Adoptive Family (3 ways)

In this episode Chuck and Eric discuss non-blood, (adoptive) family from the perspectives of both parent and grandparent points of view AND from the perspective of an adopted holds point of view as well. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:25

Saint Michael, the Archangel, defend us in battle. We are protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray. And do thou, O prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world, seeking the ruin of souls. Amen. Alright, folks. Thanks for joining us again on a journey through spiritual warfare with uh with your hosts, Chuck and Eric. Why is it gotta be Chuck and Eric? Eric and Chuck, Chuck and Eric. Eric and Chuck, Chuck and Eric. It's like the cartoons. Um so what do you want to talk about today, bro?

SPEAKER_00 1:07

Yeah, so um it's uh a little late. I know we initially planned on doing this topic of being a father, stepfather. Um and by the time this gets aired, it's gonna be into Ju July, so we already missed Father's Day, but we wanted to really uh talk about start by talking about Joseph in the position he was in and what things could have looked like differently if he made different choices in how things could have possibly went differently with Mary as well, and then bring it to the the current with both of us who have uh family members that are not in the book bloodline that that we're in direct contact with and now this podcast assumes that it's primarily Christians of whatever stripe that are listening, uh, but maybe not, right?

SPEAKER_03 2:06

So a brief overview is uh Saint Joseph and the Blessed Virgin Mary were engaged to be married, which in Hebrew tradition, when you become engaged, you're considered in many respects to be married, right? So they were um engaged to be married, and then the Blessed Virgin Mary came back after visiting her cousin Elizabeth and said to Saint Jo, like, Well, I'm pregnant, and Saint Joseph was like, Well, I gotta pray about this, and he he could have had her, he could have had her killed uh for infidelity, you know. Worst case scenario, right? Right, worst case he could have because you know, but it says in scriptures that he he wanted to put her away quietly, like just get out of my house, just just go away. I'm gonna a very gentle, a gentleman, gentle man, gentleman. Yeah, he didn't want to see her. Because he was older than the Virgin Mary. He didn't want to see her whole because he truly cared about her. Joseph loved Mary and loves her. Yeah. Um, and so during the night, he was visited by an angel. Uh many believe either his guardian angel or maybe the archangel Gabriel, and told him, No, it's okay. Mary's just telling the truth. Um, she's not making this stuff up. And so when he woke up in the morning, he said, it says he took her into his home, which means he accepted her and accepted her story. Um, and from then on, it was like Joseph was like, you know.

SPEAKER_00 3:41

Oh, of course, you know. So I think he was challenged.

SPEAKER_03 3:44

Of course, would you be challenged with it, right?

SPEAKER_00 3:46

His I would imagine his mentality is how would it look on him? How would it look on her? And how would it look on them as a couple?

SPEAKER_03 3:54

Yeah. Because they came from a so Nazareth was a very small everybody knew everybody. Everybody knew everybody. It even said later on in the scriptures, it says, What good can come from Nazareth? It's kind of like a small little working-class town. And so it might that might be part of it, could be a significant part. Joseph's thinking, uh crap, they're gonna think the worst about me, they're gonna think the absolute worst about my wife. You know, what's gonna happen? But you know, for a variety of reasons, uh Joseph was like, This is this isn't gonna be good, but he decided to uh to stick it out and more power to him and more power to us. But what a what a story, right?

SPEAKER_00 4:34

And I'm sure that there's still you know things that were said, and um, you know, referring to Jesus, oh you bastard child. Oh, for sure.

SPEAKER_03 4:43

You know, these things were happening and sideways glances and yeah, all the things in I can imagine how difficult it was during the time. Um, and whispers, you know, oh there goes Mary, and you know, there goes like what happened. And I think that I might have watched a movie. Um, I think this came from a movie or maybe a TV show. I don't know, but I somehow I got the idea, and this isn't my idea. This came from somewhere that Mary, the the possibility was that Mary was raped by Roman soldiers, and that it wasn't her infidelity, but that she was but that still she was assaulted, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:20

Probably not on the same level as as well. As if she did it her own right. It would still the that would still be an insult to the family. Yeah, and you know, it and we're so used to the story. But why is she keeping the child yeah? You know, but we're so used to the story. But just take a second and think about this, right? Being this guy, you're in love with this woman, she's pregnant. Whether you're doing all the angels and all that, but just take the two individuals as they are, as humans, because they're humans, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 5:59

You know, this look, this isn't my child, right? Yeah, you know, your woman goes away to visit her cousin, she comes back pregnant, and she's like, Oh, I'm pregnant and it's not yours. Oh, and here's a fantastic story, but like, and you're like, what the hell? Like, what I'm supposed to like, there's so much going on.

