To My Future Son In Law, From A Mother In Law Who Loves Her Hurting Daughter

A Message to The Holder of My Daughter’s Heart - My Newest Son-In-Law to Come

(names have been changed, but the message is the same)

Daniel, I wanted you to know I was so glad you called and talked with my husband, Trent personally about marrying Annie. I know you are quite old enough to make these kinds of decisions on your own with my daughter, but to be so brave and respectful of Trent and asking his blessing, meant a lot to my heart.

Dan, I love seeing her happy and loved again, yet I know she has paid a heavy price to get where she is in life today. Dan, I’m not sure you understand how desperately grieved she was over the death of her first marriage. I feared for her very life, the tiny thread that she held onto. Now you, her love from college days have found her and brought love back into her life.

I need to talk with you about some things that only a mother can know about her child. I worry that there may be some deep scars that even she doesn’t know she’s carrying from the divorce. I know she’s been able to speak to you from the dark places of her heart and trust you with the horror she experienced. I believe from watching you live and learning about your character that you are wise enough to understand this may affect her in ways she doesn’t realize, and may carry into the marriage with you. These are just some things I needed to talk with you about from a Mom’s perspective. From Annie’s Mom.

First, she and Tyler did NOT have Christ as the center of their marriage from the get-go, and there Dan, was the beginning of the fall. I cannot express to you enough how important it is to have your husband as your spiritual leader. Annie will now fall under your ‘umbrella’, so to speak spiritually. Your relationship with the LORD can affect your relationship with her AND her relationship with the LORD. I DO believe Annie DOES need to take responsibility for her own growth in the LORD and not just hanging onto your coat-tails of spirituality.

There will be time during your marriage where there are shifts in balance of your walk with the LORD, where maybe during one season of life one of the two of you may be the stronger one, and need more carrying or encouragement. This is the cool aspect of being a Christ-centered marriage. Dan, JESUS was sometimes the only link that held Trent and I together during the hard struggles and bitter battles that arose. Trust me on this, you may think you will not have these arguments or disagreements like others, but Dan, it’s the human side of us to disagree, going the entire way back to Kane and Abel. I’m sure those brothers heard arguing from the first parents of the world too. I imagine Adam and Eve got into some heated whooping finger-pointing over whose fault it was that they were cast from the Garden of Eden. They were the only man and woman to come from a perfect world yet, temptation go the best of them too. Basically what I’m trying to say is things are bright and wonderful with you both in this ‘honey-moon’ phase of your relationship, and I am glad, that is how it is to be, and I’m not trying to rain on your provide, just give you some tips that come from a seasoned married woman. There will come a time when you realize the guts of everyday living, the bills, the jobs, the interruptions of daily life will seep into your relationship. This is when sex will not be the cure-all, pardon my bluntness. God does give us the gift of intimacy, yet it is the intimate relationship with the creator that’s going to sustain your journey together.

I advice marriage counseling. I realize that in these sessions many couples may answer questions ‘correctly’ because that’s how you believe you will communicate and settle disagreements after marriage, but this doesn’t always follow true in the moment of a heated debate where one of you feels stronger about an issue than the other. I pray this may make sense to you. I know before marriage we live a more guarded life and live on a ‘natural’ high. Or even better, maybe you both HAVE really been yourselves as much as you know to be without the ceremony of marriage yet. Dan, Annie is a bit of a follower. Yes, she’s fiercely independent in some ways, yet on the other hand she is the type of person who needs to feel loved to feel validated. (Don’t we all?) Most women do need this, this is how God made us differently than you men. She goes where the man goes, and I sometimes relate her to the character in the movie “The Runaway Bride” with Julia Roberts and Richard Gere.
Please follow my train of thought here, and maybe you will understand her inner-makings a bit more. Julia Robert’s character, Maggie, also took on the persona of the man she was engaged to. If he liked eggs a certain way, then that’s the way she liked her eggs cooked. It seems silly, but the movie did have a good point, in the sense that Maggie did not know herself enough to know what SHE really liked. She immersed herself into her newest fiance` and took on traits and habits of his. I’m praying Annie has found herself, and does KNOW what she really wants. It is a concern of mine, because let’s both face it, she hung onto a disastrous marriage for the sake of not wanting to be alone. I believe God wants us to have Interdependence in a marriage, no co-dependence.

