How do we move from being a mother-in-law to becoming, as my friend Amy so beautifully puts it, a mother-in-LOVE?
Endorse their new voice.
Your child and his or her spouse create a new family that sings a new song by finding their new voice. Together, they are a new unit in God's eyes--no longer the child that belongs to you but rather a new pair that God wants to gift to the world.
Can we disrupt the process? Absolutely. We simply grip too tightly and try to get our child to come back toward us.
But if we are determined to let God have His way with this new family, then we will learn the pain and self-control of endorsing their new voice.
Dr. Scott Peck, in People of the Lie, writes: "...it [is] the task of parents to assist their children to achieve their own independence and separateness. In order to succeed in this task it [is] essential for parents to tolerate their own loneliness so as to allow and even encourage their children to eventually leave them." He goes on to describe the opposite: "...to discourage such separation not only [represents] a failure in the parental task but a sacrificing of the child's growth to the parent's own immature self-centered desires. It [is] destructive."
Ouch! So we can mess it up...badly.
This love is so different because it releases your child. Becoming a mother-in-LOVE requires new wisdom, the loneliness of restraint, and confidence in what can be accomplished when you endorse their new voice.
Do the work. The world needs their song.
