In-Law Invasion: The Sequel

"Honor your father and your mother,

so that you may live long in the land

 the LORD your God is giving you."

This verse from Exodus 20 speaks loudly, and repeatedly -- if you have already read "The In-Law Invasion" this may definitely sound like a rerun.  Nope.  It's not.

Are you a married person living with your in-law family or with your biological parents?  You have a completely different perspective than I have of how to honor them.  Do you live in the same town, or at least, the same area code?  Your version of "honor your father and mother" adjusts to your circumstances at that distance.  Do you live in a different country or on a different continent?  Your vision of honoring looks and feels different from mine.  We all have a different idea of what honoring parents (biological or in-law) should look like or can look like, but at the same time, we are all in this together.  Our honoring should look a lot the same, no matter what the relationship or the distance between people.  We need to uphold each other in this practice and cheer each other on to doing it well.  We should even share ideas and prod each other when we aren't doing as well as we might.

As wives, we need to praise our husbands in their honoring efforts and spur the family on to practice honoring more carefully and with more gusto.  Women excel in the area of exhibiting emotion/feeling, and thinking of and acting on ideas for honoring parents comes more naturally, sometimes, than it does for men.  Think of something to do and start the ball rolling, encouraging your mate to join you. 

I'm curious if you feel more disconnected and distant when living farther away, thereby giving you more of a sense of how to honor parents?  Or, does the saying, "Out of sight, out of mind," pertain to you and parental relationships?  Does living close by or with them give you proximity to them but not practice in honoring them because you take them for granted?  Or, do you live life too closely with them, knowing their every move and change of mind?  Do you feel them grating on your nerves rather than plucking your heartstrings?  Do you honor them, near or far, with thoughtfulness and care, visiting, making plans for dinners and outings together, sending cards or gifts and keeping them updated on the grandchildren's growth and activities?  If not, you should, and you can start right now.

Our attitudes and actions mean everything when it comes to relationships with our parents and in-laws.  God gave the commandment to honor them for a reason, not just as another line to round out the list and balance the stone tablets more evenly for Moses to trot out and proclaim to the Israelites.

My own parents live nearby, and we do not honor them as well as we should.  We often take that nearness for granted.  My husband's parents live several hours away, and we think more about how and when to share with them throughout the year, but sometimes  see through lenses of obligation, rather than honor.  We also spend a good deal of energy planning for failure in advance of visits here or there.  I can from experience, a lot of it lives in our heads.  We live in fear of expectation we cannot meet or in moments of anxiety over what might transpire.  We focus more on possibility than on reality, and we don't often assess ourselves in word and action during and after encounters.  Every relationship takes work.  It takes work to enjoy success, and it takes a different kind of work to suffer failure.  Why do we not focus on success as a target all the time?  It's all in attitude!

This current "invasion" of the in-laws has had its ups and downs, but often, our attitudes create and/or maintain both.  I have jerked my husband's chain a few times when I shouldn't  (and didn't mean to).  I have made a few comments that turned more toward disparaging than uplifting, and I heard it happening.  Being more in tune to my own actions changes the dynamics.  I pay attention more closely to what I say and do, and I find less opportunity to poke any sleeping bear in the area. 

We all need to try harder in this relationship-building.  Honoring.  Thinking before we speak, acting kindly, and living the Golden Rule.  Do unto others as you would have others do to you.  This verse disallows retaliation, kicks vindication to the curb, and slams the door on selfishness.   

I believe that some of our awkward behavior, when it comes to in-law or parent relationships, comes from the parent-child relationship we learned as children.  Parents are in charge, right?  Then, parents visit an adult child in his or her natural setting and circumstances provide a whole new level of anxious feelings and fears of rejection ... as if our parents will judge us harshly for misbehaving in some way we cannot calculate or forecast.  As if we might let them down, disappoint them, or otherwise incur disdain for not living up to their raising of us.  We want our parents to accept us as we are.  We have always wanted that, deep down in our hearts and in the forefront of our minds.  We also want them to accept our spouses, our children, and our way of life.  Our spouses want the in-laws to accept these things, too. 

We never want to feel rejection.  We want gold stars on all our efforts, and we want to know that they understand us and appreciate what we do day to day.  Yet, living in this adult world, we put up short walls that end up as speed bumps in our relationships.  We strive for perfection:  clean house, good food, well-mannered children, smartly appointed décor, and quality entertainment between riveting, multi-faceted conversation.  We set unattainable goals of "The Perfect Visit" or "The Perfect Thanksgiving," or "The Perfect Christmas." 

We plan for perfection while anticipating failure at several levels.  What a mess!

Let's get down to brass tacks and see life as is.  No perfection possible.  Television and movies do not reflect reality and paint an impossible visual image to duplicate.  We are not actors with a script.  We don't get instant replays.  We don't have endless energy and the ability to read minds and interpret every mistake and misspoken word. 

We need to do one thing:  honor others.  Always.  When we vow to do the best we can, no matter how tired we are, or how much someone else aggravates us, we will have a better outcome.

It's a given.

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.