Dan, your Annie has always had a creative soul to her. She loves trying to learn to crochet or knit. She and I both would go through phases where we tried so much to
make things, and then get so frustrated when we can’t catch on to it quickly enough. Encourage her in this. You will benefit from seeing her creativeness. She loves taking pictures and is good at doing this. She sees beauty that others don’t see. Encourage her to continue this. She loves and defends those on the ‘outside’ of a group, or what we referred to as the ‘fringe’ people, because she herself is an introvert and a ’fringe” person, wanting to include her. Take care of her and watch out for her. Her personality is that of a nurturer. A born nurturer. As a little girl she loved taking care of dolls and pets and always talked about having children. Tyler did not want children, and I am glad now that they didn’t have any. I know you love children Dan, you love being with your nieces and nephews, you are kind to animals, and that speaks highly of who you are. I am grateful for that.
Annie is passionate about music, we share that, and now you both do also. For that I am glad too. The songs she sends me featuring her favorite christian groups show me that you both are on the same page, and as a Mom, I needed to know this.

I’m going to ask something of you Dan. Pray together on your knees. This is the most awesome, humbling intimate thing you can do for your wife. When Trent prays for me aloud on his knees, I feel overwhelmed with loved and protection. I feel he truly has my best interests at heart and it makes me love him even more. It’s not an easy thing to expose yourselves to one another in this way, but just trust me on this Dan, it will do incredible things for your relationship.

A tip my dear son-in-law to be, some things just aren’t worth arguing about. Really. Many times I’ve learned that my own arguments were more about control and power issues. Yet after 32 years of marriage I understand there ARE some times where one of you may feel very strongly about something, more than the other, and that is compromise time. Or if not compromise, I try to step back from the situation and decide who this is issue is more important to, Trent or myself, and the effect it’s having on us. I’m still learning that most of the time, I just wanted to be right and heard, rather than to fix the problem. Bullying someone into agreeing with you on an issue doesn’t really work. Dan, some issues just are not going to be agreed upon by both of you. If it’s something like politics, agree to disagree, it won’t kill either of you not to think exactly the same way about everything. That is what will make your marriage survival unique. Yet, there ARE issues you need to agree on wholeheartedly. Dan, you can’t walk the fence with the LORD. He hates a lukewarm christian, and literally says he will spew you out of his mouth. In other words, don’t be a fence-hanger. Get strong and tough now, and decide and vow in your hearts that there will be lines you and Annie will NOT cross. Abide by them. Set boundaries. Otherwise, when your children come, they may become wishy-washy in their own beliefs and may never come to know JESUS as their Savior. You will be their greatest example, I know this to be true to life. Take stands for things, or else you will end up never standing for ANYTHING. There are still some absolutes in life and in the Word of God. Find the black and white issues, learn that not everything is gray. This is the tough road for you and Annie to take, but I have faith you will seek and find the answers.

I ask you to consider taking a financial class together. I realize you are a good caretaker and steward already of your money, but my daughter needs help with this. Budgeting is not her area of expertise, yet that is no excuse in not learning to do it better this time. If you take a class together, you can understand your strengths and weakness and learn to work together on your budget before marriage. Our society is such a ‘want it now’ world, that we don’t even know How to save for things anymore. We will just ‘put it on the card’ and pay it off next month. Dan, it never happens that way. Life happens. Things break down. Emergencies flare up. If you control your money now, it will not control you. Robbing Peter to pay Paul monthly can cause bitterness and resentment. 52% of all marriages end in divorce because of money problems. Be wise stewards of your money and give to our God first and he will bless you even more. Maybe not monetarily, but you will feel God’s blessing on your life in other ways. I know this to be true.

Lastly you are marrying a very loyal young woman. Loyal almost to a fault. She will have your back at all costs, and it’s a treasure to married to someone like that. She doesn’t talk or reveal private things about her husband (it wasn’t until the separation that we learned how deep her pain was, and what she endured), she is respectful. She needs hands on loving. She needs to told she’s looks lovely or pretty. She needs you to grab her hand and hold it, she needs to be hugged and kissed. She missed out on that so much. She responds so well to the ‘gift of physical touch’. I don’t just mean the sex act itself. There is a cool book by Gary Smalley entitled “The Language of Love”. Read it together, it’s illuminating. She thrives through words of encouragement and affirmation. There are 5 love languages and we all respond to certain languages more than others, find out what she requires. Study her. Learn to know her. Learn what she’s passionate about. Look at her face when she needs to talk to you, and you Dan, will be a super-couple.

