Tag Archive for: moms and daughter in law

[box] Today, I share a letter to my future daughters-in-law, Lord willing. It’s promises I make before I know them. I pray for these girls daily, and I know the Lord hears my prayers. [/box]

Dear Daughter-in-law,

God has graced me with many gifts in my life, some of the most lavish of His gifts were 3 boys. I remember the day it dawned on me that my boys weren’t actually my boys, rather they were God’s boys first, on loan to me only for a time. I was given the gift of mothering them, pointing them to the Father, and preparing them to be loving and devoted husbands, Lord willing.

My greatest gifts were never meant for me to hold onto forever. They were always intended for me to give back out. Isn’t that how many of our gifts are?

I’ve written letters to my boys since they were very young. And from the day they were born, I began to pray not just for them, but for you too. Because I’ve spent my life praying for you, my love for you goes beyond what I’m capable of offering on my own.

We love Him because he first loved us (1John 4:19). I love you because He first loved you. Simple as that. I love you not based on any criteria other than the fact that God loves you and chose you to be the wife of the son He chose for me to raise.

When we pray for someone, we can’t help but begin to love that person. The longer we pray, the more we love them. I’ve prayed for you your whole life.

I’m writing this letter now before I’ve ever laid eyes on you. As I sit here writing you are still a little girl. I try to imagine you as that little girl. I can’t wait to hear the stories of your life before we knew you. As I write to you, your story is in the first few chapters.

Being a woman is hard. We feel pressure to please, we feel the expectations that we place on ourselves accompanied by the expectations others place on us, we hide insecurities deep in the corners of our hearts. We wonder what others think, we hope we are loved, we hope we are understood, we battle fears that we don’t want to share.

In our soul what we want most is to be truly known and deeply loved.

God has knit us to desire to be known and loved by Him. I pray you find security in knowing who knows you and loves you. True joy is found in the freedom of grace. I pray we shower you with grace, which is only an attempted sprinkling of true grace.

Here are 10 promises I make to you, my daughter-in-law:

1.  I will always pray for you. Every day, forever. I will pray for your marriage every day. Prayer has changed my life more than anything other than my salvation. Praying for my own marriage has changed what every day has looked like. I want to give that gift to you. I want to pray for you and my son every day that you will both love the Lord more than anything else in the world. Because when we love Him more than anything, everything else flows from there.
2. I will always love you. Because love is more than a feeling. It’s a choice we make, when placed in God’s hands, grows into a love more beautiful than we can fathom.
3. I will always be your cheerleader. I will always be here to encourage you, to cheer for you, to love on you.
4. I will not expect you to be anyone other than yourself. I celebrate the creativity of our Creator God. I cherish you as a work of His hands. I thank God for the intricate, unique ways He crafted you. I will never expect you to be anyone other than who He created you to be.
5. I will never expect your life to look a certain way. God is the author and perfecter of our faith. He writes the most beautiful of stories and being a part of His story is the greatest thrill in life. Live in the freedom that we don’t expect your life to look like ours or anyone else’s. Your family is on a journey where God is creating a new story. No 2 stories read alike.
6. I will be honest with you. I’m a very transparent and honest person. I will always share with you from a position of trust and honesty. I will never make assumptions about you.
7. I will thank God for you. Every good and perfect gift is from above. You are a gift to our family, and I will thank God for you. (James 1:17)
8. I will always be a friend you can turn to. You will never have to worry about me talking about you behind your back. You will never have to worry about what I really think of you. You can always know that a friend loves at all times. Proverbs 17:17
9. I will always encourage grace over try-hard living and people pleasing– Grace is the freedom I live under. The harder I try to please people or the harder I try to be a “good” girl or make people like me, the smaller grace becomes in my life. When I release the pressures of being anything other than a daughter of the king, I am free to live in the grace He died for. Grace colors us beautiful. I will always encourage grace based living over try hard people pleasing.
10. I will always remember we are sisters before we are mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. – I grew up with 4 sisters. I get sisterhood. But earthly sisterhood is only a flickering of our sisterhood in Christ. You are my sister. When I look on you, I see a daughter of the King, a sister of mine in Christ, the gift of a daughter He’s given to me.

With all my love,

Renee

If you enjoyed today’s post, consider subscribing here to receive posts via email. Blog subscribers will receive fun free downloads!

 

Beautiful journal to capture the ponderings of your heart.