This is a continuation of the Cutting the Apron Strings (part one).   In this article,  I will start with the parents.  Do you want to be a great inlaw?  You are in some good and bad company.  In the history of the Bible, there are some great and not so great inlaws.   How about Saul?  How would you rate him as a father in law?  I feel bad for his daughter, Michel.    She is given to David in marriage in hopes that David will be killed while trying to meet her dowry.   When this doesn’t happen, he constantly puts his daughter in the position of “you either side with Daddy or you side with your husband”.    I am sure in the beginning of my marriage, my own dad may have been that way.   Even though he always told me that his job was to raise me to give me away, he still  lost his little girl.    Let’s look at some good inlaws now.  How about Naomi?   When Ruth’s husband died, she was ready to give up her relationship with her daughter in law.  She must have been a darn good one if Ruth wanted to stay with her!   Or how about Jethro?  What kind of father in law was he to Moses?

Parents, if you want to be able to have a good relationship with your child who is marrying and his/her spouse, you’ve got to let them leave.   It is something that I haven’t experienced from the parent angle yet, but as the child who’s parent is hanging on, it doesn’t make things easy at all.   Parents, you’ve got to cut the counseling strings.   If your daughter or son comes to you, spilling their guts out to you, don’t say a word.   Dr. Young suggests these things… back up…shut up… pray a lot… listen and encourage.   Don’t take sides.    In this way, you can be a parent to both your child AND your DIL/SIN (son in law…not sin!  LOL)   Cut the economic strings…you can give economic help, but leave no strings attached to it.   “Since I paid for your marriage, I expect you to take care of me in my old age”or “since I helped pay for all this baby stuff, I need to be the first grandparent called to babysit”…um, no.   You can make an arrangement that it be paid back, but do not put stipulations on it.   Let your kids leave you.  Let them spread their wings and fly.  I know you’ve BTDT, but you’ve got to let them learn how to do it on their own.   It will build a very strong marriage for your children.  It will help them learn to let their own children leave someday when it comes time for them.

Alright, if you are on the “child” side of the coin, here’s my advice for you.  To have a successful marriage, you need to also leave the following things…

1. leave your parents:  Sometimes we need to create boundaries with our parents. Sounds bad, doesn’t it? We need to let them know that we love them, and we are grateful for the love, support and training that they have given us, but once we marry, we have created a new family that needs to be able to spread its wings and fly. This does not dishonor your parents by any means…it can actually honor them by not placing them in the situation where they have to take sides.   And depending on the parent, they might take yours or they might take your SPOUSES!  This can be hard on a young couple in their 20’s, but it can be just as hard for those marrying later in life as well. It is wonderful when you can be bailed out by your family, but the longer you take to learn to bail yourself out, the harder it is on your marriage.

2. leave people/former relationships: your mate is #1.   You can’t keep your weekly pool matches with your drinking buddies.  My own shopping sprees with my mom and sister…I really needed to leave them behind.  Anything that takes a lot of your time, it takes away from your spouse.   Now I’m not saying that a once a month GNO is bad, sometimes we need it, but it needs to be that…once a month.   We should be dating our spouse more than our friends.   Leave your past relationships behind.   There is no reason to compare your spouse to someone from the past…or someone you wish you had married instead…your grass can be just as green as what’s on the other side of the fence if you properly water and care for it.   Leave those emotional attachments in the past.

3. leave problems behind:  when you carry baggage around with you, it affects communication, sex life, etc.   1 John 1:9  “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” If there is something to confess about, confess it to God, confess to your spouse, and don’t forget to forgive yourself!

4. leave places, too:   don’t compare to past places.  The good old days are in the past.  You are in the present.  There are good times to come, too with your spouse.

I hope that I have learned enough about God’s plan for marriage that when my two children get married someday, that I can help them leave our home and create their own bond with their spouses without any interference from me. Our job is to raise God fearing children and prepare them to fly out of our nest to build their own.

I would like for you to share your experiences below and any advice you may have for our readers who are engaged or newly married…lessons you have learned from your own experience. But remember this from the Gospel of Matthew “ “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.” (Matt 19:4-6) Do not let anything separate you from (1) God and (2) your spouse….including attachments to your “old home”.

March 25, 2010
Categories: Difficulties and Struggles . . Author: spicynutmeg . Comments: 18 Comments

God never intended for man to be alone.   When he created all the animals, he had Adam name them all.  While naming them all, Adam realized that all the animals had a partner.  He kept looking and looking, but no suitable partner for him could be found.   When God saw how lonely Adam was he created Eve.   He placed Adam in a deep sleep and from his side, he took a rib and fashioned a woman.   Adam named her Eve.  I was pondering this while listening to a radio program one day.  Do you realize that Eve didn’t come from Adam’s head, to be head over him….she didn’t come from his feet, so that she would be trampled by him, but she came from his side…in which she is always under his arm, and equal partner.  I find that totally romantic!