I know I’ve had much to say, but I believe God wanted me to talk with you from a Mom’s heart. I love you Dan, and surround you with prayer and grace and peace.

Thank you my dear son-in-law to be for reading this with an open heart, and I pray you understand with your heart what I am trying to say. We gave her to someone the first time who hurt and grieved her. This time I need you to know something about the daughter I bore who will be in your care, and for you to know that I am entrusting you with the most precious gift a person can give, Her child.

Love, Annie’s Mom

Faith is not Necessary when You Know how Things Are Going to Work Out- That's Knowledge!

Someone just wrote, "Faith is not necessary when you know how things are going to work out, - that's knowledge. It's in the time of unknowing that having faith is what sees you through to the other side. Faith is what gives you strength. Faith is that light in your heart that keeps on shining even when it's all darkness outside. Now is the time to keep that faith alive!
We've just had 3 young men die who lived in our town today. 20year old Ben Berger, 22 year old Nick Adenhart, and 23 year old Ryan Myers. It is now Good Friday, and remembering how Jesus died on this black day in History, yet, the brightest day in History also, reminds me to ask for Prayer for the Families of these Three Young Men. It will be a long time until "Good Friday" will ever be a "Good Friday" for their families left behind.

Kindness, It's power is often Underestimated

Kindness, How it has changed my life.

Love, Honor, obey. We all are familiar with those lines. Maybe some of us have opted out of using these words in the marriage ceremony. I believe there is a word that could be used in ceremonies, which would make for a life-time of love with your spouse. Kindness.
I believe my husband must have inserted Kindness into his vows, because He is the person who I have learned what kindness really means in action. An adjective,” Kind is described as “; thoughtful, gentle, helpful, friendly and sympathetic.” This is Mark.
I married him 32 years ago, and I realize now, how young and immature I was. He really wasn’t much older than me, but He seemed to possess some wisdom beyond his years.
We all have stories of who may have impacted our lives in compassionate or thoughtful ways, but many times we overlook our faithful spouse. The one who has shared many years of history with you. Mark’s gentle and kind ways come from his belief in the Bible. In the book of Galatians chapter 5: 22- 25, talks about ‘fruit of the spirit. It describes love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness and many more wonderful attributes of a Godly man or woman.
I think of the many times, I would spout off my feelings, harshly, with hurtful painful words, when I was a younger woman, and I’d be waiting for his retaliation, but He would not speak until he thought about what he was going to say, and would talk to me with gentleness that I did not deserve. That self control lived daily has changed my life, there is good in men and women. It can be lived and grow.
We’ve survived the death of our first child, the birth of 4 more, disabling events to 2 of our children, weddings, grandbabies and a divorce. Yet, when I lay down at night, and look at this person, who chose me to marry, I am humbled at his kindness toward me.
I sometimes look at marriages, and notice that before marriage the couple speak sweetly and all about love and the promise of a great relationship, and then after marriage, something seeps out of them, and the sweetness they shared has changed into blame, anger, meanness, and unkind words. I feel sad wondering where they lost their goal of a good life together.
Mark chose on his wedding day, that this was going to be a forever deal, and how you treat your wife, is going to be a lifetime of choosing to know when to speak and when not to speak. I kept waiting for him to change into that husband we all dread. Instead, he just lived day in and day out, with the fruits of the spirit. I feel blessed to have learned so much from him. I am touched that after all these years; he still is kind, patient, and even wiser.
I didn’t learn about kindness through most venues we women learn from. I learned it from the one person who I see day in and day out. The person who has seen me at my best, and been with me at my worst.
I know that our children love him so much and our sons are trying to emulate their Dad. I believe the true measure of a man comes out in the ordinary everyday life, and Mark is the true measure of the adjective, Kind. Thank you Mark for not bending to the natural ways of men, but choosing to look long term on our marriage, and decide to base your words on “what she’ll remember”.
To be able to learn from your own spouse, is incredible, because I know he really has my best interests at heart. I know also, he is a loved and blessed man because He took his role as husband seriously, even at the young age of 21... My life has learned by his example, and grown in return,
we would be gentler, more careful with our words, we could change the dynamics of family life daily. Kindness, a powerful word, yet many times overlooked and underestimated. Kindness practiced and lived is similar to pay it forward, the returns you reap may not always be seen, but its effects ripple through time until the day we meet God

