Colossians 4:5-6 Be wise in the way you act with outsiders, make the most of every opportunity.  Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt so that you may know how to answer everyone.

I clobbered my mother-in-law with doctrine.  I wrote her a letter outlining my concerns about her spiritual life.  I shared some basics about sin, repentance, the Good News of what Jesus has done for us and how to grow in the love & knowledge of God.  But I overwhelmed her with my intensity. And I have irrevocably moved our relationship into a new territory where neither of us knows how to maneuver.  All of this – 2 weeks before our youngest son’s wedding when family will gather.

My mother-in-law is 81.  She grew up in the Catholic Church, switched to the Episcopal Church in college, met & married a seminarian and shared the life of an Episcopal priest & bishop for almost 59 years.   Thus has the Episcopal Church been the center of her life.

My concerns for the state of her soul were cumulative over many years as my husband and I were graciously drawn out of the kingdom of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of light.  Looking back on our past, Mike & I recall how we truly THOUGHT we were Christians all the years we were faithful church-goers and served in different ministries.  Indignation and denial most likely would have been our reaction had someone confronted us with the state of our souls.  So I understand how it must seem puzzling to someone living a ‘religious’ life, that it might be possible not even to belong to Christ.  “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven; but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.”  Matt 7:21

As we discovered truth and life, we wanted to share this joy and the assurance of salvation with those closest to us.  My mother was a believer, yet died before I was regenerated.  I failed to share the Gospel with my father.  I tried, but was not equipped and backed off many times when he didn’t want to talk.  Out of that experience, my husband and I approached his parents.  Our concerns for their spiritual well-being intensified over the past months as my father-in-law was dying.  We prayed for opportunities to have authentic discussions about the reality of Christian hope.  But we could do no more than skirt the periphery of religiosity.

I don’t understand people’s boundaries.  To my discredit, it is very difficult to imagine or empathize, and therefore yield to limits and walls friends and family erect to protect emotions or comfortable routines of looking at life.  (Why wouldn’t you want to talk about the most important topic in life? – your future after you die?  Don’t you want to know if what you have staked your life on is valid?  Don’t you want to even know WHAT it is you believe?) My grown children and husband consider me intense.  But I can’t see that:  I am what I am.  Is a fish aware that he breathes in through gills?

So returning from my father-in-law’s funeral I wrote my mother-in-law THE letter and launched her on a roller-coaster of emotions of anger, shame, indignation and horror.

Here is what I have learned from this experience:

(1)   – Patience is not something I practice naturally, so just as a pilot must intentionally crab into a wind to keep her flight path straight, so must I wait longer than I think is necessary.  I composed THE letter on a Friday and sent it to two people whose opinion I value.  I received a green light from one, but did not wait long enough to hear back from the other person before mailing it off.  She replied 3 ½ days later and suggested restraint.  But I had already mailed off the letter. To my ‘partial credit’ I had slept on it and prayerfully revised it over a 3-day period.  Yet I should have waited for this second person’s wisdom, since I had explicitly asked for it.

(2)   Offhand remarks I wrote that were not even my main point were received poorly.  This really surprised me.  I should have considered every sentence.  When I closed the letter to my dear mother-in-law with the reassurance that her grandsons would be praying along with me for her, I thought that would encourage her.  Instead she was horrified that I had shared something ‘negative’ and had ‘misrepresented her’ to the boys.  I never would have anticipated that reaction.

(3)   Less is more.  I dumped TOO much on her (14 pagesL).  The quantity had two negative effects: a) she missed some important parts because it was too much to take in all at once and b) she felt bludgeoned by the sheer amount of what I wrote.

I failed to SEASON my written conversation with her; I just dumped out the whole blue container of Morton’s iodized salt.

So, I am trusting God now to work my blundering efforts for her good and for mine.  I am praying that we can sort out a way of relating that is safe and comfortable for her when she arrives next week for the wedding.  I am sorry that she will feel self-conscious around her grandsons and us.  That was not my intention.  But I don’t regret that I initiated the discussion.  I could never have said some of what I wrote face to face.  I will continue to share the Gospel with others when appropriate and will trust the Holy Spirit to let me know His timing and the proper words.