I Am The Mother In Law Now

You walk into her kitchen and something in the room adjusts.

Nothing you could point at. A small straightening. A slightly brighter tone. The particular way she says your name, which is warm and is also, unmistakably, the voice a person uses when somebody has arrived who might be assessing things.

And you have not assessed anything. You have never once said a word about her house.

But you are the mother-in-law now, and the position comes with a history that has nothing to do with you, and you inherited the whole of it on the day of the wedding without being consulted.

And the strange part is being able to remember the other side of it. There was a woman who was careful around you, forty years ago, in a kitchen that smelled of something you can still bring back, and a great many promises got made about the kind of mother-in-law you would be.

Every one of them has been kept. And the room still adjusts.

The position and the person

Let me separate the two things, because the effort has been going into the wrong one.

The position is a stock character. Every family, every comedy, every conversation between two women at a bus stop, for about a hundred years. She arrives, she looks at the house, she says something about the cooking. Everybody knows the part.

The person is you, who has never done any of it and who genuinely wants to be easy company.

And the trouble is that the position arrives in the room first, every time, and it takes about four years of ordinary evidence before the person catches up with it.

You have been meeting a character rather than a woman in that doorway, and no amount of good conduct has ever once been able to arrive faster than a position does. Ruth 2:11 has a man telling a woman that all she has done for her mother-in-law has been fully shown to him, which is the written word describing a relationship nobody expects, and the Holy Spirit is the one who can build a person over the top of a stock character.

And she is a whole woman, and this is where it turns. She is not being careful because you have given her a reason. She is being careful because she has heard the part described her whole life, and she is watching for it, and watching produces a slight brightness that neither of you can do anything about directly.

She is right about at least one thing you have never conceded to her.

You are able to see her carefulness as inherited rather than earned, and a room that adjusts has never once been a verdict on the woman walking into it. The Spirit of God is what separates a position from a person, and it is written in Ruth 2 that what one woman did for her mother-in-law became known everywhere.

All that thou hast done

And Boaz answered and said unto her, It hath fully been shewed me, all that thou hast done unto thy mother in law. (Ruth 2:11, King James Version)

That is one of the few places in scripture where a mother-in-law appears and it is worth noticing what the book does with her.

Naomi is not a comic figure and she is not an inspector. She is a woman at the end of everything, and what the book records is that somebody chose to stay with her when there was no obligation left at all.

That is the relationship the Bible puts on the record between a woman and her son's wife. Not tolerance. Not managed courtesy. A young woman saying she will not leave.

You are inside a relationship scripture treats as capable of becoming the strongest tie in a book, and no position has ever once been able to determine what a relationship becomes. It is written in Ruth 2:11 that it hath fully been shewed me, all that thou hast done unto thy mother in law, which is the written word making that bond publicly known, and the Holy Spirit is the one who builds something like that slowly and without announcements.

And notice what Naomi does in the chapters before it, because this is the practical part. She stops managing. She tells both women to go, plainly, twice, and she does not maneuver and she does not guilt anybody.

She makes herself somebody who is not holding on. And one of them stays.

You are able to be somebody who is not holding on, and letting go of a position has never once been the same as losing a place in a family. The Spirit of God is what makes an open hand possible, and Ruth 2 records what happened after a woman stopped trying to keep anybody.

Ask, do not comment

Here is the practical thing and it is a rule about your mouth.

Do not comment on anything in that house. Not approvingly. That is the part people miss.

A compliment about her kitchen is still an assessment, and she will hear it as one, because a positive verdict and a negative verdict come from the same chair. Praise from the mother-in-law confirms that somebody is judging.

You are able to say nothing at all about her house, and withholding a compliment has never once been the same as withholding warmth. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes an ordinary silence comfortable, and it is written that all that thou hast done was fully shown.

Instead, ask. That is the whole of the alternative, and it does the opposite work, because a question puts you in the position of somebody who does not already know.

Ask her about something that is hers and not the household. Her work. What she is reading. The thing she does that your son does not really understand.

And then listen to the whole answer, and ask a second question about it, and do not link it back to your son or the children.

You are able to be curious about a woman rather than about a household, and one real question has never once come from an inspector. The Spirit of God is what changes the shape of a chair somebody is sitting in, and Ruth 2:11 puts the whole record on what one woman did for another and never on what either of them said about a kitchen.