The In-Law Invasion

My mother and father-in-law arrive today to celebrate Christmas a little early.  As ever, I dive into cooking in advance and cleaning down to and including the baseboards.  Housekeeping happens as necessary in my gene pool, and that means I feel a need to do it when there's a need to do it.  As in, when we will have guests.  Really, I would like to have a crumb-free, uncluttered environment in which to live, and I try.  I just didn't come equipped to keep up with it.  We all have our strengths.

I fall on the short end of the cleaning stick, and so I guess I make up for it in cooking and baking.  Which makes a mess.  Doesn't it figure?

Stress.  I feel stress to get it all right, because I think, deep down, that judgment cometh.  Some people are very particular, very expectant, and I married one of them.  He comes from that kind of lineage.  And it stresses him out, too, wanting everything to be perfect, from the house and children to the meals and relationships. 

No matter how well we plan and prepare, very little of that perfection has a possibility of happening. We are fallible humans!  Personalities clash, preconceived notions make truth crawl under the carpet, assumptions slither into attitudes, and nerves stand on edge, and when any one of these bind with another, our minds and sometimes our stomachs take a hit. 

We want better for ourselves, and we want better for the rest of those involved. 

I think all of us married folks, from time to time, have in-law issues.  Even the most perfect in-law pair, either the seasoned parental couple or the younger wedded couple, have difficulties that seem to surface.  These difficulties may happen only in their heads, but they happen, leaving stress, irritation, and sometimes anger or tears at the inability to live up to the example, in the attempt to avoid criticism (giving or receiving), the attempt to avoid advice (giving or receiving) or ilkjn the attempt to avoid a hamster wheel world of trying to be everyone's everything.

My husband and I have navigated 21 years of marriage and dozens of visits here or there with our sets of parents.  Every time I think of Exodus 20:12, which reads:

"Honor your father and your mother,

so that you may live long in the land

 the LORD your God is giving you."

No suggestion here, a commandment.  Hoo-eee!  It sometimes feels like more pressure, but, in making it reality, it pays for itself.  First, in obedience to God, which should stand as our first line of action, in all things (don't look at me -- I'm practicing, too!).  Then to the feeling that comes from blessing the very people who provided your husband by giving him life in the first place.  Finally, in the continued blessing showered on us when we witness a change in attitudes and behavior all around because we have acted as we should.  

The in-law resistance we often feel, I think, we usually create ourselves.  We have our own preferences.  We have our own hopes for the relationship.  We have our own sets of expectations that, Satan-bound, put us first ... wholly because we feel that others should act or speak in certain ways to maintain the structure of the relationship we envision.  Dysfunction runs rampant in this way of thinking.  As Sheila Wray Gregoire illustrates in "Do You See What I See?" our preferences and sadly, our expectations color our vision.  We need to use God's vision -- and he gladly shares it when we ask.  It offers more clarity than we will ever find in an independent search.  It offers grace in place of contempt, it provides hope instead of defeat, it views everyone with love instead of with impossible expectations in mind.

And, while I'd sometimes like to toss the reminder of Christ's review of the marriage commitment (Matthew 19:4-6) toward my mate's parents when advice or questions arise -- I'd be offering God's word as judgment, wouldn't I:

"He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” 

I know that I have my own expectations of perfection and hopeful views of what family should be.  I know my own biological family has no claim to perfection or excellence.  And, I remember, a little sheepishly, as I think of retorts or admonitions:

"A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise man keeps himself under control."  Proverbs 29:11

I need to keep the relationship in perspective and remember that feelings are fickle and hearts live out life on people's sleeves in family relationships sometimes.  It's our job, as wives ... as family ... to protect both.