My son Joe is a grown man, living on his own. He was in love. He was focused. He makes good decisions. I didn't feel any pressure to "sell myself" when I met his bride's family.
But looking back with hindsight, Gwen, mother of the runaway bride, was on a shopping trip that day. She still wasn't trusting her daughter and she still hadn't decided if she would accept this marriage. Looking back, I now find that a bit creepy. Notice how I italicized the personal pronoun just then? "She" was shopping. "She" was making decisions about buying into the marriage. One thing "she" didn't do was keep an open heart. Under the surface smiles, Gwen was pretty ticked that she had not gotten to control our meeting. She had wanted to meet us (Joe's Dad and me) before we ever met her daughter! Everyone I know thought that was at least a little peculiar, and many thought it was downright bizarre.
Long story short, it turned out that KatieLyn needed "permission" from her parents to get married. And although Gwen had given permission, she regretted it. Deeply. But instead of doing either of the two more honorable things— stating her position plainly and publicly, or shutting up until she got direction from God—she did her manipulative co-dependent thing where she picked KatieLyn's happiness apart in tiny little pieces and replaced it with her own fear and doubt.
When a bride runs off in the middle of the night, the mother of the groom (that's me) has some questions. They went like this: Did I make a mistake by treating KatieLyn like a responsible adult? Her mother treated her like she was about fourteen years old, so maybe my approach scared her?? But I decided no, treating KatieLyn as an adult with adult responsibilities was proper, and it would have been mollycoddling to do otherwise. I'm not going to enable codependency in a daughter-in-law!
So I got called "mean" by KatieLyn (shrug). And Gwen wrote to me, "Let me say this as well, if Katie had been unsure about her decision to leave, your behavior cemented it in her mind. You might want to remember that for the next time."
Next time? freakin' hysteria much? Why would there ever be a next time?* — that was my impulsive reaction. But as I processed it over time, Gwen sounded more and more like the the upset woman in the returns line at the customer service desk. She had shopped for a family for "her Katie," suffered buyer's remorse over having given KatieLyn permission to get engaged, and now that the "return" was done and she had her daughter back, she just couldn't leave the store without commenting on how poor the service was.
What made Gwen unhappy with her shopping experience? The one thing that stands out the most is that she did not like the way Joe and his family set boundaries. Gwen has been a pushy mom for three decades, and she has gotten her own way a lot. In the short time that I knew her, I found multiple examples of her problem with boundaries.
• Once, she summoned Joe to her house, asking him to arrive several hours before KatieLyn would be home from work so that she could talk to him "in private." We never found out exactly what that was about because Joe had the good sense to say no. It would have required him using one of his vacation days and, consequently, shortened the honeymoon, which he rightly thought was expecting too much.
• Another example of her problem with boundaries is that after KatieLyn ran home in the middle of the night, Gwen gloatingly informed me that she had read all of my emails to Katie. Although I knew KatieLyn shared a lot with her mom and there was nothing in my email to be ashamed of, the gall of Gwen openly flaunting that she had noisily read every word of my attempt to establish a relationship with a woman I had hoped would be my daughter-in-law was just—crass.
The Lesson
This is a Bible-based blog comparing real life with scripture, but there hasn't ben any scripture yet today. Let's fix that:
And he said to them, "Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions." Luke 12:15
Covetousness is the desire for the possession of worldly things. But Jesus taught that a person's life does not consist of his/her possessions. The idea of 'shopping' for a husband is horribly worldly. The Captain and Tennille may have had a hit song in Shop Around but it was wretched advice:
My mama told meThat is how you end up with Muskrat Love, which happens to be another hit song by the same Captain and Tennille. That song promotes worldly pleasures as the basis for relationship: they twirl and they tango, jinging a jango; Nibbling on bacon, chewing on cheese... anything goes...
You better shop around
You better shop around
Try to get yourself a bargain, girl
Don't you be sold on the very first one
Good looking guys come a dime a dozen
Try to find you one who's gonna give you true lovin'
For people like Gwen, the shopping around and the pushing of boundaries are very closely linked because they stem from the same motivation. Both involve the desire to obtain and possess things in your own way by your own doing. Such people are so caught up in their own shopping, their own choices, that they lose regard for the gifts that God would give them.
* Edit to add:
Shortly after I wrote the post, I found 2 Thessalonians 2:10, which speaks of people who 'did not receive the love of the truth.' In context, the surrounding verses are addressing salvation, but what struck me was that for some, love of the truth was not a value they received. It is not that it wasn't offered; they refused the love of the truth. I can honestly say that I never saw Gwen receive God's truth for this marriage. She "shopped" because that would make it look as though she was open to the possibility and make the claim that she was "trying" to be supportive. But she refused to believe the truth and at a deep level, she took pleasure in the control and empowerment that she derived from not accepting the truth. Her "next time" comment is an example of her loving that control.
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