I looked at Mother in Laws differently until I became one.

When a couple gets married the Lord’s way they build eternal relationships — relationships that will never end. If we and extended family are true to temple covenants, not only will the husband-wife relationship be eternal, so will our ties with extended family and in-laws.

When I got married at 18, my parents encouraged us to go away together to school to solidify our own relationship.  IT was the best advice for us.  When we returned to our home town two years later, we had learned to rely on each other.  While I knew that I could come to my parents for support for any situation, when I would complain about my husband to them, they ALWAYS pointed out all of his good qualities to me.  They were a friend to our marriage first and foremost. If they had any worries about my husband, I never knew about them.  Once when my mom saw that life with young children was wearing us down, she told me that she would babysit so my husband and I could go away for a long weekend alone.  We decided we needed to make that an annual or semi annual event.  

While raising our children, we lived on the same street where my husband grew up and his parents still lived in the house he grew up in right up the street from us.  To some people that would be difficult.  For us, it was not.  Often we would only see them on Sundays at church.  We were raising our busy family and they were busy with their lives.   What could have been a really difficult situation was really wonderful for all of us because they knew that we should and did cleave to each other but we lived close enough for our children to have a sweet relationship with their grandparents.  

This last week was the one year anniversary of my husband's death.  While my loss and the loss to my children is great, it is just as great to my mother and father in law and to my husband's siblings. We decided to spend the day with my in laws sharing memories and being together.  IT was such a sweet experience and one that made me realize in a way that I hadn't allowed them to be my parents, I had limited their relationship with me never in any overt way because we have always gotten along but in a very emotional way.  With my new found view of eternity and eternal families, those limitations are falling away and it is sweet indeed.  

Are Your Children the Boss of you? Do they sometimes act that way?

As I read an article about Who's the boss, a study on whether parents are the bosses or if they have abdicated that role to their children to keep the peace.   I was very grateful that in my family growing up, there was never any question that our parents were the bosses together.  We got into more trouble when we would ask one parent who said no, and then went to ask the other parent to see if we could get a yes answer.  My parents instilled in us that they were a team and what one says, the other will support them.  Being the 6th of 9, I wondered if some of my older siblings tested this a lot because by the time I came around, it was just an accepted rule.  

In my own home, it was the same.  If I disagreed with a decision made by my husband, I supported his decision until we could talk about it privately.  My husband was the protector of the respect my kids needed to show to me.  When they were sassy which all kids are known to be, he showed his "power" by making them apologize to me and telling not to talk to their mother that way.  They weren't afraid of him, they just had a healthy respect for his authority (and size).  At the same time, he could only do that if he showed me that same kind of respect that he expected them to show me.  I love him for that and I see my sons treating their wives the same way.  They knew we were a team and stuck together.

While the relationship between my husband and I,  and our kids had the proper balance, as I read the article about power between partners, I realized that there were some things that may have been a little out of balance.  IT didn't seem to be a problem, we each had our stewardship and it seemed to work in creating a harmonious home but, I couldn't help see that there were some areas where we could have improved and I believe that holding family councils in the way outlined in Counseling with our councils would have helped.  

I learned about this topic in a class last semester and one of the things that struck me about counseling with our spouses is that when we as a couple seek the spirit of the Lord and to know what his will is for our family, it makes following that decision through to the end a lot easier.  I wonder how much less debt families would be in if they made counseling with each other and the Lord when making large purchases a part of the decision.  A friend of mine was pregnant with her third child.  They had a small car where three car seats would not fit in the back seat without great difficulty.  She was feeling very overwhelmed with the prospect of the struggle to take her family anywhere.  When she and her husband made it a matter of prayer, they were able to find a suburban for the price they could afford and it lasted them through another child and for about 8 more years.  