SPEAKER_00 6:22

And would it be would it have been wrong of Joseph to be like, listen, no, I'm I I just can't do it, can't do that to my already existing family, I can't do that to my reputation, I don't want to do that to you as as a woman and your like would it really have been wrong for him to take in a way kind of a selfish way out of it and be like, which oh I mean, we as men we see a lot more nowadays in general from real fatherhood. But I mean and then on the flip side having that, could you imagine what it would be like if Mary was rejected from by Joseph and she went through the process of aborting or you know, f finding a way to kill the child inside of her who ends up being Jesus?

SPEAKER_03 7:20

Well, I could tell you one thing. Um, it would because we have to remember they had free will. Yes. Right. Um, everybody has free will. It would it would be a different tomb to be sure. But would it have been wrong for Joseph to be like, yeah, I'm gonna bow out of this? Uh would it have been wrong? No, it wouldn't have been wrong, it definitely wouldn't have been out of the ordinary. But that just goes to show you how humble and righteous Saint Joseph is as a man. Because what kind of man godly and holy and righteous, and how love how much in love do you have to be with your with your woman to be like, you know what?

SPEAKER_00 8:02

And your God, right?

SPEAKER_03 8:03

And your God and have the faith to be in love with you. In a world of many different uh religions, how much in love do you have to be to be like, you know what? I'm okay, I'm gonna do it. And I I can I can vouch for that with my own experience because my stepfather Dave David took me in when my mom left my biological father as a baby. I was a young baby, I was I think I was three or four months old. And I was I mean, I'm not his baby, I'm not his child, and he took me in much to the I I imagine the dismay of his family who wanted their own blood fam blood child. And they my mother and and Dave ended up having a child together, my my brother Steve. Um, but you know, he took me in and he treated me as his own. He was the only one who treated me as a as uh an actual family member.

SPEAKER_00 9:03

After your mom and him separated, he he still does remained in your life and still does.

SPEAKER_03 9:09

Uh you know, he treat he's he's the only one out of that side of the family that treated me as an actual family member, a bloodline family member. Um with the exception of my aunt, one of my aunts.

SPEAKER_00 9:22

Um who we go to church with anyway. A different a different aunt.

SPEAKER_03 9:26

Oh, you gotta the other the other family, yeah. Um she um she she treated me well. But you know, he um he's a he's a good man. He's a good man uh for that and for other reasons, and I think that people often underestimate these men and women on the other side of the spectrum who take children in who aren't theirs biologically and uh treat them as their own. And I don't mean financially or I mean emotionally.

SPEAKER_00 10:01

Yeah, like really treating them universal love, and that means correcting them when they need to be correct. Absolutely, it does, yeah. You know, I think what's what's really great, and we see this in the Bible, what separates men and women as far as parents, is men are in a way meant to be seen, not heard. So you don't hear a lot about Joseph in his role as a father to Jesus, but you know But he's there, you know the role he played by the way Jesus behaved and the um the other things outside of what the knowledge he got from God, but yeah, his basic way of living, the way he treated other people, and because we know that Jesus as a man was raised in a whole they they call the holy family of Nazareth.

SPEAKER_03 10:57

Jesus was taught to be a man, yeah, the human part of Jesus, the the man part of Jesus was taught to be a man by a brilliant example of masculinity, Saint Joseph, the terror of demons.

SPEAKER_00 11:10

Yeah, he's a man's man.

SPEAKER_03 11:12

I mean, being a carpenter, a working man, like but not just a working man, a man with his hands, but a man in his heart and in his personality, and in his, like you said earlier, a man in his faith. So he hit all the markers of man. It's almost like God knew what he was doing when he picked Joseph to be the foster father of Jesus.

SPEAKER_00 11:29

Yeah, I mean, but uh, and it's something that we do see now. We see people, we we live through it from being stepchildren. Um well, you're a foster father, well, yeah in a way.

SPEAKER_03 11:42

And how does that how does that work for you?

SPEAKER_00 11:44

It's actually it helped me grow in a lot of ways, uh, specifically because my stepson is on the spectrum. So even more so. So it was a lot to take in. Um did you know that when you became a stepfather? I did, but I didn't know what it entailed.

SPEAKER_03 12:01

Um, you know, it's explain that. You so you knew it, but you didn't know yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:06

I had no idea really what autism was. I I mean we grew up in an era where everything was you're retarded. So it's like that was a that was just a phrase, you know.