“For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. “ (Genesis 2:24)  I didn’t remember this, but do you realize that God used this verse 5 times in the Bible?  Pretty incredible.   God really meant what he said.  But you see,  Adam and Eve had it easy. No wedding to plan, no parents to argue over where the wedding will be, or what will the reception menu be, or who do you invite/not invite…. No ex-boyfriends to compare to.  No other women to gawk at…No in-laws!  They were a couple that was perfectly made for each other. Match made in heaven. The Bible makes no claim of a wedding because God created the perfect partner (helpmate) for Adam in the Garden of Eden. Gosh, wouldn’t it be nice if it were that way for everyone? As a newlywed couple almost 15 years ago, my husband had a pretty easy time “leaving” his family and uniting with me. He had been pretty independent mostly growing up. His parents were divorced, and he had to do a lot for himself. For me, on the other hand, it was very hard to let go of my family. I was the biggest Daddy’s girl in the world. My Dad did everything with me. He was not only my Dad, he was the shoulder I cried on. He was my coach in softball every season I played. He was my biggest cheerleader in when I played in band or on the basketball squad. He took me to the Varsity boy’s basketball home games to see my latest “crush” in HS, knowing I was watching my latest crush and not the game. He did everything possible for me. My Mom always took great care of our household. We had the best tasting, most nutritious meals every night. She was always home when we got home from school. If I woke up with bad monthly cramps, she was the one up at 2am with me, making me hot tea to comfort me. I had a very close family. We did anything for anyone and didn’t think twice about it, so even though they threw the rice at us and decorated our getaway car with balloons and misspelled words on the car, there were still “apron strings” that were firmly left in my former home that still had an attachment to me. We had a very hard first few years in our marriage. It took me awhile to see that my family was my husband and my young son now. I had to learn how to put them first before my family of origin. I literally needed to learn how to forsake the dependence I had on my parents. I now had to put the best interest of my family (me, dh and ds) forefront in my life. That was the hardest lesson I had to learn. I struggled between the commitment I had to my husband and honoring my parents. In a way, I have to say living 250 miles away from my parents made it somewhat easier. There was no way to “run home to Mama” anytime the least little thing went wrong.

I was listening to a radio program recently by Dr. Ed Young from Second Baptist Church in Houston, TX.   His radio show aired their “Thou Shalt Cut the Apron Strings” program about the same time I started writing this article!  It was an incredible miracle of God to hear about this exact thing I was writing on!    There are 3 operative words in the verse I quoted above from Genesis…leave, cleave and flesh.   We all know what leave means…it means GO!  Cleave, Dr. Young said, is comparable to super glue.   You are supposed to stick to your man and nothing should tear you apart.   Flesh…ah, in this part of the verse, we need to use divine math.   1+1=1!  One flesh unity, one agenda unity, one family unit…you get the point.

I was reading also recently that there are 3 checks to see if you have completely left your old family and united with your spouse. The first one is emotional. Have you left your parents emotional control or are you still looking to them for support and approval? I had been so used to my old life. Going out shopping with my mom and sister whenever we got together… any time we visited, we did that and left my hubby at my parents house with the baby. Can you tell the kind of view he had of my parents the first couple of years of our marriage?   He didn’t like to visit because no one visited with him!  There were also many times I felt like calling my mom and dad and crying “Mr. Nutmeg hurt my feelings by doing this…”, but there was always something keeping me from doing that…I realize now it was God. Your parents will always have empathy for you, and there is no sense in souring their relationship with your spouse by telling them every little thing that is going wrong. That Mama and Papa Bear mentality will always be there for their little Baby bear. Quit telling your parents every little thing your DH does.   That is for you to work out with your spouse.   Your parents have already done their time in supporting and protecting you. It is now time to hand that role over to your spouse completely.

The second one is your financial areas. Starting out as a newlywed couple can be very hard. If you are used to depending on your parents for help with everything, it can be very hard not to “run to Daddy” when the going gets tough. We both started out with debts to our names…college loans, credit card bills, a car note…you name it.   We got pregnant within the first 5 months of our marriage, so now we had to buy baby things…cribs, clothes, car seats, strollers…not to mention diapers, formula…. and our jobs were seasonal. We only really worked while school was in session. We could still work during the summer, but we always had a huge cut in income. There were times that we ran to his “Mommy” or “Daddy” to help us pay rent or an electric bill. Over the years, we have become much better at putting our money aside for the summer to cover our big expenses.  Don’t run to Daddy for the down payment on your first home…save your money for the down payment.   It means more to you if you had to work hard to get your home with your own money than if you borrow it from family.  There is a string that they will always have attached to you.   Sometimes in those first few years of marriage you have to live pretty meagerly, but it really makes it worthwhile in the long run to see your hard work pay off.

The last area is in decision making. As a couple, it is so important that you make your own decisions. It is great to be able to bounce it off a “voice of experience” like your parents, but be sure that the final decision is yours, meaning you and your spouse. For example, when DH and I met, I considered myself a Catholic. The first Christmas while we were dating, I took him to a Midnight Mass….in which this Baptist raised boy felt SO out of place. He didn’t know anything about the liturgy that was going on…. For me, the Baptist church was very radical from what I grew up knowing. We mutually decided to get married in my Mom’s Lutheran church. It felt like a “happy medium” to both of us (and we loved her pastor!) But after the wedding was over, then the task set in to find a church to raise our children in…. we looked at more Lutheran churches where we lived and never really found a home. DH took me to a nondenominational Bible Church, and we immediately found a home that we felt really comfortable with. My parents….to say they were mortified was probably an understatement. My dad (remember? My biggest cheerleader growing up?) labeled me a “Bible thumper”. I cannot tell you how much that hurt. We stayed at that church for 10 years. I was already a believer for about 4 years, and I struggled with baptism. My parents baptized me when I was a baby. For them that was good enough, and I didn’t need to be baptized again. When I decided to follow the Biblical model of baptism, I was really hurt that my parents didn’t come. It was their way of disagreeing with my decision, but it didn’t change my decision. I think that was one of the first steps I took, realizing that I needed to do what was best for me and my family. I still respect and remain in a good relationship with my parents, but I can tell you, it is different than when I was single and at home with them. Now my home is in the Nutmeg household.

Please be sure to tune in for Part 2 of this article in which we’ll talk about the responsibility of parents who have a child who is marrying, and the children who are getting married.

March 18, 2010
Categories: Difficulties and Struggles . . Author: spicynutmeg . Comments: 2 Comments