As established in Her Mother's Daughter - Part One, Gwen,
the mother of the runaway bride, came to town looking for things that could go
wrong with Joe and KatieLyn's marriage. This was not a hard task for an
accomplished critic. Gwen did not like Joe's house. She did not like Joe's dogs.
She went absolutely apoplectic at the thought Joe and KatieLyn were kicking around at the
time of having two married couples share one house to cut living expenses.
[•[ Let me digress on the house-sharing topic a bit because it provides a
good microcosm for illustrating how Gwen operates. Yes, Joe's house is a bit on
the fixer-upper side, but during the past few years it has had a new roof,
mostly new windows, and the hardwood floors were refinished. He was in the middle of
bathroom renovations at the time of the visit. While Gwen was touring the house, she was all
smiles and telling stories about houses she'd restored. But afterwards, as KatieLyn and her parents were headed back home, I don't
think they'd gotten a mile out of town before Gwen started in on KatieLyn on
how this was wrong, and that was wrong, and how it wasn't going to work. Gwen
stuck her nose into a problem that was not hers. She told KatieLyn not live
with another couple in the house because they would hear KatieLyn and Joe fighting and side with Joe. — Whoa! Whoa, whoa! — Stop and look at the way Gwen jumped headlong into presumption! She
had so little respect for her daughter's ability to navigate a marital
relationship that she had already imagined that KatieLyn would have embarrassing
fights with her husband in front of others— and that his friends are so shallow
that they would automatically side with Joe, no matter what! No, Gwen. You are
full of it. Full on multiple counts. Joe's friends liked KatieLyn too; so they would
have been "their" friends, not just "his" friends. And they would have
probably been smart enough to stay out of it and not take sides at
all. One more thing, Gwen: Joe respects KatieLyn enough to work out differences peaceably and in
private. Or were you expecting your daughter to do the drama queen thing? ]•]
Gwen came LOOKING for things that
could go wrong that day, and when she saw something, she'd let her imagination
run wild with it. Usually, these were things that would never affect her directly and were only marginally her business, if at all. As I said in Part One, if I had known then what I know now, I
would have been alarmed by what came next.
Within a few days of KatieLyn's and
her parents' return to their home state, Gwen sent Joe a summons. "Summons" is the proper term,
although at the time Joe considered it to be a request. She wanted him to make
the four-hour one-way trip to her house to discuss things. Furthermore, she
suggested (under the guise of being considerate of everyone's time,) that he
come while KatieLyn was still at work.
I now see this as her first attempt at setting
up a triangulation; she wanted to create an opportunity to ramp up her catty
little schemes and undermine the couple's "over the moon" relationship
behind KatieLyn's back. (Over the moon was
the term KatieLyn used to describe her happiness at this point.)
Joe politely
declined the invitation, truthfully explaining that he had a ton of responsibilities
here to get ready for the wedding and simply did not have time to schedule
another trip or take time from work.
I clearly remember when Joe told me
about Gwen's "request." He matter-of-factly described what
she had asked. I listened, and when he was done I said, "Well, you're
not going to do that, are you?" He put his lips together and shook his
head. That was that.
We did not sit around and analyze it,
pick apart the pros and cons, or try to figure out a way to make it happen. KatieLyn
had said yes to the proposal, her parents were on record as saying they had a
peace about it, a wedding date had been picked, and they'd completed their
first premarital counseling session. If Joe had asked me for advice—which he
did not—I would have agreed with the sentiment that I already saw him forming:
He was marrying KatieLyn, not her mother; it is important to establish
boundaries early on.
In looking back on it half a year
later, I see that what I had marked as a blip on the radar was Gwen's attempt to
pull off a major intervention. There had been indications that she was jealous
of her daughter's happiness. She had made comments, passed off as random jokes
that disturbed Joe a little, such as, "Ooo, you're going to take Karie
away from me!" On the surface it seemed that she meant the geographical
distance, which was no further than how far away Gwen's eldest daughter's
family (with two granddaughters, and a third grandchild on the way) are from her. Now I think she meant emotionally:
I believe she was frightened of KatieLyn loving or needing a husband more than
her.
If you will allow me to use some dark humor with this, I made a poster that illustrates Gwen's idea of an intervention.
She set out to poison and kill the marriage. She characterized her motive to
others, and perhaps even to herself, as "loving concern." In truth, it
was a selfish desire to keep KatieLyn "at home where she belongs." That
is, 'belongs' according to Gwen.
She peddled her sweet tea as if her doubts
were legitimate nuggets of wisdom. In truth, she opened her yap and spouted off
every godless, faith-destroying doubt that she could come up with! Repeatedly. She
succeeded in making KatieLyn doubt herself. KatieLyn adopted her mother's doubts and became her mother's daughter.
God
does not give people doubt. Not ever. Search the scripture. You will not find a
verse that goes, "And the Lord God gave (insert any name) doubt." But
starting as early as Eve, scripture is rife with examples of Satan causing
people to doubt. Time after time, people lost big because of doubt. Eve lost
paradise. The Israelites lost entry into the Promised Land and wandered for
forty years instead because they doubted God's provision to help them take the
land. Job lost everything! (For the thing I feared has overtaken me, and what I
dreaded has happened to me. Job 3:25) Doubt comes from the enemy in an effort
to steal, kill, and destroy what God has already plainly told people to do. KatieLyn's
mother was adding the arsenic of doubt to the brew. Doubt stole KatieLyn's faith, it killed the wedding, and it just may have destroyed the Godly call on her future.
When KatieLyn drank the tea, she allowed her mother's doubts, not the Lord's faith, to define reality.
The Lesson
Thoughts are not harmless nothings. They are seeds with the potential to grow and produce one's future. If they are cultivated with love, they can flourish. If they are cultivated with fear, they are destructive.
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