time we talked, that was pretty shocking. And I can't remember what the number was, but I just remember being shocked by the number that when you speak to the average congregation, so many percent of your people in your congregation are likely to be in a second family unit at least. I don't remember what that figure was, but it was enough to go, man, that's a lot of people who actually don't get directly addressed by the standard family model. 

Ron Deal: 

Yeah. Nationally we know 40% of families raising kids are blended families. 35% of every man, woman and child in the United States has a step relationship of some kind, 35%. That's 113 million people have a stepparent, a step sibling or a stepchild in their life. That does not include step grandparents by the way. So the math is real. 62% of couples under age 55 have either a stepparent or stepchild connected to their marital union. 62%. This is the church. This is a growing segment of our culture and around the world. By the way, we have the same stories from the UK and, Africa and Australia and New Zealand and Canada. So and yet, my estimate is less than one-half of 1% of churches do anything ever to talk to this group of people. That's what FamilyLife Blended does. If you want to know more about how you can minister them in lots of ways, whether before married or after married, please come and visit with us. 

Ron Deal: 

Let me give you one more stat, Darrell, because I think this is worthy of a quick little dialogue here. 15% of first marriages form blended families. Now just take that in for a second. We always think this is about divorce and remarriage. Well, by and large, that's true widowhood, second marriage, but 15% of first marriages today in the US forms a blended family. People go well, how does that even work? Well, somebody had a child. We have disconnected parenthood from marriage, unfortunately and lots of people have a child out of wedlock. And then don't go on to marry the biological parent. They marry somebody else. And so 15% of first marriages now get this. We know most first marriages are taking place what? Age 27, 28, somewhere in that range. It's late twenties. It's not early twenties like when I was a kid. 

Darrell Bock: 

Used to be, yep. 

Ron Deal: 

Late twenties. If one of the adults is 30 or over, that 15% jumps to 24%. 

Darrell Bock: 

Wow. 

Ron Deal: 

So a fourth of all first marriages, if somebody's 30 or over is a blended family, there's never been a marriage, there's never been a divorce. There's never been a... What are we doing to help those families get ready to live life? We're doing very little, is the truth. And increasingly the church is becoming irrelevant to people that we don't connect to their world. And it's hard to lead them in the ways of Christ if we can't even start there. 

Darrell Bock: 

Well, that's an interesting statistic. There's another category that I think of as we're talking numbers, and that is the number of marriages in which there may be a family on one side and a first marriage on the other. 

Ron Deal: 

Yes. That's right. 

Darrell Bock: 

Which is another combination that's really interesting because one has experience of a family unit, the other doesn't in the dynamics that that creates. I mean, once you start thinking about the possibilities you get my hairline. So Ron, again, thank you for, for helping us with this area. And I'm sure we've had you many times. I'm sure we'll have you back again to talk about more of this. Because every time we do it, I go, oh, that's only one dimension of this thing. How can I say this? It's Joseph's mini colored coat. Okay. 

Ron Deal: 

There you go. Speaking of Joseph, he was in a step family. There you go. 

Darrell Bock: 

There's no escape for the weary anyway. Thanks, Ron. Really appreciate it. 

Ron Deal: 

Thank you. Glad to be here. 

Darrell Bock: 

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Speaker 1: 

Thanks for listening to The Table Podcast. Dallas Theological Seminary Teach Truth. Love Well.