What would you do, if your Child wants to Die:

This is difficult. I didn't want to admit that my child I raised, could possibly be at the end of her rope of hope and be dangerously walking the suicide line. What did I do, when I knew she was desperate and had lost all hope and didn't want any help. She isolated herself, and stayed away from family activities.
This was the longest hardest summer of my life, since my first daughter Lindsey died. Now, I was facing the reality of my daughter who was married, wanting to commit suicide. She honestly felt like there was no reason for her to go on. Her husband wanted a divorce, and that was that. Sure, he was young when he married her, but alot of marriages begin young, and grow up together.
She'd been married nearly 3 years, and she adored this guy. You know, there were so many red flags that were going up before she married him, but I talked with her so many times, and she assured me, and had me trust her instincts, and not mine, that things were all good. They weren't. I wasn't going to find this out till almost 3 years later.
I saw the signs,,I knew she didn't come around the house much after she was married, but I'd tell myself, she's making her own way, and I was NOT going to interfere. If she wanted my advice, she'd ask. I didn't want to be one of "those' kinds of mother-in-laws in their marriage. So the times they did come to family events, I was grateful. Yes, we'd talk often on the phone, and sometimes I'd hear something in her voice, but I could tell she didn't want me to ask..... until this summer. The same summer that my youngest daughter was planning her marriage, I found out that my oldest daughter's marriage was not going to make it. Not because she didn't want it to, but because he wanted to move on. I didn't know which way to support her, sometimes I'd do what I knew I shouldn't and tell her to come home and live, and she'd respond,, 'mom, I'm praying for him, isn't that what I'm supposed to do?". Yes. Of course. Pray him back to the fold if necessary. Forgive and move on. But I watched her more and more, and saw her get thinner and thinner, and then one night it started. The phone calls very late at night, in a very tiny whispering voice," mom, can you come stay overnight with me?". My heart was breaking. So many times I couldn't go over because it was already so late and I had to go to work the next morning, or I had already taken my sleeping medicine and didn't want to drive. I was useless at work the next day, because all I could hear was her little desperate voice, asking me to come over.
I call this the summer of my grieving. It surprised me how much I grieved with her. I wasn't angry yet at him, I was scared for her. She kept holding out hope and our family knew the demise of the marriage was imminent. What's so sad is to try to be happy for a child who is planning the beginning of her life in marriage, and knowing the same month she weds, your other child's marriage has died. She started to die that summer. She wouldn't answer calls, she couldn't eat, she wouldn't answer text messages, unless I'd say if you don't answer me I'm coming over right now! She became a recluse. Imagining her husband as a god.
Then came the times when she'd call, and her voice would be shaky and quiet, and she wouldn't say anything but "mom...". It makes me so sad and cry now as I write when I think of her voice and her profound sadness. When you're child hurts, you hurt with them. It doesn't end when they're adult, if anything, it's even more painful because you are entrusting them to someone else's care, and who knows how they may treat them when nobody's around. That's what we found out, in bits and pieces, the horror or her marriage. The secrets she lived with and was controlled by. She didn't know any different. she didn't know what was healthy and what was not. She only knew she wasn't loved anymore. She just felt that the one person who knew her best, didn't want her anylonger. She was like an old ragdoll tossed to the side, and told to "get over it ". It would have been easier for my family if she could "just get over it", but get real, how do you end the promise of your future? How can people just tell other people, to just move on. Don't they know that you can't just get over a spouse? What kind of heartlessness is that? It was uncomfortable for everyone, so I guess they would feel better if She felt better. It wasn't going to happen, in any time soon. My precious child, preferred to die than to live without him. She teeter-tottered on the edge of rope, barely hanging on, fading away every day. Quieter, disappearing from us and reality. The truth is, I understood her. I understood how painful and rude it is for someone to think that your marriage was just something to get over. To not acknowledge her life with him was a slap in the face. I'll tell you more about how the summer went and how she barely lived and nearly died. My daughter, my life. God thank you for bringing her this far, and Dear Lord, thank you that she is loved again. Yes Lord, she was always loved by you, but the dark one kept blocking you from her view.

