Me? A Mother in Law?

My son is getting married. A beautiful young woman – beautiful inside and out – has captured his heart and they are getting married. They have put God at the center of their relationship, showing a wisdom and maturity that is so very rare these days.

I see the way that they care for each other and I could not be happier for them.

People ask me how I feel about “losing a son”. I can tell you that I am not worried.

How does that old saying go? “A son is a son till he finds a wife, and a daughter’s a daughter for all of her life”? Something like that. And there’s even a Bible verse that says a son will leave his father and mother and cling to his wife. Which he should. Cling to her. They become one – he is her family and she should forever be his priority.

The Bible says that when a man and a woman are married they become “one flesh”. I am no Biblical scholar or anything, and I’m certainly not capable of digging into Greek or Hebrew. I have to believe that when God said one flesh, He meant one flesh. She  is our daughter every bit as much as he is our son.

She is not my “daughter-in-law.” Hinting that somehow the government has something to do with it. She is not my “daughter-in-love.” A made up name that’s floating around now I guess. She is my daughter. Adopted into our family through the covenant of marriage just as we are adopted into God’s family through Christ’s covenant with His Church.

She is forever welcome in our home, she is forever a big sister to my youngest and a little sister to my oldest. She has every right to call me out on my crazy as much as the rest of my family. She is forever loved. She is my daughter.

(Originally published August 1, 2014)