Healthy Stepparenting #10: Offer Grace Freely

If you have biological children and stepchildren, you may find it easier to offer grace to your biological children than you do your stepchildren. But the truth is, our stepchildren greatly need and deserve our grace.

It's easy for our biological children to feel unconditional love and acceptance from us. It's natural for us to offer grace to the children we bore. But it may feel uncomfortable and unnatural to offer love, grace and acceptance to our stepchildren. We may not feel love toward them. We may not believe they are worthy of our grace. But we have been offered grace we don't deserve either.

Christ offers unconditional love and never-ending grace on a daily basis. In fact, I believe Christ knew how badly I needed to feel His grace after my divorce. As a result, he gave me a second husband with the name "Grace," allowing me to carry that name for the last 14 years. It's a daily reminder of His grace that surrounds me.

You are probably familiar with the common acronym for Grace - God's Riches at Christ's Expense. But I recently heard another one I like as well - God's Radical and Complete Embrace. What a sweet picture that paints of God's love for us. And what a great reminder of the grace we should offer our stepchildren - radical and complete embrace.

Are you up for it? I know it may not feel comfortable or natural. But just because something isn't comfortable for us, doesn't mean we shouldn't do it.