January 15, 2022
Doubly Blessed
Note: (wrote this December 5, 2021 when whomever decided my computer operating system is too old to connect to wordpress anymore!)
One day I was cleaning bathrooms at a church work day and met a wonderful woman. She was cheerful and spoke about Jesus like a best friend. She was encouraging. I thought “I’d like to learn about life from her!” I saw her a few times over the next year or so at that church. My brother liked the youth pastor and he needed a chaperone – thus being, when the youth group was participating in clean-up days or work days or whatever, I was there with him. We started attending that church.
About fourteen months later on a warm July afternoon, I went to meet the parents of the young man I had started dating that Friday. Although I knew God was telling me I had the green light to marry this one, my logical brain was fighting that suggestion. The woman I wanted to learn from? I was dating her middle son!
I have an amazing mother whom I love. God gifted her to me when I was born. I never thought I would love another woman in a similar way.
But God’s ways are awesome!
I tell people I have two moms. One I was born with and one I got when I married Louis. I love how Joanne is so accepting, loving, supporting, and helpful. She and my mother, Tina, are quite similar. Someone mentioned today that the normal “mother-in-law” is someone you fight with and tolerate or even don’t like. I’m so grateful for the blessing of my mother-in-law.
I pray that God gives me the same grace to my children’s spouses.
This is because the blessing of loving in-laws passes through generations. Loving interaction and respect between the parents and newlyweds turns into future strong grandchild-grandparent ties. When a mother-in-law or father-in-law is a friend and mentor, the grandchildren see their parents show respect and love to their parents; visibly strengthening the children’s understanding of “honoring fathers and mothers” and set the stage for generational connections that are hard to sever. My children have many fond memories of their grandparents on both sides! I’m so thankful for that.
That I’m a friendly, welcoming person who looks at the girls’ future husbands and Lucas’ future wife not as competition for their attention but as blessings God has planted in my life as well as theirs. I pray to be like Joanne. She is such a wonderful model of mother, grandmother, mother-in-law, and friend. I have known and loved her for twenty years – related to her for a little over nineteen.
I smile; I never considered how sweet God’s answer to my heart’s desire to “learn about life” from the bubbly, serious, hardworking woman whose company I enjoyed one Saturday while cleaning bathrooms at our “new” church – I would really get to do life with her! She would be my mom.
Thank you Jesus for amazing blessings!
Thank you for reading,
Type at you next time!
~Nancy Tart