UNWISE MARRIAGE OF CHILD

Please don't be offended if I don't reply, b/c I am trying to hear from the Lord on this. But I am wondering if anyone has any help on how to walk thru the marriage of a child that you as parents, don't believe is wise, or the right choice, particularly a daughter (I believe it is different for sons maybe a little)....both profess Christ, so it could certainly be worse. I have fasted and prayed and prayed and fasted about this, and I come to the same conclusion.....neither my husband or I believe it is God's best for our daughter. But they have sort of said they are going to do it anyway, and would like to stay friends in the matter. We are heartbroken...I am just wondering if anyone has personally walked through this, and how the Lord has helped you to come to grips with it. I know God is sovereign, I know He can stop it, I know He sometimes allows us to make mistakes, I know He works everything for good....but somehow it is hard to get those truths down to the pit of my stomach....

Please don't give advice as it is impossible to know a situation online like this, but I am wondering what has comforted you if you have been thru such a situation....Thank you so much!

Welcome to the human experience 101.

It will probably be no consolation, but when God put His perfect son in a perfect garden, visited regularly with kind counsel and excitement about new opportunities, He still had to endure the day the son and the girl decided to do their own thing.

I would guess that most of us with adult children have been through similar angst and heartache. I have two daughters who chose to go with men I would not have selected, the divorces and damaged children issues continue. I wish it were not so, but I do know we serve the God of Plan B. He can make beauty from the ashes we give Him, and takes the wayward into His sanctuary to help them see things- sometimes He has no other options for pulling down the blinders in headstrong people than to lead them through the fire.

As I think back on my own experiences from that period in my life, I would guess that my father-in-law was less than pleased that his daughter married me. In fact, I had been married 12 years with 3 children before I confessed my sin of marrying her without first seeking his blessing. Unable to deal with my blubbering confession, this tough old WW2 vet never brought this up again- but our relationship was instantly healed and we finally became friends.

(Incidentally, it was a direct result of Bill Gothard's teaching that pushed me to do this and receive a great blessing!)

I do not know you or anything beyond what you have written here, I only hope that you will be able to take a longer look at the situation, and be prepared to live with the realities coming over which you have no control.

God always has a plan B, and often the corrected plan has a perfection of its own. Trusting Him will force fear to wither away, and love covers a multitude of sins!

Just some thoughts...

Thank you Sidewalk, for taking the time to reply. I don't think I am in human experience 101, this feels like an AP class :( We have already told our daughter several times that we don't believe this to be a good thing, so I think we have moved on to Plan B already. I know God is at work....it is just kind of hard to swallow. And it is not even so much the match, but the degree of what I would call rebellion, in a previously sweet daughter that is pushing so hard for this.

So glad you made things right with your FIL, and that you are seeing God work His plan B in your daughters' lives. I was hoping to avoid that classroom (divorce)....Hebrews says w/o faith it is impossible to please God, but I cannot even do THAT w/o Him....

Thank you for your thoughts....

Greetings mama27

I have been thinking over your thread for some time today. I would like to share with you. When I married my husband we were both so young and my husbands parents did not like me. In fact I think it would be safe to say they hated me. When we were first married they made it really clear how much they did not approve of me or our marriage and it made things so difficult and caused so much pain. As the years passed we pulled away more and more from them just to avoid conflicts. It was especially difficult for my husband because his parents would constantly say negative things to him about me. Please don't misunderstanding me, I am not trying to say they were/are bad people. They love their son and wanted the very best for him. They just did not believe that I was best for him and they made sure I always knew that. As I look back now I am happy to say some things have changed. I like to think I have grown up in CHRIST, and we have been able to find a common ground to some degree. although we never really spend any time with them and when they are in touch with my husband its for very short time and only a handful of times a year. In telling you this I just want to caution you in moving forward with your daughter. Pray for her and follow the LORD'S leading but if they do go through with their plans to marry, extend love to your son in law and welcome him just as you would your own son. Make him feel he is accepted and a part of the family. You did mention that they are both saved so trust in the LORD in this situation. I know at one time both my in laws were hoping for my marriage to come to an end, but GOD had other plans and here we are 30 years later we are still together. Its not ideal I realize but if they marry you reaching out to him in love can make all the difference as your family grows and moves forward.

I hope my post does not come off as "telling" you what to do. I don't mean it to, I just felt led to share these things with you. I know you love your daughter and I pray for you in this time. Keep turning to GOD and trust in HIM. Know that HE cares for you and your daughter in all of this and just let HIM lead you.