The Lord is concerned with the affairs of our lives and things that cause us distress especially when we are trying to keep the commandments and manage our families according to the recommendations of the church.  When we council with each other and include the Lord, solutions that are better than the ones we could come up with alone will be found.  I have seen this in my life and in the lives of others who try to follow this path.  It isn't easy, sometimes our pride (okay, most of the time) needs to be checked.  We will be asked to act in faith and get out of our comfort zone and we will have to learn to trust each other and the Lord.  These are all difficult things to do for the natural man; but, isn't that our purpose here on earth, suppress the natural man and to know and do the will of the Lord?  When our families have the right balance of respect, stewardship, trust and seeking to know the Lord's will, we can thrive.

Fidelity in Marriage

The Family a proclamation to the world states, "Children are entitled to birth within the bonds of matrimony and to be reared by a mother and father who honor marital vows with complete fidelity."  While the topic of conversation this week is about sexual fidelity in marriage, there is so much to this.  The definitions of fidelity are instructive to this topic.  

1.  faithfulness to a person, cause, or belief, demonstrated by continuing loyalty and support.

2.  sexual faithfulness to a spouse or partner.

3.  the degree of exactness with which something is copied or reproduced.

In a marriage, people vow to place their spouse first in their life through richer or poorer, sickness and health etc.  The first definition covers most of these.  The second definition coupled with the first definition doesn't really allow much room for anyone else to come between the partners and the third definition I thought was really interesting.  As our children grow up in a healthy, environment where parents are living with complete fidelity, they will then have a better chance of reproducing or copying that which they already know from the examples of their parents.  

My younger sister was asked by an acquaintance about a sexual behavior her new husband was wanting her to do.  It was obviously uncomfortable for her friend.  My sister's answer perfectly sums up how a sexual relationship should be.  She said "My husband protects my virtue.  That is so important to him that he wouldn't ask me to do something that would be uncomfortable for me."    Sister Dalton, the former general Young Women's President in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints said, " “When we understand our divine identity, it will define all of our relationships with each other.”  No where is this more obvious than in the sexual relationship between a married couple."  Does that mean that we don't explore things sexually together, no!  but it does mean that we communicate about the things we like and don't like always with the other partner's feelings in mind and the loving bond we share.  It isn't always easy to communicate about a lot of difficult topics in a marriage but, it becomes much easier when bonds of trust and love are the rule of our marriages and not the exception.

In the for strength of Youth pamphlet published by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, in the section on dating it says, "Remember that a young man and a young woman on a date are responsible to protect each other’s honor and virtue."  If we teach our children the worth of souls, theirs as well as others, and they see that example in our homes between husbands and wives, this will be a natural outgrowth to that responsibility and fidelity with all of its definitions will become more natural to them.

To Gridlock or not to Gridlock, that is the question.

I am CHEAP!  There, I said it!  It is just the way I am and I think I came by it naturally maybe even genetically through my mother.  It is a great virtue sometimes and it is also sometimes a terrible vice.  My husband on the other hand was not cheap.  He liked to spend money mostly on sports equipment but he also loved to be generous which made it a virtue most of the time.  This could have been a perpetual problem and for some of our marriage it actually was.   I finally decided that our marriage was just a little dysfunctional when it came to money and how we dealt with it.  We figured out how to make it work without creating a lot of tension.  

With that being said, we didn't allow our differences to determine how we interacted and as we created our family over time, I learned why we both had the feelings and attitudes we had.  His was because of the emotions around money in his childhood home.  In my childhood home, we never lacked for anything but my parents discussed why we should be careful with money.  I am cheap not because I feel the need to not spend money, I am cheap because I just am.  He is generous and doesn't keep very good track of where he spends money just because he is.  I love him for who he is and have learned to live with his little quirk by enjoying and thanking him for his thoughtfulness when he spent money in spoiling me and our children  or being generous to others.  He dealt with my cheapness by making sure he enlisted our kids help to direct me not to buy the cheapest model available but to look for one he had prompted them on before.  I could laugh that he did that because sometimes my cheapness even bothered me, it's just one of my quirks.  After he passed away last year, I can look around my house and see all the nice gifts he showered me with that have so much more meaning.  They make me feel a little closer to him and  I am grateful that I have little reminders of him all over our house.    