SPEAKER_03 12:16

So you say that to anybody. I said that to my friends, I said that to everybody like you're retarded, this is retarded, that's retarded.

SPEAKER_00 12:21

Like so, I didn't understand how much of a um lowercase, lowercase are retarded, like there is for autism, and and he falls on the like a scale of functioning, but there's a there's a lot to deal with uh you know him being in his uh five, six, seven, still struggling with potty training and all these things. So it was really difficult. It taught me how to be patient, um, where I was very reactive because of my own past. Um but the biggest challenge I saw with me was seeing his biological father not performing um him being the typical fun guy that we see, you know, but you being the the father that he needed, which not the father he might have wanted, and it sucks because it takes me out of a role of being able to have some more fun with him. Never mind. Which ostensibly you think that it would be different, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 13:22

But yeah, it's how old was uh your son when you took him into your home?

SPEAKER_00 13:28

So he was four, turning five, I think. Yeah, I think he was five years old um when when we like actually started living together and everything, and um but yeah, you know, it's it's a frying pan into the fryer for you, huh? Oh absolutely, and it was uh but again, you know, it was one of the most healing things as far as personal outside of my my time with my journey with God now, but really taught me a lot about myself, taught me how to be patient, um, control some of my emotions.

SPEAKER_03 14:03

Yeah, well, I can imagine that. You know, how is it now that he's an adult? Because he's he's he's an adult. He's 21 now. Yeah, 21. So how how far has he come in his abilities and in his mental abilities? Obviously, physically he's strong as an ox. Oh yeah, he's he's uh very in the I remember last year or the year before he ran through the crowd like swinging at people, but it's not not out of malice at just what he does, but yeah, how is he as a man now? Because he's a man. That's that's not you know, physically he's a man.

SPEAKER_00 14:37

You have you know the difficult part is knowing exactly what to say to get through to him. That's that you can't just speak to him like you would a typical uh young young man. Right. You really have to know what triggers him, but what will catch his attention as far as getting him focused on whatever you're trying to talk about. So he's task-oriented, very, very if in individually uh individual tasks one at a time.

SPEAKER_03 15:06

I remember when you you came over, you and the family came over, and we had our because every year we have one or two family get togethers where we have our meal. Yeah, and we were doing our pizzas in the pizza oven outside, and he's uh GF, uh gluten-free. And we had uh your wife made uh special dough for him, and he was having his pizza, and he was like, I want I want some cheese. And we were like, Okay, uh, your son, and he was like, I want some more cheese, and we're like, okay, and he's like, I want some more cheese. And the river's like, okay, but you gotta save some cheese for everybody else. And he's like, Okay. And then he's like, Mr. President, which I always chuckle at, and I'm like, because he knows my name.

SPEAKER_02 15:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:40

And I'm like, Yeah, bud. And he's like, Can I have some more cheese? And I'm like, Well, mom said, and then she looked at me and I'm like, okay, a little bit more cheese. And he grabbed one individual shred of cheese and put it on, and then he put it on the peel and he put it in the oven, and he was like, Can I look at it now? And I'm like, 30 seconds, buddy. He's like, Okay, can we count? And so we counted 30 seconds, and he got to 29. He's like, How about now? And I'm like, one more second. He's what about now? So we checked it and it was perfect. And he goes, So he takes it out and he goes, Can I have more cheese? He's very food. I was like, food motivated. One more piece of cheese, and he took one individual shred of the strategy, you know, but he he does, he enjoys but I was giving him I was saying yes, but I because if I said no, he'd got all pissed off. But so I said yes, and he was like, okay, but he didn't take a chunk, he took an individual shred of cheese, and that made him okay.

SPEAKER_00 16:34

Yeah, just you know, giving him a little bit of leeway, and but he's very food-oriented, he loves food, um, all kinds of food. He's putting hot pepper, he loves spicy food. Oh man, he does. Yeah, I got him.

SPEAKER_03 16:46

What did I get him that one year? That kit first to make uh the uh hot pepper uh the different hot sauces, yeah. The hot sauces, yeah. That was great. He's he's such a great dude.

SPEAKER_00 16:55

But uh you know, it just um and it's funny because Sarah was talking to me about this the other day, and she's because we were talking about how she doesn't allow me to really discipline him. And she was saying how she's concerned because of my past. But we started talking about it, she's like, you know what? He's actually hit you and and hurt you far more than you've even actually done anything with retaliatory to towards him. You know, he he's punished me, he's headbutting. You know, and um, but it it's an interesting contrast because she she had to live through kind of two opposite ends of very chaotic uh mental emotional situations, you know. But um and you got a little bit of a different situation because you have a grandchild who's not a stepchild, but adopted.

