In which I talk myself into posting the letter

All week I have debated sharing the letter I wrote to MIL.  I have questioned whether or not it is wise or loving or respectful or God-honoring to do so.  (And so I have been writing this post all weekend in bits and spurts.)

Reasons to not share the letter:

1) I was pretty blunt in the letter about the specific things that are part of our "normal" ways of relating with MIL that need to change, and  I am sure you all will be appalled. And so, knowing you will feel that way, I don't want to share it because I don't want to seem to slander her.  Also, the things I confront her about are "private" behaviors, reserved for us lucky family members--she does not (usually) act this way in front of other people, and in the public sphere (well, not consciously), and so I don't want to seem to be invading her privacy. 

2) I am still struggling with the whole "sounding self-righteous" thing, like I am sharing these things with you to get you all on my side, or to try to say I am so great at relationships or something.  Ugh.  We're in this relationship together, and I am JUST as responsible for it's current state as MIL.  I am completely culpable.  I am NOT better than her, or thinking I am.  I am sincerely just saddened by how much I and others in my life have lived out so many of our years without spiritual awareness and self-control, and have, as a result, borne "bad fruit" from it that hurt our relationships with others. I have been convicted over the years about my own need to completely own my choices, esp. with my own mouth and attitude;  MIL and I are very similar in some ways, and I too have treated my loved ones, including my husband, in very similar ways at points in my life.  I am NO better.   So not only do I want to keep growing ever closer to being the person God desires me to be, but I am also feeling responsible for my part in how things have turned out with my MIL.  I am partly to blame for how we stand, and I want to completely own my role in our relationship, and make only positive, healing, affirming choices for our future.

3) It is also awkward to post things one has written to a third party.  Not only does it feel like I'm purposefully skewing the story by only sharing my side, but it also feels like I think I'm so wise or brilliant or something, and am bestowing upon my adoring circle of admirers the fount of my wisdom. . . blah, blah, blech.  I don't want to be that person who seems to think that highly of herself and what she writes. How mortifying.

But. 

After all weekend of serious deliberation, I think I have decided to share it anyway, and just ask you all to take it in the best light possible, assuming I mean to neither puff myself up nor pull MIL down, and I will also ask you to choose for yourself if you personally feel it crosses a line of gossip, and then you are free not to read it.  (Since we all have different levels of sensitivity and different spiritual weaknesses about that.)

Reasons to share the letter:

A) I thought about sharing just parts of the letter instead, but really the whole thing is quite to the point about what our relationship has been for so long, and about what I have expressed needs to change.  I do think those expectations could possible be helpful for some of you to read, based upon what you have said to me in private.  I do think this is all part of much bigger things that God is doing in me and hopefully in my MIL too.  Maybe He will even use some of this story to work something good in one of you--I would love to think that the fairly miserable things I have gone through, and am still going through, will have some greater good!

B)  As I wrote that first point above a couple days ago, I had a HUGE moment of clarity--one of those times when I could see the situation from outside myself, as maybe the rest of the world would see it.  CRAZY.   I started by writing that it's just MIL's family who gets the fun of all the negativity, but then I realized, actually no.  Not everyone in the family gets to experience all of it.  Really, while most of the people who share life with MIL receive some degree of her negativity, DH and I get most of MIL's crazy --which of course made me stop and question why?

Imagine a person's world of relationships is like an onion, with different layers of intimacy, starting with the public realm on the outside and progressively getting smaller and more private towards the center.  I think we all do this pretty much--how much we show of our worst selves corresponds with how well we know the people around us, how much we feel like it's their job to know and/or put up with our deficiencies, and how much we feel safe with them.   So we are usually pretty nice and charming to those people we don't know very well on the outside (although not always), but we tend to let our "real" selves hang all out to those in the inner circles--first our extended family, then our close friends, then our immediate family, then--the "luckiest" person in our lives--our spouse.   

Maybe what I just wrote does not seem to fit your world, but it sure does fit mine. And so in this particular case, MIL lets a little bit of the negativity and control issues slip out to her extended family(her nieces and their husbands for example), then quite a bit more to her immediate family (her mother and sisters), then a little more to DH's sister and her husband, and then a lot more to DH himself, and then seems to sometimes hold nothing back with me.  (I am purposefully not going to comment on her relationship with FIL or any friends, because they are not my business, but I will say she respects her husband to the extent she is able and does not rant about him in front of us, while she does rant about us in front of him. So that is worth noting, because it suggests DH and then I are personally at the very bottom of the pecking order.  But it also means that FIL is a wonderful man and we all know it. : ) 

