going Private, temporarily

(If any of you were missing my overly-long, overly explained posts as of late, then this one is for you! ; )

Please let this post serve as explanation and apology to my readers who this past weekend, without warning or explanation, found yourselves without access.

Hey, if you are reading this, that means you cared or were curious enough to come back and see what was going on--thank you so much!  I had email addresses for my IRL friends and a few of my virtual village, so I could add a lot of you to the list of approved readers, but I know there are probably others who check in every now and then who might be wondering what was up.  (And please do not be offended in the least if you knew I had or could get my hands on your email address and yet I still did not add you--first of all, it feels weird and self-absorbed to assume people want to read your blog, and to start mailing out all these invites to be private readers. . . I did not like the feeling, so I decided to just add people if they happened to mention they wanted to be reading still.  But second of all, and most importantly, this move to "private" should only be temporary!  Hopefully for only another week--which was also why I did not try to add everyone who might possibly be interested.  I am trusting if you are interested, you will pop back around to check in at some point, and be pleasantly surprised that all is back to normal.  And will at that point see this post and get the answers to your questions. : )

Gotta love the changing verb tense all over that last paragraph.  Trying to write in the present to those of you reading in the future about something that happened in the past is a bit too much for me at this time of the day, esp. when I had not yet had my tea.

So, anyway, here is the story:

My Mother-in-Law and I started out our relationship on very rough terms.  It was very hard for her to give over her firstborn and only son into the hands of a young, naive, inexperienced, strange female.  Over the years our relationship has gone through several phases, with God being so, SO gracious and slowly moving us closer towards Him--and thus closer together.  We are now probably at the best point we have ever been together. We can sometimes spend hours together without negative words, and even the occassional laugh.  We try to listen to each other, and honor each other's feelings and wishes.  I think MIL's experience being with her daughter N when she went into emergency delivery and lost one of the twins had a profound impact on her.  My birthday (and her daughter's) happened while she was still out in Colorado, and I was completely bowled over when she sent me a very generous birthday check, "from Mom R."  When we visited them over Thanksgiving I asked her to tell me what happened the night N went into early labor, and we ended up sitting on a bed like girlfriends while she told me the story, and we even cried a little.  It was an incredibly precious moment for me.

But yet, things being so relatively good in our relationship right now makes me all the more aware of how fragile it all is, how quickly and easily we could slip back into old negative patterns of relating.  So DH and I make decisions accordingly, such as limiting our visits to his parents' home to about 3 days--longer, and the tension starts to rise and the odds of negativity increase.  Another decision is not to share this blog with MIL.  It's as much for her sake as for mine. 

I remember long, long ago, back when DH and I had been married for a couple of years, and had moved into our first house (which was also our largest house, at 1,200 sq. ft.--of course!) and I had gone back to school for my Master's and we were starting to think about having children--an exciting time in our lives.  That year I decided to send my annual Christmas letter, which I started doing after college for my college roommates and some friends and family, to DH's side of the family as well.  A few days later I received a phone call from MIL, who was very upset.  She felt that the letter was way too long and detailed (imagine that, from me?! ; ) and was inappropriate for a Christmas letter (it was a highly personal letter, as that year I had decided life was too short to write about fluff, so I shared some of my goals and things that God was teaching me, if I remember correctly).  As MIL went on and on, really angry, I slowly realized that I had offended her with the intrusion of my personal thoughts and feelings into her personal world, and into the world of her family.  She was truly offended, and so when she made me promise never to write a Christmas letter again that deviated from the usual fact-filled summary (you know, then Dick got a promotion, and we took this vacation, and then Junior turned 7, and it was a great year), I was glad to comply--in my head vowing never again to send any Christmas letter to her and FIL, for the sake of both our feelings.

And that is fine, no issue at all, esp. since I pretty much stopped writing Christmas letters anyway shortly thereafter.  But that's not the point--which is that this blog is ONE HUGE MOTHER OF ALL PERSONAL LETTERS that I am sure my MIL would find highly offensive.  Not even so much for the things I write about, although some of them she would disagree with/disapprove of, but just for the very fact that I would think so highly of myself and the value of my thoughts that I would think people would want to come and read whatever I have to say.    

(And really, that part is a little weird and uncomfortable for me, so I try not to think about it.  One of my biggest fears in life is that I will appear to others like I am looking for attention and acclaim--which is pretty funny when you realize I was a theatre major as an undergrad--and while I am perfectly comfortable having the center of attention--as in getting up to teach people or speak in front of a group--I loathe the idea that somehow I want that attention, you know what I mean?  When I serve at church, for example, I do it behind the scenes--organizing storage rooms and freecycling stuff the church doesn't need and taking food for the childcare workers occassionally--and not in front of the church.  I just don't want to be questioning why I am doing what I am doing--in service to God, I just want it to be about God.  So writing this blog is a very delicate balance between contentedly and eagerly sharing myself with friends, family, and readers of like mind--and being a vain, shallow, ego-driven narcissus!  Oh, I hope you read whatever I write knowing I am trying to always come from the former stance, and if I find myself ending up in the latter stance, I'll have to quit blogging.  Just one reason why I love giving up blogging for Lent--it keeps me humble, since it proves the world goes on quite nicely without benefit of my thoughts on it! ; )

I fully realize MIL will most likely one day find this blog.  I promise you if she does find it, she will read it!  So every thing I write about her, our family, our relationship, I try to filter through that lens--if/when she reads this, will it be fair and honest and not unloving?  When I write about other stuff, though, I don't think about her and what she will think of what I am saying--and I don't want to, because if I imagined her response to everything I write, I would never write anything.  She and I are very similar in so many ways; in fact, I think our similarity is what creates our clashes, not our differences.  We are just close enough to have most of the same values and ideals--but then they don't manifest in the same ways, or go to the same extremes, and so that almost seems to highlight how we think differently, moreso than if we could just wave a dismissing hand and say, of the other, "oh, that's just the way she is."  I think we both want the other to be more like us, and we are just close enough to being alike that not seeming to "get" eachother makes us both a little crazy. 

Is this at all making sense?

So, I do fear that if my MIL found this blog that I would have to stop writing, because then it would become a negative, unsafe space (even if just in my head).  Maybe not--and that is my hope, that by the time it happens, she and I will have grown to such a place together (and in our own secure self-identities) that she won't use my words as weapons against me, and if she does, that I will be able to hear her as I need to, and see her perspective through the lens of God's truth.  I want this blog to be a space of joy, of blessing, of honesty and vulnerability for anyone who visits.  If I can't write this way, then I will have to stop.  And, if the worst happened and the blog became a source of contention between MIL and me, I don't think making the blog private and purposefully shutting her out would be the solution.  That would be justifiable, but not loving.  I would love to be able to share my personal self with MIL, and for her to do the same back.  I really believe God is getting us there, slowly but surely.  So someday I look forward to having her as a reader.  But I don't think we are there yet!

And so, FINALLY, that is why I have to go private for a while.  Because of a stupid mistake DH and I made that left a trail to my blog that MIL could easily and would understandably follow.   I think we will be able to undo the mistake in a week, in which case the coast should be clear.  Until then, this is my effort to avoid any damage to our current good relationship.  I hope it works. 

If it was too late, and MIL is reading this. . . then, welcome, R!  Please go back and read the first post I made this year, to get a feel for what I am about in this space.  Then you are welcome to read anything I have written, and I would be happy to talk with you about it next time we are together.  And may God use this space to help grow us in understanding of one another, for His glory. : )