I never expected to become a stepmom.

When I was a teenager, I could not fathom getting together with a man who had kids. I assumed I would be way too jealous that he had children with another woman, and assumed that it wouldn’t feel special to have my first baby with him if he’d already been there.

I have a vague memory of being around fifteen years old, wondering (not necessarily judgmentally, more just with vicarious overwhelm) how on earth any woman was able to do that. I assumed—it turns out incorrectly—that I would be driven crazy by the feelings of competitiveness, the baggage, and what I perceived would be a glaring lack of mutual firsts.

I can get more into these in another post, but I don’t ever feel competitive or jealous regarding my husband’s ex-wife, with whom we have a great coparenting relationship. I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t baggage when you marry someone with preexisting children, but as an adult who has been married twice myself, I have realized there will be baggage no matter who you marry. (And I know I brought my own baggage into the marriage, even if I didn’t bring any children to our blended family.) When you’re doing marriage right, it’s all a process of continued healing, growth, and sanctification.

As for the mutual firsts, my husband and I have had more than I would have thought! No, “first respective biological baby” will never make the list of “firsts,” but we have had more “firsts” than I imagined possible for a 30- and 40-something. My husband and I have experienced everything from first travels to certain places (including what was both of our first missed flight!), first of certain intimate experiences, first of certain faith realizations, first “I’ve never shared this thought/feeling/secret with anyone” moments, and much more. Plus, when we do have our first baby together, it will still be our first baby TOGETHER!

Back to why I never expected to be a stepmom….

Only a few short years after the aforementioned “I don’t know how anyone survives being a stepmom” thought, I got together with my college boyfriend and now ex-husband. I was nineteen and he was twenty-one. If I am honest with myself, I think I have always had a thing for older men… At the time, he seemed so grown because he was going into his SENIOR year of college and was twenty-one! Wow—twenty-one! (I hope you will read that in the way I mean it, which is lighthearted affection for my younger self and even for his younger self, and perhaps a little bit self-deprecating humor, rather than any kind of snark or sarcasm toward him.) Once the relationship became serious, I assumed he and I would get married one day and subsequently have what would have been both of our first-time kids together. We did get married, as the “ex-husband” designation might suggest, but we did not have—or ever try to have—kids. Rather, and also as the as the “ex-husband” designation might suggest, we got divorced after eleven years together and six married.

So, long life story short, becoming a stepmom was not an idea that was ever in my orbit until I became single, for the first time since I was a teenager, at age thirty. And, when it did enter my orbit, it went from “not in the realm of possibility” to being my reality FAST.

I will write more on that another time, as I want to keep these posts on the shorter end of things. So for today, this is the post: a peek at my journey and why I never expected to be a stepmom.

I think some women out there experienced more of a prior intuition this would be their path, or even dated other single dads before their husband. I am sure there are also plenty of women like me, who NEVER expected it, and also many women with experiences/expectations that were somewhere in between. If you ask me, part of the beauty lies in the the vast diversity of the stepmamma experience!

I may have never expected to become a stepmom, but I am so glad it was part of the plan God had in store for me. Did YOU expect to be a stepmom?