Are you ready for an adventure? Well then, pack you bags and let’s move! Oh! You should know we are going wherever your mother-in-law takes us. Really! Won’t that be fun!?
There’s a lady who did that – packed her bags and moved to a different country with her mother-in-law. No, she was not bribed or forced. This lady was a young widow and ironically her mother-in-law was recently widowed as well. Both were left husband-less in a land away from their own families. Grief stricken, the mother-in-law wanted to go home, and thought it would be best for Daughter-in-Law to move back to her own family and home community.
What would you do if your were in this situation; go home or go with Mother-in-Law?
Daughter-in-Law, Ruth, flat out refused! She told Mother-in-Law, Naomi, “I’m going wherever you go. Your family will be my family.”
Wow! What devotion.
I honestly do not know how I would have responded. I was blessed with a mother-in-law whom I loved and respected, and she is greatly missed. However, if I were in the same situation…….?
In the Biblical account of Ruth and Naomi, I’m intrigued by the love and devotion Ruth has for her bitter, grieving mother-in-law. We know very little about these women prior to their husbands’ deaths. What was their relationship like? Had they hit it off from the beginning of the courtship of Son & Daughter-in Law? When Father and Son went to war, did that draw the women close? What was it about Naomi that caused Ruth to emphatically choose to go with Naomi?
I wish I knew the answers. I’d like to know the secrets to being a mother-in-law worthy of such love and devotion. I don’t want to take the place of my daughters-in-law’s mothers, but I do want to be the best mother-in-law I can be. As I grow in this role, I have much to learn!
What words of wisdom can you share with me?
homespun happenings 