My heart and mind are on my mom-by-marriage this Christmas time, since she reached 90 in November, started losing weight that month and died on Christmas Eve. I feel sorrow together with Darlene, great relief that my prayer that she might go Home is answered, and really good about the life and relationship we have had.
In-law relations should and can be filled with joy and with building one another up. After all, the spouse of one's child has been CHOSEN, loved, wanted. One's own child, who is smart and beautiful and good and wise, has chosen him or her. Let's be glad for in-laws everywhere, and let us praise God for them. GO, IN-LAWS!
We share rich memories with Dorothy Wright - making a life together with Darlene and her parents helping in so many ways when we were young, working together with street kids in Nairobi as we began to teach kids Bible and English and Math, taking trips together as we went back and forth from US to Kenya. We rode the elephant in Northeast India, we walked all around the old wall of Jerusalem, we stood at Nikos Kazantkasis' burial plot in Heraklion on Crete, we saw the sights of old Athens and picked up pieces of marble, we looked for gold on the riverbanks of California, we listened to the waltz music by the Danube on our Vienna trip, and we thoroughly enjoyed seeing the animals on the Mara in Kenya. We also sat knee to knee with street kids who were scratching the body lice, and we went out together to visit street kids where they slept at the "bases" in the alleyways of Eastleigh. And not once did my mom-by-marriage complain or back off from any unpleasant task.
We've been looking at old pictures on Christmas eve and Christmas day and today, and the memories are sweet as a Swiss chocolate bar, as gentle as the hands of Jesus, as uplifting as the church singing "Here I am to Worship".
So...give thanks for your in-laws today, give them a hug and ask God to give them richly everything they need. They make your life better.