SPEAKER_03 17:51

She's adopted from in in like with an asterisk because she is my sister, uh my daughter-in-law's blood family, my daughter-in-law's cousin, but she's my adopted granddaughter, and I love her to pieces, my my granddaughter, and uh, you know, um I look at her as I would look at when I look at her, I don't you know, I thought let me let me back up. I thought at first when uh my son, my oldest son, and my daughter-in-law said, Oh, we're gonna adopt this this baby, um, my daughter-in-law's cousin's child. Um, we're gonna adopt this to protect her from an abortion. I said, That's that's one of the best reasons to adopt a child. I think like because they're all the abortion people say, Oh, if you want to adopt then adopt okay, so they did. And I said, I wonder I was asking myself, I wonder if I'm gonna look at this child any differently. Because I didn't know. You had never been in I've never been in that situation. I really honest, and in my heart and in my soul, I didn't know if there'd be any lingering anything. Yeah, I gotta tell you, I don't. I don't I look at my grandson with pure unadulterated love, and I look at my granddaughter with the same exact pure unadulterated love.

SPEAKER_00 19:17

I'm gonna throw you under the bus and say that there might be a little bit of favoritism towards her. Um, but I I think that's because of your six kids, only one was a girl.

SPEAKER_03 19:29

So well, maybe I look at her with more love because she's a girl.

SPEAKER_00 19:32

But I mean, like it's like but you guys have a very special relationship, the way that she's definitely a pampa's girl. Yeah, she wants to like be around you, sit on your lap, and she tells you stories and um those big, big eyes that she's got, and and uh and you call her sweet pea, which happens to be her birth flower.

SPEAKER_03 19:54

She's a birth flower, yeah. And you know, it's funny is I didn't know that would be her flower at the time. It's just I call her sweet pea. Um, what's really cool is that I treat her as if she's a blood relative because in my mind she is she's a relative. She is. Oh, absolutely, and you know exactly what that's like. Yeah, it's um and it's great, but it's also great because her family on my daughter-in-law's side, who's also her blood family, is close to her in the same kind of way. And my son and my daughter-in-law are not keeping the adoption secret, they're keeping it an open adoption. She's gonna know who her biological mother is and everything. And I I wondered about that. And I asked them, are you gonna keep it a hidden adoption? And they thought about that for a long time. And they said, you know what? No, they're not. And I know some people do, some people don't, and they have their reasons back and forth, but they said, no, they're not gonna keep secrets from her, and she's gonna make her own decisions and her own opinions based on whatever she wants.

SPEAKER_00 20:54

No, no, I think uh statistically that's the best route. I mean, think about it, right? Think about if Mary didn't explain the the situation of uh Gabriel coming to her in a dream.

SPEAKER_03 21:10

Like what if Jesus didn't realize being right, because Jesus knew the whole time, the man, Jesus the man knew that Joseph was his stepfather, but he called Joseph father. Yeah, there's even a time when Jesus, at about 12 years old, scripture tells us, stayed behind in Jerusalem to talk to the Pharisees and scribes, and they ran back and searched for him for three days. And Mary, the Blessed Virgin Mary said, You know, why did you do this to your father and I, not your stepfather and I? And then Jesus says, Don't you know I'd be about my father's business in my father's house? Yeah. Not my biological, not my father. Like so they didn't make a distinction then, even though there was a distinction technically. So I love the fact that scriptures are are letting us know that in in in a in a very subtle way that when you adopt somebody it's they become a member of your family. Yeah. And you know it's don't treat them as a second class child.

SPEAKER_00 22:17

It's great to to look at the biblical families and see the same situations that are happening here and now with people with adoptions. We're talking thousands of years ago, we're talking thousands of miles away, very different cultures, different worlds.

SPEAKER_03 22:37

Absolutely, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:38

And you know, being here in the north country, the white mountains of the United States, we still have a lot of these things that we have to process. And which way do we go? Do we do we uh you know shun that girl away? Does she have an abortion? Do we, you know, treat that child differently? Do we how do we react? How do we how do we teach them how to be a young man or a young woman?

SPEAKER_03 23:04

And it's it's a good point because how we treat people in this world, it's kind of like when you're a kid and you hear ripples in a pond, right? How you treat somebody, how you react to somebody, especially kids, they pay attention to that.

SPEAKER_00 23:18

They're sponges. Yeah, they're sponges. One of my favorite things.

