Blended families bring together people with different histories, expectations, parenting styles, and ideas about what family should look like. Add co-parenting schedules, complicated holidays, and children adjusting to changes they didn’t choose, and even a strong marriage can feel the pressure.
April and Rockford Todd experienced that pressure firsthand while raising five children from their previous marriages. At one point, Rockford visited a divorce attorney, but as they began praying and working through their challenges together, their marriage and family started to change.
If your family is struggling to find its footing, these prayers can help you bring what’s happening to God and ask Him for the patience, wisdom, and love your family needs.
1. A Prayer for Unity in a Blended Family
Family unity doesn’t mean everyone agrees or immediately feels close. It means choosing to work toward a home where people feel safe, valued, and included, even when their relationships are still developing.
“Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.” Ephesians 4:3 NIV
Pray: God, our family is still figuring out how to fit together. We bring different experiences, different needs, and sometimes different ideas about what our home should be. Help us listen to each other, make room for each other, and choose peace when tension starts to build. Teach us to become a family where everyone belongs. In Jesus’ name, amen.
2. A Prayer for Your Marriage
A blended family can put real pressure on a marriage. Parenting disagreements, financial stress, difficult exchanges with a former spouse, and a packed calendar can make it easy to forget you’re on the same team.
“Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” Mark 10:9 NIV
Jesus’ words point toward protecting a marriage with care and faithfulness. They should never be used to pressure someone to remain in an abusive or unsafe relationship.
Pray: God, help my spouse and me face the challenges of our family together. When we disagree, remind us that we’re partners, not opponents. Help us speak honestly, apologize when we hurt each other, and protect time for our relationship. Give us the courage to ask for help when we need it and the commitment to keep choosing each other. In Jesus’ name, amen.
3. A Prayer for Patience With Stepchildren
A child’s frustration or distance doesn’t necessarily mean you’re failing. They may be grieving what changed, wondering where they belong, or trying to understand how loving you affects their relationship with their other parent.
Pray: God, give me patience with my stepchildren, especially when I feel rejected, misunderstood, or unsure of my place in their lives. Help me remember that they’re dealing with experiences I might not fully understand. Teach me to earn their trust without demanding it and to show them care without expecting immediate closeness. Help me love them in ways that make them feel safe. In Jesus’ name, amen.
4. A Prayer for Healing After Divorce
A previous marriage can leave behind disappointment, grief, anger, or fear that the same story will happen again. Those wounds don’t disappear because you’ve started a new relationship, but you don’t have to let them decide what comes next.
Pray: God, You know the parts of my past that still hurt. You know what I lost, what I regret, and what I’m afraid of repeating. Please help me heal from what happened without pretending it didn’t matter. Show me where old wounds are affecting my marriage or my parenting, and give me the courage to take responsibility for the ways I need to grow. Help our family move forward with honesty and hope. In Jesus’ name, amen.
5. A Prayer for Co-Parenting Wisdom
Co-parenting can bring disagreements about schedules, rules, money, and how decisions should be made. When emotions run high, it can help to remember that your child shouldn’t have to carry the weight of conflict between adults.
If you’re still learning how these relationships work, What Is a Blended Family? offers a helpful starting point.
Pray: God, give us wisdom as we co-parent. Help us communicate clearly, respect appropriate boundaries, and make decisions that put our children’s well-being first. When conversations are difficult, help me respond without adding more conflict. Protect our children from feeling like they have to choose sides, and remind us that they deserve the freedom to love the people in their lives. In Jesus’ name, amen.
6. A Prayer for Stepsiblings to Get Along
Children in a blended family may suddenly find themselves sharing bedrooms, routines, attention, and parents with people they barely know. Friendship might take time, and respect may be a more realistic first goal than instant closeness.
For more on navigating those relationships, read Will the Siblings in My Blended Family Get Along?.
Pray: God, help the children in our family treat one another with kindness and respect. When they feel jealous, left out, or frustrated, help us notice what’s underneath those feelings. Give us wisdom to set fair expectations without forcing relationships to grow faster than they’re ready to. Help our kids discover that there’s room for each of them in this family. In Jesus’ name, amen.
7. A Prayer for Blending Family Traditions
Holidays, birthdays, vacations, and even dinner routines can bring out strong feelings. What seems like a simple change to one person might feel like losing a meaningful part of home to someone else.
Pray: God, help us approach our family’s traditions with understanding and flexibility. Show us which memories and routines matter most to each person, and help us respect what came before. Give us creativity as we build traditions that make room for everyone. When plans change or expectations clash, remind us that being together matters more than getting everything exactly right. In Jesus’ name, amen.
8. A Prayer When You Feel Overwhelmed
Sometimes the hardest part of blended family life is feeling like you’re responsible for making everything work. You’re allowed to admit when you need support, take a break, or ask a trusted counselor for help.