God bless
mj

I appreciate your comments Mary Jane...I am sorry you had to endure such. I am not unaware of that kind of treatment as my own mother refused to accept either my own husband or the wife of my brother. We have had decades of hurt b/c of it. I had always prayed that God would give me grace to embrace my children's spouses as my own. In a way it is easier to be kind to the "other" than one's own child if there is friction over the issues. It is a tall order that only God can give grace for. I would have expected this from my prodigal sons, but not one of my daughters.

If you read another thread I started, I just recently buried my aunt who I had tried to witness to, and who was Catholic. I really tried to share with her in the last 2 weeks of her life, but I do not have any indication that she gave her life to the Lord. I had pondered much when I drove home from her deathbed just 2 hours before she died, that really, God gives us a choice. We can choose Him or not. It hits you hard when you are minutes away from death and watching a loved one make a wrong choice. I bring this up b/c it is the same with our children. I am almost as grieved at this marriage choice (not quite) as over my aunt. It is as if you "see" what they don't see, and you'd do anything to spare them the pain and troubles ahead.

So that is where I am....very grieved over what I believe to be a mistake. I am trying to find comfort for my hurting heart. One thing that has helped is I think it was John Piper who said, "God is always doing 1,000 things that we cannot see." But relations are estranged with my daughter - it is as if she has blackmailed us by saying, "I won't have a relationship with you unless you accept that I want to marry this young man".....this is not the spirit in which my children were raised, and it is just so so sad to me....

Thanks so much for sharing!

Mine is a little different perspective. My wife and I have been married 26 years come the end of April.

We married young. She was a daughter of a preacher and I never went to church until we started dating. I was saved about 18 months after we started dating. My mother could not stand this girl I was mad about. Her parents were more or less resigned to it but were never unkind to me.
My mother turned passive aggressive and catty after we married. Her dad died a few months after we married, but her mother and family treated me like I was born to them.

My family was mean to her. Hers was very kind and embraced me.

It worked. I got the better end of the deal for sure. I gained a family that loved me and, to a degree, influenced me in growing in Christ (my mother in law especially). My wife never got that kind of love from my own family and that relationship is mostly splintered now.

Gentleness may be not only the only option but the best medicine. I am praying for you all.

Sister, I have not gone through what you are going as I am only 30. But less than 3 years back I got married to a daughter of a Church Elder, a man of God whom I respect a lot. I will explain how my father-in-law handled the situation when I asked for his daughter.

I was at that time a new Convert who has been to born again only for 2 year. I met him and as usual he asked my testimony. I prayed that I should never project myself as a different person from who I am. I just told him all the truth about my conversion and how I still fall in so many areas. I told him how Jesus is so important to me. He then wanted me to meet a senior elder brother in another city and I met him and gave my testimony. The other elder brother told my father in-law that I appear to be a genuine convert who is frank about his failures. After that my father-in-law was interested about his daughter's will, she said she liked me but was willing to give up if he did not approve this proposal. Once my father-in-law gave an yes, he did not even keep 1 foot back. There were lot of opposition from my parents and they directly threatened to take my inlaws to court if they proceed with a wedding.

My father-in-law is well respected among his relatives as a man of God for his faith, but they started thinking that he was getting his daughter married to a new convert (or someone from another religion) which is a shameful act to them. But my father-in-law was not concerned about the approval of his relatives. To him only thing mattered was whether the boy was born again and whether his daughter found this boy as God's will for her. Once I satisfied these 2 conditions he was not at all affected by my parents approval or his relatives approval or fellow church members approval etc. Even the man who has most sermons on Sermon Index advised my father-in-law to be careful in trusting new converts but he did not waver, even his wife was concerned about the problems that my parents were creating.

I don't think I have the faith as my Father-in-law and will give my daughter to a new convert. But he had the faith that God will not let his daughter choose a wrong person as God's will. Finally with much opposition we got married. Initially I made the mistake of letting my mother speak evil of my wife but once God opened my eyes to his word that 'A man should leave his parents and cling to his wife', I told them that they have no authority to speak anything about my wife. Which they had to obey.

As a parent we might think of so many factors but a man of God like my father-in-law kept it simple,
1. Is the boy born again
2. Has my daughter found God's will
Everything else like my parents or my financial status, my job, my education, my past faith, my caste, my race etc was nothing in front of him.

Dolfan and Sree - thank you so much for what you shared....I do not have time right now for a lengthy reply, but I just want to say that this is the issue, has our daughter found God's will? As I mentioned I have prayed much about this. An adult child must hear from God for themselves. But those of us in the family see wrong motives, and that this is done out of a rebellion of sorts....that is exactly the issue - is this God's will....