SPEAKER_03 23:24

And maybe not in a year or two, but later on in life, whether they know it or not, it's going to carry forward in some way or another. And it's our responsibility to teach them, whether by word or mouth or something, word of mouth or by our actions, that this is how you conduct yourself, this is how you this is how you be a man, this is how you be a woman. And we have a lesson in the the Bible from the beginning on how to be a man. Even when how to be a family. It's just like it's cliche.

SPEAKER_00 23:59

You'll understand when you have kids of your own. But it's true, like when you're growing up in even late teens, early twenties, you you'll like have this resentment and disliking, disliking towards your parents because they were parents to you in general. I mean, not specifically. Yeah, basically. Once you have kids, then you're like, oh my goodness. Uh like I get it now. I get why it's so important to celebrate Christmas. I get why Easter egg hunts and all these things, like the pictures. I understand. When you're a teenager, you just want to go frolic around. This is stupid, this is dumb, this is boring. You're going through that now with a couple of your kids.

SPEAKER_03 24:40

Yeah, it's it's you know, and and I've been through it before, and I, you know, you hear the you hear the it's a phase. It's just a phase. It is, it doesn't make it easier.

SPEAKER_00 24:49

No, and it is what it is, it's throughout time, and it still doesn't make there's no manual right to be a parent, but yeah, but um I you know, and it takes us back.

SPEAKER_03 24:59

We were talking about this maybe a month ago or so. I wonder what Jesus' phase was like, because Jesus was a man just like us, basically. And what did Jesus do to piss off or or play pranks on Mary and Joseph?

SPEAKER_00 25:13

Or or his followers. I actually want to do that, and and we'll do an episode where we'll come up with some things that he may have done or said, or ways that we could have had because he was a man's man. Don't put a peg in the thing, and when Joseph sat down in a chair and he fell, or because he is a man's man who was raised by a man's man. I mean, to do that trade, you know, it's not what we do here sitting in the office, you know.

SPEAKER_03 25:42

No, he was and he was out in the sun, he was dark-skinned, Middle East Sunday. And we've both been there. So it definitely wasn't the cold uh northern New England sun, although it's been a 100 degrees heat index for the past couple, but just temporarily deal with it. So it the the point of this podcast is you know you you have to understand that when you you when you adopt somebody, you adopt them into your heart.

SPEAKER_00 26:15

It has to be, it has to be a a fully a full commitment one way or the other. Um and it has to be truthful, it's gotta be truthful to you, it's gotta be truthful in your relationship with with the people in your life. And when the time is right, it has to be truthful with the child. Yeah. Obviously, if you know a seven, eight-year-old, you're not gonna be like, oh, yeah, well, your mom didn't want you. Right, because they're not gonna get that in their place.

SPEAKER_03 26:41

Absolutely. But and fatherhood is more than just biological fatherhood, it's adopted by spiritual fatherhood. I say happy father's day to the priests in my life that I care about. But fatherhood is more than just biological fatherhood. What's it like anybody can be a father, but it takes a special man to be a dad kind of saying. Um I believe that's true. I have I've had multiple fathers in my life after Dave. My uncles, a couple of my uncles were father figures to me. Uh my grandfather was. Um, so it's not just it's not just the your biological father that's that that's you know, especially if your biological father wasn't there for you for a variety of reasons, which mine was not. You know, and your biological father was a a dirt bag.

SPEAKER_00 27:30

So and I'm grateful that this episode is joyous and and we're talking about these things, uh but I I do wonder let our audience know that this is how we've been able to find ourselves, our lives within the timeless aspect of Christianity, of the Bible. And sometimes you just have to twist your your view of certain things to be able to get that relation because it's there as long as human beings have been around, there is gonna be a connection and it's all in how you look at things like what happened with Mary is not only what happened with Mary. These are things we experience, and we will have uh some more difficult episodes where you talk about different things, but I'm grateful to to have to be a dad, and still my 23-year-old calls me for advice. I I love that aspect of it.

SPEAKER_03 28:30

Yeah, you know, it's my oldest son still calls me for advice too, and he's he's as different from me as I as as one could hope, but there's still the little boy in him sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 28:40

Yep, yep. It's and I imagine, you know, Joseph sitting back and seeing what was happening with Jesus and his followers, seeing him turn out to what he was supposed to be must have been very um pleasing, you know, to to witness that and and know that he was literally changing the world.

SPEAKER_03 29:01

That's right. It all comes full circle.

SPEAKER_00 29:03

It does.

SPEAKER_03 29:04

Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word, and my soul shall be healed. Amen.

SPEAKER_01 29:34

Veritas