Fathers Day Special: A nod to the Step-Dads

Dear Joseph - the patron saint of step dads.

You didn’t have to marry her. She was pregnant with someone else’s baby.

But you stepped up. Big time.

For a man that was part of Christianity’s ‘First family’, there’s not much written about you.

I know the Bible says you intended to divorce her quietly, but I have the feeling that you’re the kind of guy that would have married this young teenage girl just to save her from being stoned.

The Bible is unclear about whether you had more children with Mary and raised a blended family, or there’s some fan fiction claiming you were a widower that already had adult kids before you married Mary. At the end of the day, this was no conventional “house with the picket fence, 2.5 kids and a dog.”

Did you raise eyebrows around town with your ‘honeymoon’’ baby? Did it set tongues wagging when your wife of a few weeks packs off and goes to visit her cousin Elizabeth, and comes back obviously pregnant? I bet the housewives were doing their mental calculations.

Some feminists will say that travelling to Bethlehem with a heavily pregnant women was a dick move. The census could have been short by two people, and that donkey ride probably prompted her labour. But your actions showed your loyalty and also your humble obedience to authority. The fact that Mary agreed showed that you were the head of the home.

I wonder if there were times when you doubted your decision.

I wonder if you ever doubted her story.

You must have thought she was worth it, but it can’t have been easy. Death threats, moving from town to town to keep Jesus safe, packing up your business, always looking over your shoulder. Seeing strangers from distant lands show up at your door, wondering if their intentions were evil or enlightened.

I wonder what your relationship with Mary was like. Were you there for her or was she this untouchable, holy forcefield of perfection and light? Did she need your help during sleepless nights and teething struggles? Did her mother give you parenting advice and try to move in for a few weeks? Possibly, but I have the feeling that it was just the two of you, against the world.

What was it like, raising God’s son? Were you able to set boundaries as a father figure? I wonder if you were the angry parent when Jesus got lost at the temple, or if you were the peacemaker, talking a fretting Mary down from the ledge. Grabbing her hand, saying, “he’s probably fine, love”, while your eyes were darting across the busy marketplace.

Did you get to have a normal relationship? I’m picturing nights at home, sitting at the table that you’d made, tracing your family tree back to King David. Talking and laughing about what Jesus had been up to that day. Planning a visit to see cousin Elizabeth and her free-spirited child John, with his obsession with water.

I hope you got to grow old together.

For what it’s worth, I wanted to say that you are not forgotten Joseph, and you’re an incredible role model. Especially today when so many relationships don’t go as planned, and some men are stepping into relationships with ready-made families. We need exemplary men like yourself, to love and cherish children and their mothers.

Your name means ‘he will add’, and you certainly did that. Without you, and the choices you made, the path of history would have been irreversibly altered. I also hope that your life was better, fuller, more meaningful, than if you’d decided on another path.

Loving a child that didn’t come from you is not for the faint hearted, and for that, I think you’re a saint.

Khalia - Loved mother with a child to another