I Want to Beat the "Blending" Odds

"Blending families in second (or third) marriages is one of the greatest causes of divorce. Very few of these marriages survive five years."

"Marriages with blended families tend to be very unsuccessful, one of the greatest predictors of divorce."

~From the "Marriage Builders" web site

My little family is having a tough time blending.  Sometimes I think my blend isn't working due to the fact that there is just too much "stirring" going on.  Stirring the pot.  Stirring up of resentments.  Stirring up of unmet expectations.  Judgment.  Condemnation. Unforgiveness.  Ingredients for trouble in any family...ingredients for destruction in a family who's foundation is based on a tenuous connection between two flawed parents rather than shared DNA. 

So, I ask myself, how do people do it?  How do they "beat" the odds and succeed in blending families and saving their marriages? 

I have done A LOT of reading and research.  I have been driven to my knees again and again crying out to God to change my heart and give me HIS heart for this endeavor I feel He has led me to.  The problem is; not everyone in my family is doing the same.  How do I keep peace when not everyone is following?

Honestly, at this point, I don't know.  All I can do is my part and follow God, but the journey does get wearing.

If you are reading this right now, would you please pray for my family?  Thank you!

1 Corinthians 13:1-13 If I speak in the tongues of men and angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a tinkling symbol. And if I have prophecy and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And if I dole out all my goods, and if I deliver my body that I may boast but have not love, nothing I am profited. Love is long suffering, love is kind, it is not jealous, love does not boast, it is not inflated. It is not discourteous, it is not selfish, it is not irritable, it does not enumerate the evil. It does not rejoice over the wrong, but rejoices in the truth It covers all things, it has faith for all things, it hopes in all things, it endures in all things. Love never falls in ruins; but whether prophecies, they will be abolished; or tongues, they will cease; or knowledge, it will be superseded. For we know in part and we prophecy in part. But when the perfect comes, the imperfect will be superseded. When I was an infant, I spoke as an infant, I reckoned as an infant; when I became [an adult], I abolished the things of the infant. For now we see through a mirror in an enigma, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know as also I was fully known. But now remains faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.