Are we called to Love our Mother-in- laws? I think the answer is yes, because we are called to love our enemies. It is a bad joke, I know, and it is even worse because it is in my MIL’s expense. I am willing to share with you something in openness and humility, the struggles of my role as a daughter in law, so stay focused it is a long post.
If you are married women you are called to deal with three different family dynamics.
§ Once our- Mother, Father, Siblings, and so on,
§ Once our Husband’s- our Mother in law, Father in law, Brothers and Sisters in laws, and so on,
§ Actually our – us, and kids.
With or without our awareness the first two dynamics influence the third one majorly. For that reason, I am writing this blog post. In this post, I write mostly about the once mine, and my husband’s family dynamics. And the lessons I learned living in the midst. I don’t like to address these families like once mine and once his, as they are still our extended family, so just going to address it as family number one, family number two (definitely not according to priority, see my actual family is numbered three). I didn’t love my family 2 well, well as I was called to. Not because they were my enemies, but simply because they were different, very different. If, I need to explain in one word the dynamics of the family number1, and 2. I would say it is truth and love. Yep, I was reared as truth is a most important dynamic, even though it hurts people (sometimes hurts hardly). I saw something different in family 2’s dynamic; you talk in love, love like crazy, even though it is not true at times. Sometimes too much love in the talk might be interpreted as not being truthful, and taking too much truth might be interpreted as not loving (but it is not true, we can absolutely talk truth with love). This was a struggle in our life in the beginning (still at times); my husband felt that I do not love because I was talking blatant truths. I felt he was not truthful because he spoke with so much love (only love, including white lies). I later learned we are called to talk the truth with love, so in the pursuit of building my third family with love and truth.
Not loving your second family well can create some friction in the third family. In spite of being in good awareness of this happening in our life, I was still in rebellion. I don’t know where the circle started? seemed like it was an endless circle of, I hurting them, they hurting me more, and I hurting them more an more ( I wouldn’t deny the fact that they really tried to stop this circle, they were not happy about this too). Remember nothing beautiful happens, when deprived people get together and try to break a circle. Then one day, God “showed up” (intervened) and a wonderful thing happened. I was called to love! Love them from my heart, not because the law called me to love, but because I loved Him who called me to love. Immediately I took a decision to love them intentionally. After few days of this decision (I even forgot about that decision). I called them as I would regularly, spoke with them for few minutes, just a regular talk, and after that never really thought much about that. To my amazement, my husband told, “Mom and dad are very happy in the way you spoke to them; they said that they felt so much love in the way even as you addressed them” Wow! How wonderful? I was addressing them with the same title, as I was addressing them from the first day of our marriage (even before our marriage). But, what made a difference? How loud our heart is exposed in our words? As I was thinking this in my heart, I just mumbled, “Oh! That’s sweet.” I never said anything more.
Actually, deep in my heart there was another hindrance, which was stopping me from loving them. I felt guilty for loving them completely; loving them as family 1, somehow I felt that is betraying my family 1. Then, I realized in the light of my Redeemer’s word, that guilt is rooted in lie, lie that comes from the ultimate enemy.
Any time, I meditated on the life of Ruth, I wondered, what could have made her to stick with her mother in law, even when her husband was no more? For many years, I “loved” them for my husband’s sake. But now I love them, love them for my Savior thus I love them well. Anything done for purely another human being without God in the picture cannot be done well, even if that is your husband, the same act that is done for God can be done well, well as it is meant to be. In Ruth’s story the words that touched my heart is when Ruth saying, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.” What a profound words, can I say these words? Yes, I can! Holding hands of my Savior to love my families well, all of them, really well.
For some of you, you may not be able to say that, “Your God my God” that is still ok, but that is not an excuse for not loving them, not loving them well as we are meant to. Our purpose is to love our God and our neighbors, lets us start that work of love, from our own family.
God Bless.
Humbled by His truth every single day,
Ahila Prabu
