Family, Friend, or Foe?

I come from a very large, close family. Ok so my immediate family is rather small and only consists of my mom, dad, brother, and myself; but my extended family is huge. On my dad’s side I have 5 aunts, 4 uncles, their spouses, and over 30 cousins and now my cousins are having children. We all care for each other, celebrate with each other, help each other through the hard times, and stand up for each other. Sure there are the occasional disagreements, but often times these disagreements are worked out and life goes on as normal. We get together as often as possible for the major holidays and even find time to get together “just because”. The childhood memories that I have of these times with my family fill me with joy, and provide a basis for how I would like to raise my children. Family is everything.

When I married my husband I was ecstatic because that meant that I would have even more family to share everything with; I was gaining a mother in-law, a father in-law, two brothers in-law and their wives, a niece, two nephews, and two step-children. To make things even better I get along with my husband’s ex-wife. That’s not to say we don’t argue, but we get along pretty good and work through our disagreements. Somehow I had this notion that being a part of this new family would be a lot like being a part of the family I grew up in, just a little different because they are obviously different people with different family traditions. I could not have been more wrong.

Don’t get me wrong, I have a pretty good relationship with my brothers in-law (I have yet to meet one of my sisters in-law, but I seem to have a good e-mail relationship with her and unfortunately one of my brother’s in-law is currently going through a divorce and I have pretty much written his wife out of the equation) and my step-children and I love them dearly. For some reason, though, my step-mother has never truly liked me. I’m not going to go into details of the events that have taken place over the years, there’s honestly too much to write and I really don’t want to get into all of that. I just don’t understand why she doesn’t like me. I have never done anything malicious toward her or had any ill-will or intent toward her. I will be honest and say that in regards to my husband’s ex-wife I have often acted in a childish manner and would understand why she would not like to continue a relationship with me (which, thankfully, is not the case), but as far as my mother in-law is concerned this is not the case. She has time and time again told my husband to divorce me, told me that I was not good enough for her son, and blows things out of proportion or twists things to try and make me look bad. I would understand all of this much better if I cheated on my husband, was a bad mother, spent all of my husband’s money and put us in debt, was ill-tempered, etc., but I’m not any of those things so I really do not understand the constant character assassinations, many of which are becoming public (isn’t facebook wonderful?). Now, not only is my mother in-law assassinating my character but other family members are writing my husband and doing the same. My mother in-law’s sister (who I met once, 6 years ago for only a few hours during Thanksgiving) wrote my husband and called me trailer trash. I know I shouldn’t take these things to heart, but when so many people are trying to bring you down and call you names and such it starts to wear on you.

I have not responded to any of the recent character assassinations. Honestly, anything I write my mother in-law will be misconstrued into something horrible, even if it’s nice, so I really do not see the point. Not to mention, right now I don’t have anything nice to say at all and if I write her a nasty-gram that really doesn’t make me any better than her. So I stick with the old saying “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all”.

It’s not that I have not tried to have a relationship with my mother in-law. There have been several times where I have written her and stated that we should talk and work on our issues and attempt to build a stronger relationship. The last time I tried to do that, which was about a year and a half ago, she informed me that she did not have time for it and that she has to focus on her health. I’m not going to post her medical history on the internet, but the health problem she was referring to is relatively minor and not a serious disease, and she would have been more than capable of talking with me and attempt to work things out if she had been inclined to do so.

I recently wrote a dear friend of mine asking her to pray for my husband’s family and all of the family drama and troubles that we all have been going through. In her reply I realized that where I might not have been given the ideal mother in-law, God did bless me with a wonderful “family” here in Bamberg. This woman wrote back and said she would pray for us, agreed to do another favor I asked of her, and offered to take my kids for a weekend so my husband and I can have some alone time. How awesome is that? In that moment I realized that family is blood and should be everything, but some family can be foe at the same time, and that some friends can be just as good (if not better) than family.

With all that being said, I’m going to do my best to not let all of this stuff bring me down. I KNOW I am a good person, a good wife, mother, daughter, sister, and friend. I AM worth getting to know and have a relationship with, and if ANYBODY fails to see or realize this then it is their loss.