The Mother-in-Law Preparation Process

This transcript has been adapted from the attached audio. It may not be in its final form and may be updated.

HAROLD HARPER: It’s great to have you back with us and in the studio today. Welcome back to For Faith & Family.

ANNIE CHAPMAN: Thank you, it’s great to be here.

HARPER: Talk to us about when this began. One Scripture that comes to mind that you have referenced in this book, is the leave and cleave passage in Genesis. But let’s back up a little bit to say, before marriage is even thought of, in a case where a young man, out of college, he is just kind of starting and he is starting to bring some prospects around. At what point do you start in the process?

CHAPMAN: Well, you start by praying for them, probably before they are born. Our kids have made really good choices, and I don’t know that they’ve ever brought anybody around that I would have just had a heart attack if they were going to marry them. But, I put a lot of that at, and I don’t mean to divert credit away from the Lord, the moment that Steve knew that Nathan was conceived, he began to pray and fast for him. The day we found, not the day the rabbit died, but, you know, the day we found out, he prayed and fasted for three days. Now, he said he lost his appetite because he was scared, but I’m going to give him the spiritual benefit of it. And then, from then on, for every week, and he chose Wednesdays, every Wednesday since the children have been conceived, he prays and fasts for them. I really believe that has helped them. It just sets such a foundation under them. You try to mirror image that to them; the kids have never seen Steve be disrespectful to me. They have never heard him call me a name, to yell at me. That’s not who he is; he doesn’t do that. I have yelled before, but we won’t talk about that. We aren’t talking about me.

HARPER: But you’ve also written a really good book on anger, so…

CHAPMAN: Yes, I had to get some material for my anger book, so I just had to let it vent. No, but, I think being that example and then praying for those kids, it really does set the ground work for them to make good choices, hopefully, where they want somebody like their daddy or they want someone like their momma.

HARPER: You make an excellent point, though, as you referenced earlier, a mom raises a boy and say, by the age of twenty, that’s twenty years of investing in this young man, and then this girl shows up.

CHAPMAN: Oh yeah.

HARPER: Talk to us about that.

CHAPMAN: A lot invested. A lot of heart, a lot of stuff involved, and, yet, she has to somehow be able to make the transition, but it’s not easy. I use in the book an example that a mother is like a mighty river. If you think about the pioneer days when they were settling the country, people would make their choice of where they would make their community in proximity to the river, and the river was a place of teaming with life, a place of commerce, on Sundays you go down and you jump in the river. It was a place of pleasure and recreation. The river was an incredible asset to a community, until it overflowed its banks. And that same river that brought such pleasure and life and commerce, also then could drown and destroy and decimate a community. The same is with a mother. A mother is that entity in a family that brings life, pleasure, transportation, commerce. She is an incredible asset to her family, until she overflows her banks. Until she gets out of her realm. As a child grows to maturity, she has got to back off and stay within her boundaries, regardless of how much she has invested in him, she has got to back away, and when he takes a wife, when he says, “I do,” then I’m done. Does it mean I don’t love him anymore? Well, of course I love him, and my love demands me to back away because I don’t want him to have to choose. I don’t want to put him in a position where he’s got to placate mom and then keep his wife happy. I don’t want him doing that jig. If anyone’s going to dance, it’s going to be me. And I want to back away and let him have a life because, you know, that’s why you raise them, is to let go of them.

HARPER: We’ve heard stories, horror stories of some parents who couldn’t quite accept even the prospect, and as a result, their hard stand may have actually pushed that son or daughter to that opposite just because of how they handled it.

CHAPMAN: I heard years and years ago, Dr. Dobson talking about a parent who tries to control the child and dominate them, and I may be getting this all wrong, but this is how I heard it and I remembered it. He was talking about the thirteen colonies under England, the mother country, and how, when she saw that these thirteen colonies were becoming a little more independent, that she started tightening the screws and putting taxes and tariffs and things like this on them. He said, “If England had done it right, we would still have Queen Elizabeth on our money.” If that country had not tried to control the colonies, and he likened that to children, that when you see them begin to give some independence, instead of letting them grow up, if you start tightening the screws and you start controlling them, you actually are fostering rebellion in those children. Well, it might be a little step to the side with this idea too, but I think it really can work that way that when we start trying to control who our kids are marrying, and I’m not talking about teenagers, who you take to the prom, you know, I’m talking about adult men and women, as parents, if they try to interject themselves too much, you are right, they can actually foster rebellion and maybe that child will make a wrong decision out of rebellion where they wouldn’t have necessarily made that choice had they not been having to prove that they are a man, or a woman.

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