Have you ever heard the old saying, "God will only give you what you can handle"?
Well, I believe this saying and often look to it in times of stress and overbooking and overall craziness.
But, in a different light, I now see this saying taking on a new meaning.
For background - my husband has never known his father. His mother and grandmother raised him and he has never even laid eyes on his father. Doesn't even really know if his father is still alive or where he even lives.
So when I married my husband, I gained only a mother-in-law, not a father-in-law too.
By this point I thought I had scored. Because I only had to deal with one in-law parent instead of two, or in some cases three or four.
But over the last few years of our marriage, I can see that God truly did give me all I can handle with only giving me one in-law parent.
When I married my husband I was told to be careful, because he and I are from different cultures, and he was raised much differently than me. And down the line, some where down the line, we would run into trouble.
I brushed them off as most excited new brides would, thinking that love would conquer all - but now I see where those good-doers were coming from.
My mother-in-law is an issue.
She is an issue in my life, my husband's life, our married life, and the lives of her other children.
And without going into much more detail for personal sake, I really can't handle her.
This next semester in MOPS, I am leading a group of new mothers through a Bible study book entitled, Mothering without Guilt. It hopes to teach these young moms how to let go of "false" guilt and learn to expect "true" guilt in her parenting.
One major "false" guilt that mothers carry is being what the book calls a "martyr mother." You know the type, where the mom puts guilt on her children for their successes and for her sacrifices she made raising her children and in return her children owe her things like phone calls, presents, money, and sometimes even more.
One perfect example of my mother-in-law being a "martyr mother" is when we offered her to stay with us for a week in our home, and she invited over eight of her personal friends to come over for dinner without asking us first, or even giving us a heads-up. As she put it, "This is my house. I can invite whomever I want over."
Well, no lady, this isn't your house. As I recall, you didn't have anything to do with purchasing it. But in her mind, it is her house, because it is her son's house, and her son belongs to her because she raised him.
And I am just venting here, but whenever I joking point out to her a characteristic of my husband's personality, she always responds by saying, "You don't think I know this? I am his mother! I know everything about him!" Well, again, no lady, you don't. His co-workers now know more about him than you.
I know that my relationship with my mother-in-law will only get worse once my child is born. I have seen it with the relationship of her other daughter-in-law and her first grandchild.
My only hope now is that God continues to hold my tongue when all I want to do is lash out at her for everything she has done, and let my husband do all the talking.
And I will continue to seek refuge knowing that God blessed me with only one in-law parent to deal with - because that's all he knew I could handle.