In Gottman's book The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work he states that perpetual problems don't have to lead to gridlock which is when partners can't find a way to overcome their perpetual problems and they lead to feelings of resentment.  Gridlock and resentment eventually make compromise impossible along with all the ensuing emotions inherent in perpetual conflict. 

After about 15 years of marriage I decided that if I wasn't going to divorce him over a problem that we had, I would learn to just let it go and accept him as he is.  If the problem was such that I couldn't live with him and the problem, it was something we needed to work out.  There weren't too many of those problems but the ones we had, we were both emotionally intelligent and deeply committed to our family that we worked them out by compromising and supporting each other.  That process refined both of us into two people who created a beautiful happy marriage and family.   

Choose your Love, then Love your Choice.

A friend of mine once said, there are probably 10 things that will be perpetual problems that you will have no matter who you marry.  If you think the grass is greener being married to another person, think again.  I loved the comment in Dr. Gottman's book, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work,  when he says, "marriages are successful to the degree that the problems you choose are ones you can cope with."  His example was profound to me. "Paul married Alice and Alice gets loud at parties and Paul, who is shy, hates that.  But if Paul had married Susan, he and Susan would have gotten into a fight before they even got to the party.  That's because Paul is always late and Susan hates to be kept waiting.  She would feel taken for granted which she is very sensitive about,  Paul would see her complaining about this as her attempt to dominate him, which he is very sensitive about.  If Paul had married Gail, they wouldn't have even gone to the party because they would still be upset about an argument they had the day before about Paul's not helping with the house work.  To Gail, when Paul does not help, she feels abandoned, which she is sensitive about, and to Paul, Gail's complaining is an attempt to at domination, which he is sensitive about."  And so it goes. 

A very wise man once said, "Choose your love and then love your choice.  We are all imperfect people.  We will not always agree with our spouse and they will do things that are very upsetting and irritating just as we sometimes do things that are very irritating and upsetting to them.  How do we maintain the love that once felt for each other in spite of these irritations.  

I was married for 33 years to my sweetheart before he passed away suddenly in December of last year.  We married young and when we were first married, I thought it was my job to change him.  As you can imagine, that didn't go over very well.  Luckily for both of us, I matured a little and came to realize that I needed to love him as he is, after all, who he is, was the man I fell in love with, not someone I expected him to become.  No one wants to feel like their spouse is continually trying to change them. We all need to feel validated and appreciated for who we are right at this very moment.  When we feel that love and validation, we are so much more likely accept the repair attempts or the benefit of the doubt or to give the repair attempts when we have conflicts. 

Once when I was having a difficult time with my mother in law, I came home from a particularly difficult family event and was ranting and raving about something that was said.  Even though the things that had aggravated me were, from my perception true, and my husband didn't try to defend his mother, he just said, "what do  you want me to do about it, shoot her?"  That was obviously not an option but by having him show me that there was nothing he could do to change his mother, he didn't need to defend her and disagree with me, he validated my feelings but totally defused the emotions around the incident.  It could have gone very differently, we could have each dug in, but it didn't and it was never a conflict between us and we have a sweet relationship with her.

How we choose to deal with the perpetual problems in our relationships determines whether those problems will create wedges that escalate or whether they can become funny little quirks that add love and humor to our relationships.  Love and humor are so much easier and more fun to live with than conflict.

I found this really great quote this week. 

Only what is truly important...

“Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.” Steve Jobs

I come to this quote from a different perspective, I am the widow who is left to ponder on the life my husband had led or rather the life that I helped him to lead.  Now that he is gone, I am left to ponder on the little things that I did or said both good and bad that had an impact on our relationship.  Happily for me, there was much more good than bad.  With his passing, I have had the opportunity to look at my motivations and yes, pride within my relationships.  What is it that I gain from holding onto my pride?  I can have some righteous indignation that I am correct.  At least correct in my own mind and perspective. I can have people think that I am stubborn and opinionated.  I can alienate people who I think have wronged me.  I can hold grudges, pit people against each other, and withhold my love because I am right.  Or, I can be humble and forgiving and have loving and happy relationships.  Being humble and forgiving doesn’t mean that I need to allow people to take advantage of me, but it allows relationships to grow in such a way that when we are feeling put upon, we can tell those who are hurting us that they are hurting us.  Rather than holding onto our anger and pride, we can let it go and restore contentment. 

About a year before my husband died, he and his brother went to Texas to look at property in an area that we eventually wanted to move when we retired in 15 or 20 years.  During that trip, they found two pieces of property that were perfect for what we were looking for and right next to each other.  Without telling me, he put a low ball offer on one of the properties not thinking it would be accepted., while his brother did the same on the other piece.   I found out that he had made an offer and that his offer was accepted through an email from the realtor.   I felt very put upon that my opinion didn’t really matter if he would make such an important decision for our family without consulting me or telling me.  My pride was really hurt and I was going to show him how very upset I was.  I held this over his head for months as we made preparations to move.  When we discussed this, he did everything that I asked him to do to make it as easy for me to move as he could.  If I am being totally honest, he didn’t really think through his decision but I also wasn’t allowing him to forget that he had made a huge blunder.  I made his life really miserable every time we came up against some obstacle to this plan and I felt justified.  It took some personal impressions from God to soften my heart.  The Lord, knowing I wasn’t ready to be happy about the move, allowed me to just be positive and supportive about moving.  We finally moved and to my surprise, I absolutely loved Texas.  I had made my husband’s life really difficult for several months as I held onto my pride.  What did it get me?  Contention and animosity in the most important relationship in my life.  What a waste of time and loving memories we could have been making during those months.  Had I known he would be gone within the year, I would have done things differently unfortunately, we seldom know when a loved one will be gone. 

CS Lewis, in Mere Christianity said, “Once the element of competition has gone, pride has gone.”  I had been having a competition with my husband making him pay for his decision rather than having our relationship be complementary.  Once I let the competition between us go, the wedges that had been put in place through those several months fell away and our new home became a great adventure for both of us for the nine months he had left to live.  Don’t waste your time holding onto pride that can hurt the most important relationships in your life.  

I've never heard of a man being shot by his wife while doing the dishes...

I once heard a lecture on the story in the New Testament of the Savior and the woman taken in adultery.  The lecturer said, the terms that the Savior used to address the woman, “woman” were terms of utmost respect used to address royalty.  Now, certainly this woman had done things that were not respectable, and the Savior didn’t address her that way because she was a respected woman.  He addressed her that way because he was good.  We don’t treat someone with respect because they deserve it, (although everyone deserves respect simply because they are a human being) but because of the kind of person that we are.  The Savior treated her with utmost respect because he was good not because she was good. 

I think when we are trying to emotionally connect with our spouses, we treat them lovingly even when they are not being very lovable, we give them support even when they are not being very supportive.  If our relationship is based on traditional marriage vows or covenants, we have covenanted to stay connected not because they deserve it all the time but because we’ve covenanted to do just that, STAY CONNECTED. 

One of my favorite refrigerator magnets was a picture of a man doing the dishes, the caption said, “I’ve never heard of a man being shot by his wife while doing the dishes.”  While that is kind of funny and probably true, there is so much more going on if a husband is willing to do the dishes simply because he wants to make his wife’s life easier and in a real way, connect with her.  On the flip side of that, a man rarely has left his family when he is appreciated and validated for his hard work and devotion to his family. 

We all need to feel appreciated and validated.  Each one of us feels those things in a different way.  The exciting part of being married is that you get to discover what it is that makes your spouse feel connected to you, you get to explore what helps you feel connected to your spouse.  There are somethings that will be obvious and other things that will be a mystery to uncover.  The fun is in figuring each other out emotionally.    When that happens, you are on your way to a real life happily ever after.