FamilyLife Blended®

Guest (Female): From a very young age, I kind of took it upon myself that I needed to take care of my mom. And at one point, my third stepfather who was really stable and a really incredible man who kind of changed everything for us, but maybe two or three years into their marriage, my mom had to sit me down and say to me, "Kim, it is not your job to take care of me. You don't need to do that anymore. George is here and George will take care of me." And she did need to say that. It was good she said that. But at this point, my world kind of spiraled out of control a little bit more. I got very angry and very hurt because it suddenly felt like what I had taken on as my identity was just gone. And that left me going, who am I? Am I even in this family? Am I even part of this family? That was actually a really tough time for me.

Ron Deal: Welcome to the FamilyLife Blended podcast. I'm Ron Deal. We help blended families and those who love them pursue the relationships that matter most. We are in the process of updating our Little Rock studio, so while we're doing that, we thought it would be fun to share some of our favorite episodes with you. Ones that perhaps you missed the first time around. So let's get to it.

Many people listening grew up with step family relationships. Some people are tuning in because they're kind of dealing with the life they're living now and others are processing the life that they had when they were a child. Either way, I think there's value for both in today's conversation. This episode of FamilyLife Blended is another installment in Growing Up Blended, in which we talk to both of those audiences. People who grew up in a blended family, if that's you, we want to help you maybe make sense of some of the things that you lived in your life. Put words on it. Maybe help you see it from another person's point of view. And if you're living in a step family right now or perhaps you love and care for somebody who is in a blended family, we want to help you make sense of what's going on with the kids. Their inner world, their experience of life. Whether they're a biological child in the home or a step family child, part-time, full-time, whatever their journey has been to this season of their life. We just want to help you get some perspective on that. Help you step into their shoes for a few minutes and see life through their eyes. So, you can understand them a little better and hopefully understand your role as a parent or step parent or grandparent or family member, so you can understand that role a little better.

Now, if you've followed this podcast for a while, you know that we revisit this theme, Growing Up Blended, from time to time. We have different persons, different topics, different narratives because, hey, kids live different lives. But if this is your first Growing Up Blended conversation, please know that there's many, many more. You can just scroll back through our episodes and you'll find a lot to learn from those who have been there, done that.

Kim Walker-Smith is my guest today. She's an American singer, songwriter and worship leader and recording artist. She's best known as the worship leader for the group Jesus Culture. Kim, thank you so much for being with me today.

Guest (Female): Yeah, thanks for having me.

Ron Deal: I appreciate it so very much. Hey, I got to ask you a quick question before we kind of jump into your family story. As someone who has been in ministry for nearly 37 years, I know that nothing insulates us from the world. You know, just because we're on stage doesn't mean that we don't live real life, that we don't have real problems or difficulties or suffering. But sometimes people who are not on the stage sort of assume that we're immune to some of that. Have you found that to be true?

Guest (Female): Yes, definitely. But you know, I figured out a long time ago, if I can just be vulnerable and if I can be just myself and be like I would love for it to be said of me, "Oh, she's the same person on and off the stage." And so, I actually really fight to keep that at the forefront of, you know, my thoughts and my how I'm coming across to people in hopes and efforts that I will be perceived as just another person making my way through life like everybody else, you know.

Ron Deal: Yeah. And because that's the truth. That is true about all of us. And thank you for that. I appreciate that. There's a humility in that. And I really value that. I think unfortunately, a lot of people who are on the stage, if you will, this day and age within the Christian community, are there because they want to be a celebrity, not because they want to humbly walk with God. And here you are as a worship leader, trying to emulate the humility that we sing about, that we're called to. So thank you for that. Um, and thank you for being with us today and just, you know, sharing real life.

Guest (Female): Yep.

Ron Deal: I don't know a lot about your story. I think you were pretty young when your parents divorced.

Guest (Female): Yep, I was four years old when my parents divorced. My mom, she got married at 18, really young. She turned 19 the next month and had me, you know, a few months after that. She turned 19 in March and had me in December. And my dad had been in a really tragic motorcycle wreck. He lived through that, but he was never really the same person after that. And he was recovering from very, very serious head trauma. Back in that time, it wasn't required in Oregon where I grew up to wear a helmet when you ride a motorcycle. He wasn't wearing a helmet and sustained a really bad brain injury. And I think just in her just being very young, it was just more than what she could cope with. I don't think she felt safe with him. I think it was just more than she could handle. And so they ended up divorcing. I was four. I had a sister and she was two at the time.

Ron Deal: Wow. Did you have other siblings eventually?

Guest (Female): Yes, um, so I had a total of three stepfathers after that. And my second stepfather, my mom and him had a little boy, my little brother. Um, and eventually later my third stepfather adopted him. Um, he was really young and he actually grew up so different from me and my sister with a mom and a dad who are married, who love each other, who have this really beautiful marriage and that was just kind of all he knew. There's a nine-year age gap between us. So he had kind of a different upbringing than us, which I was actually really thankful for, really. So, yeah.

