Perfectly You DevotionalPrøve

Day 4 - Instant Mom

Mike was a single dad with a young daughter when we met and eventually got married.  Being newly married and a wife and a mother at the same time was not as easy as I thought.  I was only 27 when I became an instant mom of a 7 year old girl.  I have to be honest, I had no idea how to be mother. After being married for about three months, I noticed that I was getting a little distant because I was having a hard time adjusting to being a wife and an instant mom. The way I dealt with uncomfortable situations was to not engage in the situation or relationship, but to remain silent. I started to shut them out and go about doing my own things.

The struggle was real in our family, and I can relate to other blended families. We all come from different upbringings with different styles of parenting and different ways of showing love to one another. When families merge together, it is not always a smooth transition. Unfortunately, we tend to miss the mark with one another. When our heart is not in the right place, our love can become depleted. We need God’s help. When relationships become complicated and cease to flourish - whether with our husband, wife, children, siblings, or in-laws - we must ask God to forgive us because our hearts can quickly become hardened and bitter. 

In Gary Chapman’s book entitled, The Five Love Languages, we discover that there are five different ways in which we show love and want to receive love: physical touch; quality time; gift giving; acts of service; and encouraging words. We can know each other’s love language, but if we don’t show or speak their love language it won’t help us in our relationship. For example, children who like to receive love through physical touch will not feel comforted when hurt unless someone gives them a hug or kiss. We need to show love in the way they can receive it and vice versa. Perhaps that means that you need to show more affection, and give encouraging words even if you don’t feel like it. Or perhaps you need to show acts of service through cleaning the house or doing the dishes.

If you are experiencing difficulty in a relationship, get on your knees and cry out to God to help you love. Let God help you let go of any bitterness, anger or hurt. Continue turning to God for His wisdom, and help because we cannot understand one another without God. Take this season as a season of growing to trust God and knowing that God is God. Then stand back and see what God does in your life in each season and how he merges lives together to bear fruit.