Still, parents do not have the right to dictate things in their adult children's lives. Unless God would intervene, it appears that our daughter will go ahead with this. The reason I started this thread was to see if anyone else had gone thru this and what kind of "God-thinking" they had that helped them walk thru this. To be sure, it is a test of faith. As a parent you pour so much into a child, and hope to be moving them towards God...and you see their certain bents and you try to guide them towards those as well. When you see disaster ahead, you try to warn them. But as Keith Daniel says, "there is always the free will of man".....I am trying to find peace, and to know that God does not waste any trial. It really boils down to, do I trust Him? Still struggling in that department :(

Greetings and salutations Mama

I'd like to give you a different perspective.

My middle daughter met a fine young man at a Christian university. Eventually the young man asked my husband for my daughter in marriage. My husband agreed (after talking with our daughter) and they were married. The young man did one more year of schooling and then they joined a small mission organization he had done short term work with before. Both my daughter and her husband worked from the home office but would also go to the missions the organization had in Haiti and Mexico. Then he went to seminary and then pastor of a church. Two years later they were divorced. He resigned his pastorate because he no longer believes God exists and married the woman he was having an affair with.

I tell you all this to say there are no guarantees. All we can do is trust the Lord. You have done your best. Leave her in God's hands.

I will add another of my daughters was enamored with a young man who was not a believer. I fought that on my knees not with her. She broke up with him.
REJOICE! =)
Mary

Hello Mama27-

My children are still unmarried, but I see myself as having been that teen girl who married against all wise counsel.

I was 19 and considered myself a spiritual person who loved God, having been mostly brought up in church. I fell head over heels for a man who had different religion.My family urged me that it was unwise to be "unequally yoked."
The pastor who was to marry us advised me that it would not work.
I was not thinking or caring about how my parents felt about it. I was immature in my thinking even though I thought I was oh so mature!

We had huge compatibility issues.
We were both from different cultures, he was older than I, we didn't really have the same hobbies... Against all advice, I married him and it didn't take long before he moved me far away to his country- just what my family said would happen.

We had a lot of challenges to say the least, but the one thing that we had in common was that we were firm about our commitment to marriage.

Little did I know that God would use every part of that pressure cooker to bring me to a revelation of Him that I never had- and in the isolation of a foreign country where Christians were rarely heard of.

I've been married now for over 25 years and I owe it no longer to my sense of commitment, but all to God, because I drew/ draw strength from Him alone.
I had rejected the God that I was raised to believe in (but without personal revelation) when I married my husband,but God used the trials in my marriage to reveal Himself to me
and give me a real and true and lasting foundation of faith in Christ. I think God knew me so well, He knew what it would take for me to come to Him. His patience with us is for our salvation.

Keep praying, sister. Perhaps God has put this on your heart to push through. Even if she does go off against all wise counsel- even IF it is not God's best for her... God can and will use it to shape and mold her.
I feel like I am testimony to that.

Thank you so much, SMILY and Onemite....thank you for your testimonies......I could use prayer - rough weekend - I am having a very hard time....

mama,

You know I have thought a lot about your situation,knowing full well the pain that accompanies it. One of the hardest things is to see your child become an adult and they seem to refuse the teachings you have taught them. The time does come when a child will make their own decisions, and at times react strongly to yours - doing the opposite of what they know to do. This is extremely painful to mom and dad.

Now they are an adult and they are accountable to God. One of the hardest things for a parent to do is to relinquish this child to the LORD Jesus for Him to do his work in him/her and then back off. I have had to pray a lot that I would not interfere in the LORD working in the life of my child. My preaching/teaching (!) days are over. :-/ :-)

Years have gone by and I have prayed the LORD would give me some sign that he is working and he has - in a way I never imagined. This fuels my hope more that I can safely trust my child into his care. In the meantime, we learn something about patience - but we wanted it all yesterday, don't we?!

You say the fellow is a professing Christian...it just may be that it will be this marriage the LORD will use to bring them to himself. Marriage will make or break a person. God can/will use it put ones maturing process on a fast track. It speeds up when children come on the scene.

If they do marry, I suggest you accept him as your son. We have done this to our son's wives and it has been a blessing. I earnestly believe God put them into our family for a reason, one is to show them what family can be like - that not all families are dysfunctional. I love all our daughters-in-law - all different from me but have value in God's eyes and they all want to do the right thing. But we still pray earnestly for them - more so then when they were little - there are more people involved now then before.

God bless.

Sandra

EDITED