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