Great Article on being a Mother-In-Law

As a new mother-in-law I desire to build the relationship not tear it down. I need all the help I can get. Here is a great article I found from Nancy Wilson’s Femina blog…..

http://femina.reformedblogs.com/2007/10/03/the-mother-in-law/

I am excited to continue to grow in this new phase of life. I now have a daughter-in-law, Halannah, married to our oldest son, Taylor, who is expecting our first grandchild and Jack, our son-in-law married to our oldest daughter, Ashley, who we are praying will be expecting our second grandchild soon…..that is my will not the Lords yet for them .

Halannah comes and spends time with me two nights a month for dinner. It gives us a chance to get to know one another. I love hearing her stories of the walk of courtship she and Taylor had. Their ups and downs and the learning to love the Lord through it. Growing more in love with her as we learn about one another. She is like mine now and is growing in her faith as a young married woman. God has deepened their faith because they lost their first child. They married young and wanted to start a family and they felt they were ready so we supported them and decided that although they were young, they were doing it right so we came along side of them to help them not try to convince them they were wrong.

Taylor and Halannah came to us a week after they married and said they felt the conviction of the Holy Spirit and confirmation by the Word of God that they should be debt free and leave their family planning up to the Lord. They paid the one bill they had and went off birth control that week. That night I cried because how could such a gracious Lord allow me to be a grandmother sometime soon. That is what this site is all about, Leaving a Legacy of love to our children and down to the grandchildren. It happened sooner than we thought. I was humbled when they first called my husband “grandpa” when all our friends were around. He said “what!”. We were very excited for them. They had been chided a little through all of us family and friends about wanting many children, they want 10, so when Taylor called me at 6am in the morning when Halannah was about 6 weeks pregnant and said she had been bleeding all night, my heart became still and I just prayed first for them, then for me. I had personally never experienced a miscarriage and I was deeply affected. Eric and I went to their house and we looked into their sweet faces and saw the sadness. It was probably one of the most difficult moments of my life as a mother to these young adults, my children, heartbroken like this. They had these big brown eyes full of tears hoping for the best outcome, that this was normal and that Halannah and the baby would be ok. We prayed and believed with them. But in the end, they lost this first baby. When you want to grab your son and take away the pain and can’t because you as a mother-in-law are now in a different place, how hard it is. Now, they are pregnant again and the mommy and baby are very healthy and she is now over 8 weeks along. How bittersweet this lesson was for me. How it matured these young adults in their walk with the Lord. I will keep you posted on new events of our lives.

Michelle