Keeping in step

In life, we go through different stages. We make goals or have ideas of the kind of teenager we want to be (even if it changes every five mins), what kind of wife we will be someday and the one I dreamt of since a little girl, a mother. Now that I am in a phase in life where half my kids have flown the nest, I am coming to this next stage. Before long my kids could be married. Gasp, I feel like I just had them! People weren’t kidding when they told you to enjoy em’, because they grow fast!

I loved studying the concepts of creating healthy ties with in-laws and their married children this week. Based on my personal experiences with the parentals and past in-laws, I came to the conclusion that there was a lot done wrong on their parts, and individually in mine and my ex-husband’s parts. Twenty something-year-old kids are well, 20 ([insert nice voice] if you’re still in your 20’s come talk to me in 20 years, I’ll laugh with you). I might be making an assumption based on all I have seen in the last 20 years but some do not get the concept of what it means to go from practically teen to marriage; minus mom and dad practically overnight. Let’s face it, in a majority of the church culture I live in we marry young. We were a kid wasting mom and dad’s gas cruisin’ on Friday night, to practically getting married the next day. What adds to the difficulty of this is the differences of traditions and beliefs each new couple’s own family of origin brings to their marriage. How on earth are 20-year olds supposed to know they need coupliness on their own without Mom and Dad advice and handholds when that is all they knew? I am sure there were some whose parents kicked them out of the nest earlier on for self-reliance purposes. I feel like in my experience I wasn’t really prepared to fly, nor was my spouse.

I think the solution to avoiding unhealthy parent/married adult-child relationships can be solved by being a healthy in-law/parent. They can set the stage in helping their young adult children transition from their young adulthood into marriage partnerships. In the book Helping and healing our families: Principles and practices inspired by The Family: A Proclamation to the World by James Harper and Susan Olsen suggest that one of the greatest gifts parents/in-laws can give their married children is to recognize early that they must help define and protect the boundaries that these children have with their own spouses. Newly married couples should be separate from the families in which they grew up to make their own connections and family traditions. When parents meddle, it makes it very difficult for their children. Here some ideas I found so I can attain the favorite Mama/Mother-in-law title someday:

1. Don’t be the main confidant to your children in regards to their lives. Turn them around and send them home. It is important that they develop their solutions, make decisions, and share big news with their spouse, not you!
2. Don’t get too enmeshed. Step back and do not impose your opinions and feelings or try to coerce their family’s decisions.
3. Don’t pressure your kids to join you for every holiday, and other special occasions. They need to make the joint decision as a couple where they will start their own patterns of celebration, at times that will likely involve you.
4. If they don’t include you, choose not to be offended and be happy they are drawing near to each other. Don’t worry they still care about you. If you are feeling otherwise maybe reassess if you have been breaking the ones already stated above. If that’s the case, please review 1-3.
   

Parents need to encourage their married children to turn towards each other if they see unhealthy patterns forming. Following the above ideas is a good start to do this. Too much interference from in-laws lowers marital satisfaction in couples. So, if or when married children start forming their own traditions parents will do best to accept the boundaries that their married children give. The more parents respect this the more their children will want them in parts of their lives. Families can create amazing bonds and come together with healthy boundaries which can help everyone involved. 

LO13

Walk beside me

Marriages that are healthy reflect a husband and wife who show an equal partnership. One partner doesn’t show control and power over the other.

President Gordon B. Hinkley said, “In the marriage companionship there is neither inferiority nor superiority. The woman does not walk ahead of the man; neither does the man walk ahead of the woman. They walk side by side as a son and daughter of God on an eternal journey” (Ensign, May 2002).

I really love the imagery of this both physically and mentally. Couples who keep their steps in different strides to their individuality, yet still make conscious efforts to not walk ahead of the other with ill intent. Walking together, two people who respect each other; I imagine hand in hand with their fingers enlaced. How beautiful would that be? Certainly, this is a true partnership! Maybe some of us have this? Maybe some of us mourn this? Maybe, like myself, only dream of this kind of relationship. No worries though...I know the Lord has my life mapped.

This week I read a really beautiful interview given to President Gordon B. Hinkley and his wife Marjorie Hinkley from the Ensign magazine (Ensign, Oct. 2013). Now, this is a couple to look to! One thing I always remember about President Hinkley is how much you knew he loved his wife. The reason you knew this because he told us all the time! He really honored and loved her; his helpmeet (meet means equal). In the interview, Sister Hinkley shared spiritual experiences of how she was treated being the wife of the prophet. She said he never insisted she do anything “his” way or any way for that matter. She was recognized for her individuality and because of this made choices for herself. She was given space to make decisions and this she said, made her feel like a real person. He encouraged her to do what made her happy and never ruled or dominated her.

President Hinkley added he did this because he valued his wife, her personality and desires, her ambition and her background. So much respect and love here! WOW! He loved to see her develop her own talents and would marvel at watching her do so. He went on to express how strongly he felt about the importance that husbands should NOT run their wives’ lives and tell her what she should do because it will never work. That last part made me literally laugh out loud. Probably because of my mindset in having met so many righteous, and strong women in the church who are learning to stand up to such abuse. It will never work because eventually, that girl will learn. She will continue to walk with God and eventually… she may go. Or her very actions of standing up will turn her spouse to God, finally. No one, I repeat no one deserves to be mistreated and no doubt our Heavenly Father feels the same way about all His sons and daughters. 

The Savior of the world, Jesus Christ, said of those who would be a part of His Church, “Be one; and if ye are not, ye are not mine” (D&C 38:27) There it is. That says a lot about how we should treat our marriages. Unity comes to the couples who chose to respect and love one another, not tear, nor walk ahead of one another.  

LO12