I still remember that first Thanksgiving seventeen of us crowded around the bountiful table, knees touching, elbows bumping. My stomach was already in knots—and the afternoon had just begun.

"Shall we pray?" My stepfather, Don, beamed down the table at this group of acquaintances transformed into relatives by his marriage to my mother. He stretched his arms out, signaling us to hold hands.

"We're going to pray," I whispered to Tyler, my then-two-year-old son. "Hold Aunt Donita's hand."

Don's teenage daughter grimaced as she held out a reluctant finger for Tyler's eager grasp. He immediately pulled her hand to his mouth and clamped his teeth around her finger. Donita gasped as I finally pried her finger free, and then proclaimed vehemently, "I am never having kids!"

Don smiled benignly and began his prayer. "Our Father, we thank Thee for this food and this family … " "He's the only one thankful," I'd thought to myself.

At first, I'd been thrilled when Mom married Don fifteen years ago. Widowed at thirty-two, she'd committed her life to raising my brother, sister, and me. But all of us kids were married by then, with families of our own, and I was glad she wouldn't be alone anymore.

Don understood the pain of losing a spouse. His wife had died several years earlier, leaving him with three teenage daughters. When Mom and Don announced their plans to marry, both families rejoiced, and at the wedding, all six kids stood up with the bride and groom. It couldn't have been more perfect.

But when Mom said "I do," it brought drastic changes. My brother, sister, and I had been the center of her world. Even as an adult, I drew tremendous strength from this knowledge. Before her marriage to Don, Mom frequently drove the more than three hours to my house. Once my kids were asleep, we'd brew a pot of tea and curl up for cozy late-night chats.

Her marriage changed that. Secure in her relationship with her own children, she concentrated on her relationship with Don and his family. Understanding this didn't make it any easier.

The first time I visited Mom and Don after their wedding, reality set in. Mom had sold her house and moved to Don's dairy farm. Gone was the furniture I'd grown up with, the curios our family had collected, the dishes I'd argued with my sister over washing. The photographs on the wall were of people I didn't know, occasions I hadn't participated in. For the first time, it occurred to me I'd never be able to go "home" again. That place of my heart no longer existed.

The responsibilities of the dairy farm made it impossible for Mom to get away to visit me. And when I went to see her, cozy visiting was just as impossible. Shouting interesting bits of news at her as we fed fifty bawling calves wasn't the same.

I began to feel orphaned, and Don was the easiest person to blame. I was thirty-five years old and wanted to throw a three-year-old tantrum. I envisioned myself grabbing Don by the throat and screaming, "I want my mother back!"

"God," I wept into my pillow after one particularly difficult visit, "I miss my mother! Will things ever be the same again?"

"Would you prefer she be alone, just so she can be at your beck and call?" God countered.

No, I never wished her back to widowhood. But my negative feelings had caught me off guard. I'd expected only minor adjustments with this remarriage, since my brother, sister, and I were settled into our own lives, as were Don's children. But the collective relatives were seldom together long enough to feel like a family.

Then one weekend after Mom and Don had been married a few years, the kids and I went home for a visit. That was the weekend Don's daughter, Deanna, brought home her boyfriend, George. After dinner the adults sat in the living room talking. For the first time, I felt that longed-for sense of belonging.

When I finally glanced down at my watch, I gasped. "It's nearly midnight!" I hated to leave the cozy setting, but I had a long drive home the next day. Reluctantly, I excused myself and went to bed.

Snug under a mound of blankets, I listened to laughter drifting up the stairs. "What was I missing?" I considered rejoining the fun, but instead nestled deeper into the warm bed, feeling very much at home in the old farmhouse.

That is, until breakfast the next morning, when I discovered the reason for their laughter. Deanna and George had announced their engagement. I must have registered appropriate shock because everyone laughed again.

"We didn't think you were ever going to go to bed," Deanna laughed, "and we wanted to tell Dad the news alone."

All my good feelings about the previous night vanished. I felt like an intruder in my mother's home, and a dawdling one at that!

After congratulating them, I made a hasty retreat upstairs to pack. Fighting humiliated tears, I stuffed my clothes into the suitcase and said my good-byes. "How could I have felt like this was beginning to be my home, my family?"

Before I even reached the highway, however, reason returned. If it had been me announcing my engagement, wouldn't I have wanted a little privacy? If I were struggling with my enlarged family, it made sense my stepsister was, too.

As time passed, Mom began adding her own personal touches to the farmhouse. Each time I visited, something familiar from my childhood had found its way into the decor. The lumpy clay pitcher formed by my ten-year-old hands now sat on the kitchen shelf. The wooden bowl carved by my brother was displayed on the coffee table and my sister's hand-sewn comforter covered the bed in the guest room.

I was especially happy when Mom repapered the kitchen. The room had been decorated around the garish orange and greens of the sixties, and I loved the softer color scheme Mom chose.

Don's daughters, however, weren't as enthusiastic about the new kitchen when they came home to visit. At first I didn't understand their reaction and felt they weren't giving Mom a fair chance. But as I prayed about this, God helped me see these changes through my stepsisters' eyes.

I realized as Mom put out familiar objects from our family, some from their family disappeared. The kitchen I thought looked so pretty now had been lovingly decorated by their mother. To them it must have felt as if her personality had been ripped from the room along with the yellowed paper.

Although every change Mom made in the farmhouse made it feel more familiar, one Christmas my brother, sister, and I discussed the possibility of having Christmas at one of our homes instead of at the farm where the dinner and gift exchange had to be squeezed in among endless chores.

Astoundingly, the suggestion met with loud protests from all our children. "It won't be like Christmas if we're not at the farm!" cried my niece, Katie.

"What about the sleigh bells?" asked my son, Tyler. "How will we know when to hide without them?" He referred to our tradition of ringing sleigh bells, signaling Santa's arrival and time for all the children to run upstairs and hide while he unloaded his sleigh.

As I listened to their complaints, one thing became very clear. The farm might not feel like home to me, but it was home to the grandkids. This was the only house they could remember Grandma living in, and it was as much a part of their heritage as our grandmother's house was to us.

That realization—more than anything else—made the line between our family and Don's family soften in my eyes. Knowing my children saw everyone simply as their family made all the difference.

The greatest proof of all came last Thanksgiving. Once again the two families were crowded around a bountiful table, knees touching, elbows bumping—but there were no longer knots in my stomach.

Once again, Don signaled for us to hold hands as we prayed. Tyler, now a teenager, sat calmly. However, two-year-old Levi, son of my stepsister, Danise, soon wearied of his grandpa's prayer. I could sense Danise's growing tension. How well I remembered the days of having the only toddler at the table!

Just as Don brought his prayer to an end, Levi banged his fork loudly against his plate, startling Tyler with the noise. As Levi laughed in delight, Tyler looked at me and grinned. "I'm never having kids!" he stated.

I laughed, remembering when those same words were spoken in response to him, and looked at the faces circling the table. When Mom married Don, time didn't stop for me to adjust to the changes. It kept moving forward, and I had the choice to move with it or be dragged along in the dust. Even though I'd spent much of that time digging my heels firmly into the past, a miracle had been unfolding. All the while, the people gathered around this table were in the process of being transformed from acquaintances to relatives to family. My family.

MAYO MATHERS is a TCW contributing editor and columnist. She and her family live in Bend, Oregon.