Ron Deal: Wow. Okay, so I got to tell you, my head's going in a lot of different directions. There's so much I want to ask you about. So I'm going to try to get to little pieces of it. Um, I want to go back to your dad. Uh, you were four. He had an accident. It changed him. That changed your home. It changed the stability in the home. I know you were really young. Do you remember any of that? And really what I'm particularly wondering about is, how did that tragedy, if I could use that word, how did that impact you? How did you try to make sense of what was going on?

Guest (Female): Yes, you know, actually, I know this might be kind of hard for a lot of people to grapple with, but my earliest memory that I have is actually at two years old going in to see him in the hospital when he was in a coma. And I know that it seems wild to think that you could remember as early as two years old, but I think because it was a little bit traumatic because at two, I didn't understand what was going on. My dad is in this hospital room. He's lying in a hospital bed. I'm talking to him and I'm trying to get him to talk to me and he's not responding. He's not opening his eyes. He's just lying there. And I couldn't make sense of that.

And then when he did come home and he was not the same person, that's when the instability was there. And I think that there's something, now I couldn't have verbalized this obviously at the time, but looking back, I think that there was just something in my personality of, "I'm going to figure this out." And I kind of think that in that time, the instability in the home, what my mom was dealing with, watching what she was kind of coping with, I do have memories of seeing my mom cry. I don't feel like my mom necessarily tried to hide her emotions from us of of what she was feeling and and dealing with. But again, being so young and not being able to understand exactly what was going on, I think this is where it kind of started inside of me. I want to help fix this or I want to do something to make this better.

And from a very young age, I kind of took it upon myself that I needed to take care of my mom. And it didn't feel actually upsetting to me. I actually, I wanted to do that. I I think in just my love for her, I wanted to take care of her. And so I think that that actually started all the way back then in me trying to make sense of what I was seeing and just going, I should help. I should do something. Like I know things aren't quite right. I know things are hard and I should do something to help this.

Ron Deal: You know, that is such a common experience for kids actually. I would want our listener to recognize that that, you know, kids will fill the gaps. They look around and they care for mom, dad, they care about younger sister and whatever is going on and they want to try to make it better. And in part that's about them. In part it's about their well-being and them being seen and recognized and affirmed. But in part it's about them just being sacrificial with who they are. And did that sort of become just something in you that um, hey, if there's a problem, I can help.

Guest (Female): Yeah, I would say that that only grew into me kind of assuming this identity of this is my job to take care of my mom. And you know, as an adult, as a mother myself, I look back and I I know that that's not healthy. I know that that's not the job of the child to take care of their parent. And my mom never put that on me. I just assumed that role in my wanting to help and wanting to take care of the situation. And I do think that there was an element of, you know, when she the two men that she married after who were really abusive stepfathers, that role just became even more solidified in me of, I want to take care of, I want to protect because I was looking at the situation, feeling very out of control, and I developed a pretty high need for control. And so I thought, well, if I can if I can take care of my mom, if I can take care of my sister, if I can protect, if I can again, do something to make this better. That also was kind of helping me feel a little sense of control in my very out of control situation.

Ron Deal: Absolutely. Again, wow, this is just so helpful and I just want everybody to recognize that's a natural course for a kid, especially you were the oldest. Um, you know, they, there's a strong tendency there to fill those gaps. Um, mom's not doing well. I can step up. Oh, now there's things happening that are scary. But you just wanted to try to add some measure of control to an out of control situation. I'm wondering if um, how your mother received that from you.

Guest (Female): You know, I I can't really speak for her, but I will say that I did feel that she did depend on me a lot. But in a way of like, she knew she could depend on me. Whether it's like, you know, can you take care of your sister at your dad's house when you're there on the weekends. And can you look after her after school or, you know, like she knew that she could depend on me. And I think that um, you know, we were also a source of love and strength for her in what we were going through. The abuse was not just my sister and I were not just suffering that abuse. She was going through that abuse as well. And um, I think that it wasn't that she um, put that role on me of, I need you to take care of me. But I think that in her out of control environment, her children were the stable thing for her as well. And so I think she was actually depending on that love and that comfort that we brought as children. And for me, that only solidified that role even more for me of, I want to do this for my mom. And you know, in fact, at one point, my third stepfather, who was really stable and a really incredible man who kind of changed everything for us, but maybe two or three years into their marriage, my mom had to sit me down and say to me, "Kim, it is not your job to take care of me. You don't need to do that anymore. George is here and George will take care of me." And she did need to say that. It was good she said that. But at this point, I'm a teenager.

Ron Deal: I was going to say, how old are you and you've been doing this a long time. And did that feel like you got fired?

Guest (Female): It did. I was about 13 or 14. And she said, "Kim, you're a kid. Just be a kid." And that's when my world kind of spiraled out of control a little bit more. I got very angry and very hurt because first of all, I felt like I stopped being a kid a very long time ago. And I was really frustrated that she didn't acknowledge that. And what does that mean? Just be a kid? I don't know what that means at this point. And it suddenly felt like what I had taken on as my identity, like this is who I am was just gone. And that left me going, who am I? I don't know who I am. I don't I don't know my role in this family anymore. Because I always thought this was my role. And so suddenly not knowing my role, I felt like, am I even in this family? Am I even part of this family? That was actually a really tough time for me.

