Have your dreams for a beautiful in-law relationship vanished? Whether you’re a daughter-in-law or a mother-in-law, perhaps you began the relationship with hopes of a close connection, but now loving your in-law feels impossible.
Dread and worry fill your mind. Will Christmas dinners and birthday celebrations always be an endurance contest? Will this broken relationship harm future generations of our family? At first you may blame her, thinking she has ruined everything. But with time (and the Holy Spirit’s prompting) you begin to see your failure to love your in-law. You’re not only disappointed with her, but with yourself.
Here’s the good news: your fears and regrets need not leave you hopeless. God uses even our regrets and disappointments to invite us to walk more closely with him. Learn to look through your circumstances to the God of hope.
Practice and Pray for Repentance
You’ve been hurt. It’s natural to protect yourself. Your heart says, She deserves my distance. I’ll love her when she stops hurting me. Maybe you smile when you’re around her, then talk about her behind her back. Perhaps you find ways to punish her. Have you begun to justify yourself? Have you become cynical and bitter (Heb. 12:15)?
Grieve for her, but grieve also for yourself. Bitterness will burden your heart, and the temptation to retaliate will grow stronger every time you fail to resist (James 4:7). Perhaps you already feel defeated by the pressures of the relationship. Maybe you’ve decided to avoid her as much as possible.
God may use your humility to heal your relationship, change your in-law, or even bring those watching to faith.
Turn to the Lord in repentance. Give thought to Christ’s power in you. Remember, the Holy Spirit lives in you and is at work in you. Ask your loving Father to help you come to him regularly for forgiveness and for help to change (1 John 1:9; James 1:5). Listen when God’s Spirit convicts you of your sin and prompts you to ask for your in-law’s forgiveness (James 5:16).
And pray for her repentance too—“Oh Lord, may she turn from her sin to you.” God may use your humility to heal your relationship, change your in-law, or even bring those watching to faith.
Commit to Love
No matter how close your relationship with the Lord, loving someone who is unloving is hard. If we’re not careful, we can fall into the trap of thinking that love is merely a feeling. Feelings are important; they deserve attention. But true love never depends on something as unstable as emotions.
Commitment fuels true love (Ruth 1:15–18). Before the foundation of the world, God in Christ committed to love us (Rom. 5:8). Jesus shows us what love looks like, and his Spirit gives us the power to love as he loves. Committed love follows through—no matter how costly, and no matter how unworthy the loved one (1 Cor. 13).
God will help you do what love requires—no matter what the other person is doing.
God commands his children to love, and he gives us the desire and power to obey as we turn to him. God will help you to show up and do what love requires—no matter what the other person is doing. With God’s help, as we walk in obedience, he’ll pull our feelings along toward true love, his love. Jesus’s love leaves no room for arguments, harsh words, or endless exceptions. And Jesus’s love does not withdraw (John 17:25–26).
Committed love doesn’t wait for our in-law to change. It loves first. It loves always. It loves no matter what. By God’s grace and for his glory, we can love our in-law the way God has loved us.
Look for God to Work
However fractured your relationship remains, don’t give up. What we think, say, and decide today affects tomorrow and the years to come. Maybe you’re out of ideas for what to do or how to pray—hold on to the truth that God’s imagination is greater than yours (Eph. 3:20–21). What you think is the end of the story is not the end.
Your in-law’s role in your family’s life is not a mistake. Your loving Father designed this relationship for his children’s good and his glory (Rom. 8:28–29). Consider what God is doing in your life through this relationship. What are you learning about the character of God? What sin in your life is being revealed? How is God working through this struggle for your sanctification?
Hold on to the truth that God is at work—in your most trying relationship—to accomplish his great purpose of redemption.
Ask your Father to help you act increasingly like who he’s made you to be—his own dear child (Matt. 7:7–8). Ask him to build up a love in you that acts like Jesus no matter what. Look for God to bring about good through this struggle. Your relationship with your in-law is about more than your immediate family. Hold on to the truth that God is at work—in your most trying relationship—to accomplish his great purpose of redemption (1 Thess. 5:24).
The Gospel Coalition