I mean, you might need them a handful of times, but if you and your, you know, husband, when you were dating, lived in a different city than she did, you probably didn’t spend a lot of time with your mother-in-law and then you get married. And even after you get married, I feel like a lot of mother-in-law stuff doesn’t come up yet because you’re single and you do have flexibility. So you can just do what she wants and it even feels fine. She says, Hey, do you wanna come over for Thanksgiving? You say, yes. Hey, do you guys wanna come over for Sunday? Brunch? Absolutely. So it’s not a problem for you or for her, but then usually when the baby comes is when a whole bunch of stuff can surface. And the first thing I just wanna say is, I want you to have so much love for yourself. So much mercy, so much compassion and understanding that you are often navigating two very challenging things at the same time, which is having a new baby and then having to deal with some strong opinions or some contrary opinions, while you are trying to figure out how to be a new mom and those things generally happen at the same time. And some of you, this happens every time you have a new baby, there’s some clashing that you experience with the mother-in-law.

So even if I don’t know any of the details yet, I’m already just loving you so hard that having a new baby and trying to navigate your body and your baby eating, sleeping, the husband, just all of it. And then we throw in either a demanding mother-in-law or an overly eager one or one with mental health issues or one with addiction, right? I mean, we’re all humans. It’s challenging to be a human. So I can imagine all the different kinds of mother-in-laws out there. And you’re trying to navigate that after you have a baby, and then as you are also growing with your children and you’re experiencing toddlerhood and then, you know, young kids, bigger kids, teens, you’re learning that for the first time. And then having a mother-in-law talk to you about it. So already, that’s just challenging. It’s not a problem, but I like to acknowledge to myself when I’m in a challenging situation, it’s not like, Hey, this is just brushing your teeth. And it’s easy. Like, oh yeah. Being a parent and deciding what kind of parent you wanna be while receiving feedback from another person is challenging.

So I Googled M I L I didn’t Google it. I put it into the Facebook mom groups that I’m in. Just to see what some of you were talking about, because I will acknowledge, I have a fantastic, mother-in-law like, she’s great. We get along really well. I have plenty of other crosses, but this is just not one of them. So I wanted to see, you know, what words you guys were actually using. And there were a lot of likes, she came over and wanted to decorate my house. She buys things for me or the kids that I don’t want. She brings food over either more food than we want or food that isn’t what we wanna be eating. She comes over unannounced. And then a lot of things around, she disciplines my kids in a way that I don’t like, or she’s commenting on my parenting a ton correcting me either in an outright way or in a, you know, sneaky, passive, aggressive way. There were many, many, many examples, but I just thought those were kind of three big buckets.

And when it comes to challenging relationships, particularly ones with people in your extended family, I want you to understand that the stakes feel so high because you want to be part of a family. Like most of us, we thought about getting married and we thought about how wonderful it would be to, to increase our family, to have another set of parents and siblings and cousins and all of that. And we actually want it. It makes our brain feel safe to think about expanding our family relations and living in community. So we have this deep drive to do it. Then it’s confusing when one of those people also feels dangerous. So not being part of a family feels dangerous, but then one of the people within the family feeling dangerous creates this tension.

And that’s why so many of you are putting up with things that you don’t want and feeling so bitter and angry and resentful about it. It’s because you feel stuck between two impossible situations. And any time that we feel stuck between two yucky situations, we just feel terrible. It’s so easy to be mad at God. It’s so easy to blame. You know, the people around us, the mother-in-law, the husband, all of it, because you feel like an animal whose foot is in a bear trap. Some of you are nodding your heads. So you’re like, yes, that’s exactly about how I feel about my mother-in-law or my mom or whatever. The relationship is like a bear. My foot caught in a trap.

It’s not pretty. And I’ll just tell you right now, the way that you show up when you feel that way, not great for you or anyone around you. And so the first recommendation I’m gonna make is that you choose to have a relationship with the mother-in-law. You must choose. You must know that it is a choice and you must choose and own that choice. Because as soon as we go in with half, two energy where we’re like, I have to do this, it feels terrible. Because then we’re just saying, okay, you can be in this bear trap or in that bear trap, which one do you want? And your brain’s just gonna Fritz out.

And so I want you to know that you get to choose. You get to sit down with your own brain and your own heart and the Lord, and you get to say, you know what? I desire to be part of my extended family. I desire to be part of this family. I choose. I know full well that I could tell my husband, no, I could refuse to go. You could be fine. You take the kids to Thanksgiving. I’m gonna stay home. That is fully within your power to choose. And I wanna show you that you probably don’t want to choose that.

Now we’re gonna talk about narcissists and real abuse and real addictions toward the end of the episode. But right now we’re just talking about the mother-in-law who wants to comment on your parenting and bring you food or decorate your house. She’s a little opinionated and a little overly involved, which is of course our opinion, but we can just have that opinion right now. I want you to see that you get to choose to have a relationship with her. You don’t have to, you could stand up for yourself. You could be strong. You could ask your husband to go to bat for you. You could accept that everyone else would have feelings like thoughts and feelings about you. If you decided to stop involving a mother-in-law in your life, like if you really were like, Hey, we’re not, we’re not coming over for Christmas anymore. You do not get to see the kids on their birthday.