So it is really interesting why I, the person at the bottom of the pecking order, would be on the very inner circle of intimacy (if showing one's worst self = intimacy), because I am the "outsider," the person who married into the family who does not belong, and even during that Monday's rant she argued that I had made it very clear from even before DH and I married that I was not choosing to be part of the family.  She sees me as "other," and that partly explains the hostility.  But then, if I am the one who does not belong, the outsider, why am I one of the ones who get to see the most awful side of her?  Is she unconsciously trying to chase me away?  Is she blaming & punishing me for her misery, because life would be so much better if somehow I had never entered the picture and made everything go awry?  Or is she unconsciously testing me, to see how far she will go before she can drive me away?  Or am I somehow truly "safe"?  If so, that is one twisted compliment. 

The fact that I am on the very most inner circle of MIL's "onion" is why I am taking this relationship so seriously.  But when I was writing the other day, the meaning of the concentric circles of increasing intimacy (and sin, and misery) also really hit me, and I could "see" the onion so clearly for the first time ever.  And I realized how CRAZY it is that DH and I are on the inner circles of misery, and it is because WE HAVE CHOSEN TO BE.  The reason MIL does not let the yucky stuff fly with extended family (like the cousins we spend holidays at their house with) is because she knows they will call her on it, and she is smart enough not to put herself into that awkward position of being challenged for her behavior in front of others.  She knows she can't get away with it.  But DH and I, on the other hand. . . we have PUT OURSELVES into this place of being the easy, available targets.  We are not in this vulnerable and painful position because we chose to be in relationship with her, but because we have chosen to be enablers in relationship with her. 

I mentioned the other day that about 10 years ago there was a pivotal event, and it forever changed the course of my/our relationship with MIL, for the better.  One of the revelations that came out of that event was the realization that DH and I were reaping what we had sown ever since we got married.  For the first five years of marriage we had allowed MIL to dictate so much of our lives, and had hidden our true selves, and had pretty much been malleable and weak and soft in all the ways we should not have been, and so when suddenly something mattered and I was trying to take a stand, it did not work at all.  And in my shock, God was able to whisper to me, and show me that for those five years we had taught MIL that she had control over us in ways that were not right, and not really true.  We had always just done whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted, and put up with anything she threw at us (but only when we were with her of course), and it was always done purely from good motives: to respect DH's parents and to try to keep peace.

Although writing that, I just realized it is not true.  It's partly true, and what we were trying to aim for, yes.  But clearly the #1 factor in how we were relating to her was FEAR.

C)  And maybe that is the biggest reason why I want to write about all this--because I am starting to come out from under years of living under legalism and being motivated by unhealthy things like fear and insecurity and feeling like I have to earn love, that I have to prove my worth.  Feeling that I have to defend my right to be treated well.  I don't want to live in fear anymore, and right now I am a little fearful of sharing the letter, because of how you all might view me or how in theory I would be hurting MIL's feelings if she knew.  Forget that.  In this one area of my life, I am tired of always trying to be perfect and please everyone else. 

I am also sick and tired of glossing over other people's hurting me.  Even defending their mistreatment.  Part of me being the problem and enabling the sin is that I try to deflect the consequences of a person's bad choice away from them, to almost buffer them from the harm they are causing themselves and others!  This might be partly just the way I am wired, because I am a people pleaser at heart, but I have been doing it to an unhealthy extent, for a long time, and esp. with my MIL.  I have to stop protecting her from the consequences of what she has been doing for so long.

D)  Also, God has been showing me a lot of Scripture recently about the sin happening in the dark, and how bringing things out into the light brings understanding, freedom, and healing.  (I started to share verses here, but it was too hard to write it all out, since I felt like I had to interpret them as a theologian, so if you want to know verse just ask me and I will share them!)  The bottom line is that
I want to speak plainly, but respectfully, of what has happened, and get it out in the light. Because if I don't talk about it, because of worrying about being disrespectful to MIL, it's like I am still pretending all is well.  Like I am living in fear.  Like I am still covering over the sinful behavior to shield it from the bold, uncompromising light of day.

But fear lurks in the darkness, and sin thrives there.  I'm so tired of darkness.  I want freedom, and exposure, so healing can REALLY begin.

E)  Finally, I wondered to myself the other day in the car if there was a group of people with whom I could share this part of the story without feeling like I was gossiping or slandering my MIL.  I realized yes--a private therapy group.  So, you are all now officially my private therapy group, and we all know that means the things I say here are confidential, so I am going to assume you all are trustworthy. : )  Just please remember the "But" above, and the context in which I am sharing this.


May God's light shine fully in all of our lives today, for His Good purposes!  AMEN.