Pray: God, I’m tired, and I don’t know how to fix everything happening in our family. Help me release the pressure to hold everyone together or make every relationship work on my timeline. Show me what I can do today, and help me trust You with what I can’t control. Bring supportive people into our lives, and give me the courage to ask for help when I need it. In Jesus’ name, amen.
9. A Prayer for Love to Grow in Your Family
Blending a family takes more than shared routines or matching last names. Love grows through repeated choices to show up, tell the truth, repair harm, and care for people even when the relationship still feels complicated.
“And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.” Colossians 3:14 NIV
Pray: God, help love grow in our family. Teach us to be patient with the process and generous with each other when things don’t go as planned. Help us celebrate progress, repair what gets damaged, and keep making room for one another. Show us how to build a home shaped by honesty, compassion, and care. In Jesus’ name, amen.
From April
Rockford and I have both been divorced, and we’ve both been through our parents’ divorces. So before we got married, we were sure to sign up for premarital counseling! I thought that’d be enough for what was ahead. I believed we could love each other with a 1 Corinthians 13 kind of love.
Then, we both fought to be the center of the relationship. We continued to cling to the same bad habits and wrong mindsets that led to our first divorces. Have you been there?
Some people refer to blended families as a crockpot because it takes time for all the ingredients to mix and bond. That’s true, but our marriage is, and I think most remarriages are, more like a pressure cooker. Lots of ingredients, under heat, with lots of pressure.
Earlier in our marriage, I would tend to stew (and sometimes still do). Instead of addressing my frustrations, I would just let them simmer inside. I thought that if I said none of the words that came to my mind, I’d have nothing to apologize for. More pressure.
Rockford would tend to spew (and sometimes still does). He often said all of the words that came to mind when he didn’t like something, and he’d just as quickly apologize. I’d feel attacked by the assault of angry words, and Rockford felt held hostage by the icy silence. The pressure built.
Remarriages with kids require the same blending of beliefs and personalities that any marriage does, just with more ingredients, more pressure, and kids that need parenting right away while they grieve what they lost.
And remember God’s command to leave your extended family and cleave, or bond, to your new family? This is just as important to a blended family, but it wasn’t easy for me. My extended family had been there for me through it all, and it felt impossible. But all things are possible with God at the center.
Unfortunately, we had put ourselves at the center of our marriage. The pressure cooker started whistling, and we both knew we couldn’t stop the explosion coming.
God has His own way of diffusing your anxiety and pressure. It starts and ends with prayer.
Thankfully, God has His own way of diffusing your anxiety and pressure. It starts and ends with prayer. How else can we cast our cares, worry, anxiety, and pressure on Him? All things we’ve learned in hindsight, of course.
But it got pretty hard before we put God back at the center and started praying circles around our marriage.
From Rockford
You heard from April about the ingredients in our pressure cooker. The tension had built until it seemed like there was no hope left and an explosion was inevitable. Here’s what happened next.
“The attorney will see you now.” I stood up from my seat and somberly walked back into an office I had been in just a few short years earlier. “I can’t do this anymore,” I said to the divorce attorney in the moment that was almost the end of this story.
I just wasn’t satisfied. Notice the I. My wife, April, and I didn’t see eye to eye. We saw I to I. Raising kids in a blended home was much more difficult than I had realized. I just knew that I wanted to be out of the situation—sooner rather than later. So here I was back at the same attorney’s office from my first divorce.
Maybe we felt like we had nothing to lose, so April and I both opened up about what we were going through. We started talking, but my heart didn’t change, and I didn’t want it to.
Just before I dropped my plans for divorce in her lap, April started reading the book The Circle Maker by Mark Batterson. We kept arguing, and she kept reading. She started doing what the book said. She started praying and walking circles around our home, asking God to do a miracle. People would ask if she was locked out of the house. I had my own questions.
One year on the Fourth of July, my wife asked if I’d go walk the track at the kids’ school with her and the family. I decided rather than walk and talk with her, I’d try to run a mile. At 39 years and nearly 300 pounds, I hadn’t run much of anything lately.
I began to run away from my wife—or so I thought. A mile later something started to change. Over the coming months I started running a lot. So what? I spent more time running that circle, talking to God, and achieving small goals than I ever had in my life. I began to make choices that put God in the center.
Something about persevering on the track made my marriage seem possible. Maybe that’s why the book of James makes such a big deal of perseverance, why April continued praying circles around our home, and why I kept praying circles around the track.
Prayer can change your marriage because God can use prayer to change you.
Prayer can change your marriage because God can use prayer to change you. Because of our prayer for family unity, I became more of a servant to what April needs, and April became more of a servant to what I need. In fact, now April and I have started a YouTube channel for blended families called Broken to Beautifully Blended.
As summer came to an end more than five years ago, our marriage was finally circling around God. Not me. Not April. But God.