In-Laws

Gasp.

The phrase that gets joked about as soon as the topic of marriage and family arises.
The words that immediately bring to mind mother-in-law stories.
Seemingly the bane of many and the delight of few.

Why?

Building a new marriage challenges every fresh-faced couple . . . so why do we complicate it with built-in, ready-made expectations of enmity with our spouse's family of origin?

I have been blessed with wonderful in-laws who have welcomed me and allowed my husband and me to begin life as our own family. Yet, it can still be interesting establishing new relationships - ones that will be with me the rest of my life - in a manner I have never before experienced.

I chose my husband, and in that respect I chose my in-laws. I regret neither. Actually, I quite enjoy both, and in this I find great joy! But what a strange tension to know that these are people I shall do life with from now on - and likewise, I suppose, for my husband with my original family.

Normally, I find a friendship with those with a great deal in common with me. My in-laws and I share a certain young man in common and, beyond that, we might or might not share anything else in common.

So what?

In my mind, I draw this out with the marriage/church analogy: marriage is to reflect the relationship of Christ to His Church, and to the extent that a marriage is healthy and loving, it is successful.

So, what about the in-laws?

Adam and Eve didn't have to work things out between their families in the first marriage ever, but God knew that marriage would bring in-laws into existence. (And, I believe, that just because they weren't part of the original creation, they are not necessarily lesser, bad, or lacking in things to teach us.)

We land ourselves with a group of almost-strangers with whom we will grow and experience life at the moment we say "I do." Should this picture life within the body of Christ?

Please, understand me: my biblical research is limited here. In fact, I haven't ever heard this connection made or read about it from any well-respected theologian.

BUT.

If Christ and the church :: the husband and wife, then the couple and their in-laws :: brothers and sisters in Christ?

Am I way off track here?

We grow and learn to love those in the Church for no other reason than that we have covenanted with the same God and made Him Lord of our lives. Here we are, all denominational persuasions, all opinionated on the proper color of church carpeting, all striving to embody a new life under new rules empowered by new grace every day.

Yes, we clash sometimes. After all, not everyone's mother made potato salad the same way. But in the essentials, the big stuff, the things that we can look at and say, "This is fundamental and necessary to Christianity as we know it," I would think that, done well, the Church can cross boundaries that no one else would find a reason to cross.

So, I covenanted with a man for the rest of our lives, and we each got another family as a bonus. A family that we probably wouldn't have known otherwise. A family on the other side of our typical boundaries that we build a bridge to on the basis of a marriage across them.

Because of my in-laws, I have already learned to add pasta to creamy pea salad, discovered the wonders of the bean pot, experienced deer hunting, and reaped the joy of two nephews. They're mostly surface issues, but they're a start of something much bigger, something I am only getting ephemeral hints of at the moment.

Obviously, this is a topic, an idea, that is still growing, evolving, stretching, twisting, and marinating inside me. That means that this post is probably rougher, less polished, than I would normally desire. That also means that I will probably be posting about it again . . .