Ron Deal: Identity is a word that keeps coming up. And again, I want people to hear that. Your identity had taken shape, taken the form of being somebody who could take charge when nobody else was, being somebody who could protect and care for those who needed your protection. And the day you got relieved of that, shall we say.

Guest (Female): Yeah.

Ron Deal: It left you going, well, then I don't know who I am and I don't know where I fit.

Guest (Female): Yes.

Ron Deal: And teenage years are, you know, a huge identity struggle for everybody. And so I I can just imagine that left you floundering, not knowing where to go, who to follow, what to chase.

Guest (Female): Yes. It did. And actually, that's where I kind of spiraled a little bit where I went searching for answers and searching for identity. And I didn't have any healthy coping skills. You know, I hadn't learned that. I had just been in survival mode, I think, for my whole life. And so I just didn't even know where to look or where to begin to deal with the emotions and the things that I was feeling. And one of the biggest things I felt was anger and I just didn't even know why I was so angry or where that anger was coming from. I just knew my world just felt really upside down. And um, another conversation that my mom and my stepdad had with me in that time was they could see that I was really bound up by the past. And I knew in their hearts that their desire for me was good and that they wanted me to be free from that. They wanted me to be free from the past. But I think they weren't even sure how to help me exactly. So I remember at one point they said, you just need to get over it. You like, we've all moved on. You need to move on. And that actually filled me with more anger because I said, "Well, you married a new person and that was your moving on. But I'm still stuck back here. And I don't know how to move on. I I'm kind of still little Kim, young little Kim that's still back here kind of spinning from the confusion of things." And I felt like I was just trapped in the past, which made me feel a little bit more alone and isolated because I didn't know actually how to get free of that.

Ron Deal: This is so good for our listeners and viewers right now, Kim. And I just want to thank you again for being so honest and real with it because this is a journey that I hear so much with kids in the counseling room and through the years working with blended families. It's a common, I thought my identity was here. I thought it was there. There's more transition within the home. Now there's new people, there's new relationships. Turns out this guy's great as a stepdad. And that means I'm out of a job. Oh no. Now what do I do? And it's easy for you to say, just move on, because you have something that is pulling you forward. But for me, I feel lost.

Guest (Female): Yes.

Ron Deal: And I don't know what to go to and I don't know where it's going to leave me. I mean, let's cast that into there's a lot of years in between. We kind of jump to your teenage years. Let's back up a little bit, shall we? Just help us understand. So stepdad one, stepdad two, abuse. What does that mean? What were those transitions like? And and what did it if I could say it this way, what did it cost you?

Guest (Female): Yeah. So my mom, she married pretty quickly, like once she divorced and then got married right away to the next one. Like it was pretty quick in between. And I remember actually being at my grandma's house and saying to my grandma, even as a young child, I could perceive. Um, I said, "Mom thinks that she can change these men, but I don't think she can. I don't think that we can change people." I think people can change, but I don't think we can make that happen. And my grandma was, you know, asking me, "What do you mean?" You know, she probably wondered where these deep thoughts were coming from in my little child brain. But I was just constantly watching and I was trying to make sense of why does she keep marrying people? And then I I said, "Why can't it be just us? Why does she have to marry someone? Why can't we just be just us and her?" And I couldn't wrap my head around, you know, maybe what she was feeling as a woman with kids and going, I don't know if I can do this alone. I don't know if I can raise them alone. And um, she was a raised Christian and these men were were not that way. Um, one was an alcoholic and had major issues with alcohol. Um, the abuse in the home was um, with the second one it got really violent and um, I would typically when he was kind of in his moment of rage, I would take my younger sister and hide her and tuck her away in a like a cupboard or under a bed. And I would purposely go and put myself in front of him like, "Take it out on me. Please don't hurt my sister. Don't hurt my mom." Um, I still chose to want to try my best to protect and to take care of. What it ended up costing me was probably the brunt of his rage and his being out of control and it cost me my childhood. You know, it cost me my innocence. It cost me um, I had to kind of learn to shut down a little bit just to cope with what I was dealing with in that time. And you know, it's interesting because you know, this stuff is painful when you talk about it like in the family, when we talk about it. I I know my mom so so many of us mothers say, I'm doing the best I can, you know. And it's the truth. Like you're you're given a certain set of tools and you're doing the best that you can and hopefully you're trying to gain some new tools and gain some wisdom outside of maybe what you have. And um, I think that when we talk about it as a family, even my sister's perception and what she remembers and what she, you know, there's a lot of gaps, things that she doesn't even recall or remember. And I often would wonder, you know, maybe those were the moments she's just hidden away somewhere because I I hid her somewhere and she's just checked out. She doesn't recall what was going on or what was happening. So we all kind of have these different perceptions. And I think one of the other things in in talking about costs that was painful for me later on was I needed the acknowledgment of just because you perceived and experienced it