After a little teeny tiny mini rant on twitter, I realised it is probably easier and hopefully more beneficial to write something on here.
The issue I want to discuss is that of the importance of the Mother in Law (MIL). I myself am not married so I will be looking at this issue through the eyes of a single but confused girl who doesn't understand why there is such a bad stigma attached to the mother of your husband.
I have not only seen things on twitter and facebook but also
have had a number of personal conversations with people about the dreaded
mother in law. Many women will state things such as, ‘I want to marry an
orphan!’ or ‘I hope my husband’s mother doesn't live with us’. The latter
statement I can almost understand however it is not something I think needs to
be made a huge issue of, especially if you’re from an Asian background (Indian,
Pakistani, Bangladeshi) wherein it is tradition for many son’s to opt to live
with their parents even after marriage. Moreover, in the current economic
climate it is difficult to afford to own a property of your own straight away.
Although I can understand the want of many women to live
separately from their ‘in-laws’ after marriage, what happens if your husband
has no plans to move out?
My humble advice is this, sometimes you are put in a
situation that you may not have personally chosen, but there is no point in
dwelling on something that cannot be changed. Embrace it! Gaining a mother In
Law is like gaining a mother. If she’s your husband’s mother, see her as your
mother, moreover the grandmother of your future children! If you love and look up to your husband’s
character and mannerisms, know that it is his mother who gave them to him.
I know many of you will be thinking, ‘but what if she’s an
evil soap opera style mother in law?! Huh?! What do you say then ??? ‘ I will
not sit here in a bliss of ignorance and say that it never happens, I know it
does. However I give you an example of someone I know personally.
This sister got married and mashaAllah her husband is very
good to her, however he is an only son. His mother felt as though he is still
attached to her womb! Everything this sister did was never good enough for her
MIL. Every time the sister and her husband would go out for a ‘romantic’ date the
MIL would go too! Now as a young woman, whose husband loved her a lot, she could've moaned until her husband moved her out. However she did the total
opposite! SubhanAllah, she would wake up extra early before work to cook for
the family, clean the house and other chores, so that when her MIL would wake
up everything was magically done. This carried on for a while.
One day as this sister was sitting there, she heard her MIL
on the phone and she heard how she was complimenting her, as if no one in the world
had a better daughter in law (DIL) than her! After a while the tension between
the two of them simply eased away.
Now don’t get me wrong, I know sometimes the only way to ease
tension is to live separately, and this can even make the relationship between
DIL and MIL better, but it is up to us as good mannered, strong willed women to
try our best before giving up.
If only we remember that Jannah lies under the feet of our
mother, this not only applies to my mother, and your mother but HIS mother too.
If we can find a special space in our heart for our mother in laws then not
only will their love for us increase but our husbands will also see this and
their love for us will increase too, inshaAllah.
Make dua for yourselves and I humbly request you make dua
for me too, that we gain loving mothers and not just mother in laws! May we be like loving daughters to them as we were to our own mothers. Ameen.
