Out-lawed by In-laws

 

Two weeks after our wedding, my new, large, joint family was preparing for the next big event: the family patriarch's 75^th birthday, which we all knew would be his last because he was dying of cancer. In the few days I had lived with them after returning from our honeymoon, I could tell the atmosphere was rife with unexpressed emotion. Everyone was relieved that Daddy had attended our wedding still standing and wanted to really celebrate his life and legacy. But how could 20 people (most of whom had lived together all their lives) truly express all they had to say at an occasion like this? They cleaned the house, cooked the most amazing food and prepared to give Daddy a grand birthday. Being the newest member and clearly lacking in any useful skills, I was given the task of 'dusting the furniture' while the experts (a rock solid team of 5 matriarchs) took on the heavy lifting of preparing a banquet of culinary delights.

So, left alone in the well set-up hall, I began dusting and must have gotten through less than half of it, when I messed up badly! I broke a huge glass vase. And it wasn't just any vase. It belonged to the most respected aunt who had set it up here, especially for this party. I was terrified beyond words. The memory of what she did to me next seared into my brain and will never leave me.

There's an unwritten rule that you must expect only trouble from your in-laws, right? After all, they are perfect strangers who have completely different values, family culture, expectations and houserules from yours. While looking for an arranged marriage proposal, people try hard to find a match with a family that is very similar to theirs; so with more similarities than differences to adjust to, the marriage has more chance of lasting.

But when you fall in love and decide to get married, you kinda have to just accept the family your to-be-spouse comes with because you don't want to lose the love of your life over 'adjustment problems'. So coping strategies include: finding your own living space, setting new rules in place about how often you'll will interact with them and how involved you'll will be with both sets of parents:- basically trying to play nice and protect your marriage as much as possible. Because you are only supposed to expect trouble from your in laws, right?

Anyways, here I was, newly wed, living with my husband and in laws in what was the worst phase of their lives because they had been dealing with cancer and preparing to say their final goodbyes to Daddy for many months. And on the one day they were looking forward to expressing all their love and gratitude to him, this newly wed daughter-in law (me) had began the pre-party work by breaking a precious vase. Can you think of anything more inauspicious than that?!

On hearing the crash, the aunt whose vase it was, rushed out of the kitchen, the others following right behind her. She came straight up to me, bent down beside me and asked so very lovingly: "Are you OK?" I don't remember what I said or who cleaned up the mess because I was so completely swept away by this radical display of mercy and grace. The rest of the evening continued as planned and no one ever brought up this incident ever again.

I deserved a good yelling at least. I was a grown up handling a simple job like dusting and should have done that quietly and gone on to help some more. But I had destroyed something precious, made more work for them and brought in more negativity where there was much grief already. A good shout would have been justified, would have been only natural, would have been completely ok with me because I was so used to living 'under the LAW'.

I had entered this marriage with no degrees, no job, no money, no status, no skills, and as we were to find out later, no fertility. I was absolutely no match for my well-educated, well-settled husband who was a very responsible son to them. In all fairness, my in-laws should have treated me like I deserved to be treated: an outsider who was going to deplete already strained resources rather than add to them.

But in spite of being a very traditional, very patriarchal joint family that was not perfect but messed up in their own distinct way, my in laws did not treat me like I deserved but treated me like I was loved! That's because despite all the unwritten rules they too had learned about how in laws must behave with newbie daughters in law, GRACE had infiltrated the system!

The well oiled machinery of decades of living together and managing multiple generations of mothers in law and daughters in law living under the same roof with human wisdom was no match for the grand disrupter called GRACE.

The aunt whose vase I had broken had had a life changing experience many years prior. She had shifted from the lifestyle of living under the law to living under grace. And once she shifted, she had an undeniable effect on all the people she lived with even though she was clearly outnumbered. As the years rolled by, I observed how she responded to every person and every situation with the same radical grace and how everyone around her was attracted to her way of life even though she was a childless widow still living with her in laws. Like me, she too had nothing to offer/ nothing to gain power in the family with. Except, she had that radical encounter with Jesus who poured that never-ending grace into her. Nothing could take that grace away from her, not even a severely debilitating disorder. She remains, way after her death, a beloved inspiration to our family.

I could write a whole book on my in-laws because I have been loved so very much by them and learned so very much from them. But the most unexpected thing of all was, that from my in laws, I learned the complete opposite of law. I learned grace: God's Riches At Christ's Expense.

So living under the law meant:

• you give as good as you get: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth

• expect the worse from people and be prepared to fight back

• constantly looking over your shoulder because in a cut throat world, who can you really trust?

But living under grace meant:

• every time someone hurts you, Jesus teaches you to forgive rather than retaliate because Jesus has already paid the price for their sins against you
  

• expect the best from people and choose to see the good in them even when they can't see it in themselves because with grace you can see them the way Jesus does
  

• living freely and peacefully because Jesus has got my back and I can trust Him to handle whatever is coming around the corner

Living under the law is like counting your grains of rice and eating because everything costs so much. Living under grace is like eating to your hearts delight from the richest and healthiest of foods without putting on any weight and actually enjoying the meal with your enemies!

                                                     Pic credit: Zarah

Why would anyone want to live imprisoned by the law when we can live freed by grace? Grace includes the grace to live like this without striving. Grace is given freely to anyone who asks, it cannot be merited or earned. Come and eat freely from the banquet of grace!

"The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ."  

1 John 1:17

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrwkCOUOliI