A few months ago, our two youngest looked at their dad and asked, “When did you become my dad?”
I froze. My whole body tensed. I felt the lump form in my throat.
I had always known the day would come when they’d want to know exactly when the baton was passed from the man who shares their biology to the only dad they’ve ever known.
I blurted out my knee-jerk response (the one I wanted to be true so badly it hurt), “he’s always been your dad.”
“Were you there when we were born?” they pressed. He told them the truth: no. And I added the only thing I knew was truer than the timeline, “God knew he was your dad, and you were His children, from the moment you were born.”
I wanted to glaze over that part. I wanted them to just accept it and never look at the facts. I’m still not sure why, except that I can already feel the pain that will come the day they realize their biological male parent had a choice. A decision he made. I wanted to spare my babies the seam. But the seam was the truth. And the truth is what holds.
We borrowed the word from a kitchen. Blend. As if you could take two histories, two sets of children, two griefs, and run them through something fast enough to make them smooth. The word "blend" promises a purée. No lumps, no seams, nothing you can trace back to where it came from. The lie underneath is that seamless equals safe. We were sold a smoothie when we were always baking a layer cake.
Because we don’t blend. We layer. We layer people on top of people. We layer Tuesday’s awkwardness over last year’s loss, your insecurity over his confidence over her quiet. So you reach for the purée (“he’s always been your dad”) because the smooth version hurts less to say. But God has never once been impressed by the absence of seams. He builds with them. Each one visible, each one load-bearing.
Matthew opens the entire New Testament with a family tree, and he doesn’t even try to clean it up. It is the most layered genealogy in scripture. He names Tamar, who had to trick her way into the line. He names Rahab, an outsider with a scandalous résumé. He names Ruth, a foreigner jumped in by loyalty, not blood. He names Bathsheba and won’t even use her name (“the wife of Uriah”) leaving the scandal exposed on the page.
And at the bottom of his list is Joseph. A man raising a son who was not his by blood. A man told by an angel to stay inside a story that was in motion before he even showed up. Joseph’s fatherhood wasn’t biological, it was a choice he made. And kept.
God did not blend that family into something seamless. He layered it, named every seam, and called it the family tree of the Messiah.
The permission I needed, that I can now loan to you is, you can stop trying to blend. Let the layers of your family show. When you tell a child person the harder, truer thing like, “no, he wasn’t there when you were born, but God knew he was your dad from the start,” it isn’t to protect them. You're giving them something sturdier than a smooth story; a story reinforced by hard truth and love in its purest form. The facts and the divine design can both be true.
Your family isn’t a failed purée. It’s a carefully laid thing, and the lines where you meet the people you love that love you back are not cracks. They are seams. Overlapping edges joined for both strength and beauty.
Joseph never gets a single line of dialogue in scripture. He just stays. He lays himself down as the layer underneath a story he didn’t begin. Father’s Day belongs to the layer-ers too. The ones who weren’t there at the beginning and became the foundation anyway.
I wonder…
What history do you keep editing?
Where and with whom do you reach for the smooth version of your story? Why?
Is there a version of your story where you can combine the truth of your history with what is more true for you today? Write it out.
I love you.
Coi Marie
Affirmations:
~ I don’t have to hide my family. I don’t have to become my family.
~ My family is defined by love, not blood.
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