I want you to know that that is available to you. That is an option on the table. It may feel really yucky, but it feels really, really yucky to be a woman who does things against her will. And right now that’s kind of what you’re doing. You’re like, oh, I really don’t want this. I don’t wanna be here. I don’t wanna have a relationship with her. But some outside force is making me, there is no outside force. There is you choosing because the discomfort of cutting off the relationship is more than you want.

And we do this all the time. Like we all know right now, we could literally take Dave Ramsey’s advice and literally eat rice and beans, maybe some cheese for most of our meals and get our grocery budget down to $50 a week. That is possible. But most of us are not willing to take on that much discomfort to make our grocery bill be $50 a month or a week. And so it’s the same thing with your mother-in-law. I’m not disagreeing. Like I’m looking at that level of pain of cutting off an entire family member and not going to family events and all the drama that that would probably cause. And I’m like, yeah, I probably wouldn’t sign up for that. But then I would tell myself the truth, which is that it is an option. Therefore, I am choosing to have a relationship with my mother-in-law. No one is making me. And let me tell you guys, it feels so good to get there and it feels so good to choose. It feels so good to be in charge of yourself.

We also choose uncomfortable things all the time. I think raising kids can feel extremely uncomfortable. Eating healthy food can feel uncomfortable. Exercising can feel uncomfortable. There are all these things that we choose that feel uncomfortable, but what we want, we want more than not wanting the discomfort, right? So if we were to put them on scales, we could weigh how much we don’t want the discomfort of its comfort of exercising. But on the other side of the scale are the reasons we get out of exercising. And whichever part of the scale is heaviest wins. Now, for some of you exercising wins and for some of you not exercising wins, but I just wanna frame this mother-in-law thing in the same way. The discomfort of having her as a mother-in-law and seeing her is on one side of the scale and the discomfort of breaking off the relationship is on the other side of the scale, you get to choose.

That is what managing your mind is. You get to manage your mind around the levels of discomfort and then choose. So the first thing is choosing her. The second thing is setting boundaries, and you should listen to the entire boundary episode, but the punchline of it is boundaries require a consequence. So a lot of you are giving very subtle, very vague suggestions to your mother-in-law and there’s no consequence and she doesn’t listen. So if you’re like, you know, if you could just not bring over so many treats, what constitutes a treat and what is so many, and if she brings it over, what’s the consequence? Of course, she’s still bringing over treats. And then, you know, some of you will explain to your mother-in-law why you are gluten free. And then she’ll just bring over gluten-free brownies, which was not the point. Your actual point was, no, I don’t want the kids eating a lot of sugar, but you weren’t clear. So she thought she was bringing over healthy gluten-free brownies. Now I have no opinion about any of these things, but I will just show you. You’re probably doing it in a very mousey, very squeaky way. Like, Hey, just maybe if you could just maybe kind of, you know, if you just, sometimes I would appreciate it. Like we come in with this mousey energy, we toss out a request and then we jump back in our turtle shell.

Of course she’s not gonna listen. And then we’re so mad at ourselves. We’re so mad at her. Then we’re like mad at the husband. We bring him into it. And then I guarantee you you’re gonna treat that lady poorly. You’re gonna be a plasticy version of yourself. You’re gonna be withdrawn. You’re gonna be cold. You’re gonna be bitter and, and snippy or overly syrupy, sweet to overcome your anger inside. And this is just not how God is calling us to live. This is not how God is calling us to treat people. Boundaries require that the boundary itself is very clear and the consequences are clear and you are willing to enforce it. Hey, my sit, Hey, mother-in-law you may not bring sugary treats like cookies, cakes, cinnamon rolls donuts to the house. If you bring them, I might throw them in the trash. Or I might ask you to put them back in your car and the children will cry, but I will enforce this consequence.

Like that’s a consequence and you must be willing to enforce it. If you’re gonna tell her that’s part of the boundary. Now let’s do mother-in-law. Who wants to decorate your house? Comes over, wants to spend her own money, wants to get you matching lamps and a rug and curtains. And it feels intrusive. And it feels uncalled for that. One’s a little trickier. What is the boundary there? You may say, listen, mother-in-law, I’m totally welcome. I totally welcome you giving me feedback about the house, but my husband and I will purchase all of the things that we want to bring into the house. If you purchase something and bring it over. If I don’t like it, I’m going to give it away. The other thing about boundaries is that we wanna speak them in love. We wanna love the person through them. Like I love you. Mother-in-law for wanting to help us. I see that you care so much. I see that you love the children so much. I want you to have a relationship with them, but here are the rules.

