....and those are the times I need to do the most praying! Either that or I'll start reeming people out or smacking them upside the head! If you can't listen to me vent, or plan on being critical of my attitude, leave now, or at least don't bother commenting.
My inlaws have hit a new low of abuse towards my husband, if that was even possible. They can have all the issues with me they want, but to treat their own son this way is just plain wrong.
We've been living in TX for 1 1/2 years now. During that time we've only seen my inlaws once, (not such a bad thing) when we went back to NY for my BIL's wedding. Twice, we've invited them down here, arranged a free place for them to stay with family (since we don't have space) and suggested all sorts of great things we could take them to do and see, twice, but they've never come. We were supposed to go back to NY back in July for my cousin's wedding and some time with his family, but they had some small trips planned and alot going on, and we were a bit short on money, so we decided not to go. Part of our trip also was to pick up all of our Christmas stuff that was being stored in NY as well, so my inlaws are supposedly shipping it all. (someday, probably in March!)
Well, two or three weeks ago my husband was online and asked if I knew anything about his parents going to Alabama to visit his brother. (who just got married and moved there 6 months ago) Of course I was shocked, because their excuse for not visiting us was always, it's too far, it's too hot, we're not good at traveling, it's too expensive, etc.... Just an FYI, but his brother lives 20 hours from his parents, we live 26 hours, and typically it's all of 3 degrees cooler there. Anyways, apparently his mom and brother were both raving about how they were so excited to get all this family time together in Alabama on their facebook statuses, not that anyone had bothered to tell us they were coming. My husband was upset at this point, but decided not to mention anything his parents, expecting them to tell him about it when he talked to them in a few days.
10 days later, he's texting with his brother, and out of no where his brother stops responding, he didn't think much of it, till he got a text saying "mom and dad just pulled in and brought all the rest of our stuff from NY and I'll be a little busy with them for the next 10 days, bye". At this point, my husband is flat out ticked! His parents HATE HATE HATE road trips, they used to complain about traveling an hour and a half to see him when he had his internships in college, yet they can drive 20 hours to his brother's house to bring his stuff from NY when they've been supposed to ship ours for awhile now? It's not even the stuff that makes him so mad, it's the fact that no one bothered to inform him of these travel plans and give him the chance to arrange for us to come out to Alabama (a 10 hours trip for us) and meet them there, or meet somewhere in between on a gulf coast beach, or anything, plus the fact that his brother's only been gone 6 months and he's been gone 18 months. At this point, he's just hurt that clearly his brother massively outranks him (no duh, if you read my older blog!) and his parents don't seem to care anything about him.
Then, yesterday, the topper of everything- his mom calls him, wakes him up on his day off, to go on and on about what a wonderful time they're having with his brother and how beautiful a certain beach (only 6 hours from us!) and could he look something up for her while he was on the phone. Then, she has the gaul to get on facebook and brag about how wonderful their "family time" with my BIL and their DIL (oh, by the way, I'm the wife, she's their daughter) and how it's so good to be all together.
Yeah, my inlaws are JERKS!!!! Nicest word I can find. I was at work when all this was going on yesterday morning, and biting my tongue working in the office at church was a bit difficult. Oh the verbal lashing I wanted to give those people. In the words of a certain childhood TV show- HOW RUDE?! Are you 4 year olds bragging about a toy to tease another kid, I mean, seriously, GROW UP!! You treat your own child that way? I don't care how grown up and independant he is, it's just mean, hurtful, and rude! I thought parental love was supposed to be unconditional? They complain that he's too focused on me and not enough on his "real family" yet they treat him like this and expect him to come running home to them? They're lucky he talks to them at all according to me.
See if we come see you next time we're in NY.
I've had to repeatedly forgive my inlaws for various things in our marriage, nearly daily when we lived in NY, and I have forgiven them, I don't hold on to old things, I'm not still angry, but I completely 100% do not trust them not to hurt us again. There's a big difference between bitterness and protecting yourself. And it's okay to guard yourself against further hurt after you've forgiven someone. Turning the other cheek doesn't mean you can't also remove yourself from a bad situation. I think we're at the point where we have to do that, but my husband is too hurt and upset to react at this point. He's at the "numb" stage of disbelief that his parents are that bad. He's hurting, I'm hurting for him, but I also want to beat the crap out of the people who hurt him so we can move on. Too bad it doesn't work that way......
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