Surgery

Here I was in early December, so excited about the prospects of a new job. Working in an OR as a tech. I went in for the position and shadowed someone for a day to 'try' the job out, and just knew this was the position for me! I was so excited. I even had inside help, a friend who got me in the door and was sure I had the job. Then BOOM! I get a letter from the hospital saying 'We regret to inform you...." you know the rest. Oh my heart was devastated. I could eat taste and drink this job, I knew it was for me. What happened Lord? Don't you know this is the kind of work I'd be good at? Couldn't you have just given this one thing to me? I hear the whine going on in my head...... but Lord, I've done this and this in your name, and you couldn't just give me this one teensy little thing I've asked for. Another set-back and disappointment. So it appeared to me.
During the same month I had a Doctor's appointment, and was told I needed to schedule a major surgery ASAP. I put it off, because I just knew I had this job in the palm of my hand. Now, I didn't. My youngest child had just married in October, and my husband and I were so looking forward to this season in life, time for us to expand what our dreams were. The ones you had to put aside for years while you chose to raise children and take care of all the family responsibilities before your own dreams. We did a good job as a team with our 4 children, now adults, with spouses of their own, and 2 with children. Now it was our turn! Thus, the desire to get the hospital job.
OK Lord, I get it, you didn't want me to get the job, because you knew I'd need at least 4 weeks off for a surgery, and starting a new job and asking for a huge amount of time off would not work. The downside of the surgery was that I would be basically a couch potato or a computer-head. No lifting, standing for long periods of time, no physical activity, not even to push a vacuum cleaner. I know this sounds like an ideal situation, but I have a tendency to be a neat-Nick. I had no one at home now to do these things, laundry, loading the woodstove, cooking dinner.
Plan 2 starts forming in my head, I probably need this time off. It's a slow time at my job anyway, so actually Lord, you're right, this is the opportune time to schedule the surgery. We'll figure out the game plan as we go along. God is so good. He allowed for one of my sons to stop by my house for the first week and stoke the fires of the woodstove until my husband could arrive home. And, BTW Lord, there really won't be that much mess, now will there? It's only the two of us now, so stop fretting Kim! The only set-back to this set-back was that I have a 2 month old grandson, whom I can't hold or carry, and a 2 year old granddaughter who can't understand why her Granny doesn't pick her up for kisses. My children really do understand I have to take it easy, so they are helping this transitional time as much as possible, by being helpful and understanding of me having to set aside 'grandma's job for awhile.
Instead of wasting my time, God started telling me to get working on something I've always been inclined to do. Write. But how Lord? and Where? There are sites everywhere online, and as soon as I'd go to one site, I'd follow a link and be distracted and hours would go by and I still hadn't accomplished anything of value, except downloading all kinds of things my computer really couldn't handle nor does it need. I just couldn't seem to figure out how to start. And that, is where I found my start! I googled, 'how to write online",, and I came up to a site called "ehow". It's all about writing short articles about 'how to' do things. I was intrigued. I wondered, could I do this. I've never written anything to publish, yet I kept going back to that sight. I wondered, could I use it for the Lord's purposes also? How could I work God into my 'ehow' articles. I realized then,that I didn't have to have his name in all my articles, His Name is on my page, in my profile, in my lifestyle. He's woven into the very fabric of my being. So I began. Scared, fingers stumbling over the keyboard, dictionary on one side of me, thesaurus on the other. Magazines and books piled up by my computer. I had so many ideas for writing, it was almost overwhelming in itself. I asked my children for ideas on 'how to ' do things articles, and they would text me this idea or that, and then I would take off on it, research some information online, and just write. I've only been doing it for a few weeks now, but I see God pushing me all along to this point in my life. I can see his hand closing doors, and opening new doors. I can see now, what I thought of as a 'set-back' a true new beginning. I'm so excited by all the things He's filling my head with.... it is finally my season in life, I realize He has given me many experiences that have been good, bad, and ugly, yet, in due time, ultimately God has been guiding me to this path. Thank you Lord for allowing what I called a 'set-back' to be a very exciting new door . I'll write more later, and keep up a journal about various aspects of my life. Come along if you like, you'll find a real human being behind the words, someone who's tried and failed, and won some and lost some, yet the sum of my life so far has been ever believing, and faithful. Let's journey together, you'll learn alot about what can happen in 32 years of marriage. God is so good. Goodnight now.