So you choose to have a relationship with her, make your boundaries really clear, write them down for yourself. So they are clear to you. Then you can communicate them to her. And the last piece is accepting her for who she is. Some of you think you’re doing this by continuing to have a relationship with her, but you know that you’re not. If she just irks you and you are just an annoyance and bitterness, when you’re around her, then you have not actually accepted her for who she is. You’re still in resistance to reality. You still want her to be different. And there are several mindset tools that we can use for this. We can play a game so we can be like, all right, grandma, Sue is coming over. And in your mind, you can be thinking, I bet grandma Sue is gonna comment on my parenting three times today. What do you think? Brain? Grandma Sue comes over and she’s like, oh, are they watching TV again? They seem to watch a lot of television. And in my brain, I’d go Bing, that’s one, grandma Sue.

And then I would just wait, there will be another one. Oh, Susie’s hair is getting so long. Don’t you think that you really ought to cut her hair? So it’s easier for her to brush, cuz it’s really not brushed most of the time when I come over here. Bing, that’s too grandma Sue, right? Like that is accepting her for who she is, where we’re like, this woman is coming over. We already know how she’s gonna act. I choose to have a relationship with her. I choose not to set a boundary over this issue. So I’m just gonna accept that this is how it’s gonna go down. I’m not gonna be surprised. I’m not gonna be angry. I choose to have a relationship with her. And this is how she is. This is how she’s going to continue to be. And I choose I’m okay with that. There’s lots of things. Our husbands do that annoy us. And we still just choose to be married to them. I’m not saying you have to like it, but you don’t have to get mad about it. When you get mad, you’ve given up your power over yourself to her. We’re allowing her to dictate how we feel.

So acceptance. It feels calm. It feels quiet. It feels good. It feels more like walking with the Lord. Like, all right, Lord, you have given me this woman. Here’s the other life coaching tool I use as my teacher. What is she teaching me? Lord, where are you calling me to grow and virtue? Why is this woman in my life as a teacher that you sent to me, that’s also what acceptance looks like. And we just look for the plank with our own eyes. Oh, I’m really prideful. I want to be in charge. I think everyone should act the way I want them to act. And God’s like not gonna happen. And so for me, when I go through acceptance over something and it’s a continual practice, by the way, right, she comes over and a parenting thing and you might have a visceral, immediate reaction, but then I’m like, oh, remember we love this lady. And we’re choosing to have a relationship with her. So for me, acceptance is often coupled with choosing again. So you wanna choose in the first place overall, this is, I choose this woman to have a relationship with her, the discomfort. I feel having a relationship with her outweighs breaking up with her. I’m gonna set boundaries around the things that are really important to me. And I’m just gonna accept the things that I am not setting boundaries around.

For example, it’s pretty difficult to set a boundary around someone commenting on your parenting. You could try. I mean, you could try to say, Hey, if you comment on my parenting, what three times, then I’m gonna ask you to leave the house. It’s pretty fuzzy. Cuz then she’ll say something like, oh, you’re just being sensitive. That wasn’t me commenting on your parenting. And then you probably won’t enforce the consequence. And then it really isn’t a boundary at all. That’s where instead I would play the game in my mind, oh, she’s gonna do it three times, 17 times, whatever it is. And she’d be like that, but I love her. And I choose to have a relationship with her. Anyway, this is my choice. So choose to have a relationship and set the boundaries. You’re gonna set, accept her for who she is and accept yourself for what you’re not willing to go to bat for. And then let it go. And then let’s bring choice back in again as step four, cuz that’s just, we’re just gonna have to keep choosing again and again and again. So I wanted to so I wanted to talk about narcissist mother-in-laws or ones that have serious mental health issues, maybe borderline personality disorder, maybe bipolar,

Maybe, maybe excessive anxiety or depression like clinical, maybe an addiction, alcohol, drugs, something dangerous. Then the question really is do you want a relationship with her where you really sit down and you weigh those scales and you know, it’s gonna cause a lot of discomfort for your whole family. Maybe your husband, maybe more in the extended family to cut this relationship off. But maybe that is actually the least painful and the most safe option for you. Some of you have chosen that some of you do not speak to your own moms or your mother-in-law out of love and safety and protection for yourself. There are instances where that is the prudent thing to do. That is the loving thing to do.

But what I don’t want is that I don’t want you to jump on the iceberg of my mother-in-law. It is so terrible. She’s a monster. She doesn’t listen to me, but I’m gonna keep her in my life and not set boundaries with her. Like that’s where most of you are living who have a difficult relationship. You’re just kind of living between two really painful, unsafe things. Ugh, she’s terrible. Ugh. I have to keep her in my life. And then you are not showing up as a holy person. Probably I’m just guessing. Okay. So I wanted to do this episode for anyone who has a difficult relationship with their mother-in-law or any other family member, please share it with women in your life who are going through this because it feels very confusing and it feels very isolating. Especially when your mom’s friends around you are not dealing with this.

And so I want you to treat yourself with compassion about why this relationship so often feels so charged because you have a deep desire to create safety within your family. So you actually really do want this relationship, but then when you look at her and she looks like a snarling tiger to your brain, then you feel like you’re in a lose lose situation. So the choice is either to accept that you don’t want a relationship with her, or if you do then to work with your brain to make her seem like less of a tiger. And we do that by setting boundaries and then accepting her for who she is and then choosing her over and over again. All right, you guys, I love you. I’m praying for you. And remember you are Made for Greatness.