Growing up I always heard adults talking about their significant others families. Sometimes everything they said was negative but ocassionally they were positive talks. Everyone always told me to make sure I married into a family where I loved my mother & father-in-law! I thought this advice was stupid because it was my husband who mattered not his family…Right?? WRONG!
When Matt & I met we were babies still and his family treated me like family from the beginning. He has a HUGE family compared to mine so I was just another one to add to it! I come from a very small family and to them Matt just became another one of us. Maybe this is not how it goes if u meet later in life.. I really am not sure, but it is how it happened for us! Years later when we married I officially became a part of their family and his parents became my in-laws.. This was not a big thing for me because I had been apart of their family for so long already, but everyone kept telling me how I was so lucky because of the relationship I had with my in-laws. I had no clue how right those people were. I was young and dumb, and sometimes it takes me a little longer to come to conclusions by myself ! Shhhhh, don’t tell my husband I am admitting that!
Fast forward several years to today.. I have never been closer to my in-laws in the 15years that I have known them. I realized that they aren’t going to be around forever & I have such a limited time to spend with them that I just was not spending the time I needed to spend learning all the things they could teach me! I have parents and anyone who knows me will tell u that I am VERY close with my parents as well. My mom is my best friend in the world, but she is from an entirely different generation than my in-laws. They had Matt way later in life therefore they are my grandparents age!
I started thinking of ways we could spend more time with them. We live next door so it shouldn’t be that hard, right? RIGHT! I started taking the girls down of a morning so we could have coffee with them. I started cooking supper and taking it down there so we could eat it as a family. Does this take more time out of my day? Yes it does! Is it worth it? So worth it! I never realized how much bonding can happen over watching a baby play in the floor while you drink coffee! A new recipe where they are all my Guinea pigs makes for the best conversations! I have learned so much about life & the way things used to be compared to now! I now have the relationship with my in-laws people always told me to look for..
When you pick a husband you are not just picking a husband you are choosing a whole family. I hope I teach this to my girls well enough that they don’t just choose a spouse but an entire family! I used to think those people just liked to complain about their mother-in-law, but since then I have learned that they were not kidding around. Some of these mother-in-laws are no joke!! I am so thankful that I am blessed with a great one! If you aren’t married yet I hope you take this advice to heart when people tell it to you. You are not just marrying your spouse. You are marrying his entire family if they are close! You are marrying the good ones, the bad ones & the ones you can not stand! Pick wisely so that one day you can have the best talks over coffee with them every single day! Pick the husband who has the family that makes you one of their own from day one!
I pray that everyone is blessed with a Mother & Father-in-law like mine! I couldn’t have chose a better pair to learn life lessons over coffee and supper from.. if you aren’t this close with your in-laws already then maybe after reading this you will try harder to get to know them! They won’t be around forever!
Motherhood & Marriage 