HARMONY AT HOME.
"I have recently married for the second time. My husband is a splendid
man but his grown up children are not in harmony with me. Good people,
but a different point of view. I make no pretensions to perfection, of
course, but I do try to do the best lean."
This is the gist of several letters I have received from as many
different women. I will answer them together.
When you enter a new home the matter of importance is _not_ whether your
new relatives harmonize with you, but whether _you_ harmonize with
_them_. It is for _you_ to do _all_ the adjusting.
This may seem hard, but it is not. It is an easier matter for one person
to readjust her living than for a whole family to change. The family has
not only its individual customs to hold each one, but its family customs
as well; whilst you have left your family and have only your individual
self to readjust. If you refuse to adjust yourself, for no matter what
reason, you will act upon this family you have entered, as a red hot
iron would act upon a pan of water--there'll be boil and bubble, toil
and trouble and the family will fly to pieces. All because you came in
with _positive_ notions of your own which you insist upon enforcing.
But if you come into the family like a lump of sugar into a glass of
water you will all, _in time_ melt together and the whole family will be
the sweeter and better for your coming. Whatever there is in you which
is better and sweeter than their own ideas and customs will in time be
_absorbed_ by the family; for what is good is ever positive to the less
good, and has a power of its own to convert; and every human soul, if
left free, will eventually _choose_ the good.
The only danger lies in your tilting your nose at _their_ ways and
ideas, and insisting upon your own. That rouses the sense of
_individuality_ in them and they then fight for _their_ ways and
ideas--then there's boil and bubble and sputter and flying apart.
Learn to vibrate _with_ people where you can and keep still when you
can't. _Look_ for the little things you can enjoy together, and make
light of the others. Recognize their _right_ to differ from you, and
REMEMBER that "_all_ judgment is of God"--_their_ judgment as well
as _yours_.
All this differing of judgment among the people of earth is simply _God
reasoning out things_. All the brains God has are your brains and mine.
Just as in your brain you reason things for and against, wondering which
is right and waiting for time and experience to decide; so God reasons
one way through _your_ brain and another and opposite way through _my_
brain, and then rests and observes until the "logic of events" shall
show _him_, and us, the point of real harmony. Just be still and _let_
God think through your brain, and don't kick up a muss because he thinks
out the other side of things through my brain, or your new
relatives' brains.
Toleration is a great thing; but loving _willingness_ to _let_ God think
out _all_ sides of a question through all sorts of brains, is a glorious
thing. Let's stand for our point of view when it is called for, but
don't let's insist upon it. Let's remember always to use God's "still,
small voice."
Do I need to tell you that what I have just said applies to you whether
you have just married a second time or not? The whole world is our
family, you know. Let's respect it and be kind to it, and _trust_ it to
recognize and appropriate our point of view just as far as is good for
it. Let's be more interested in getting at the _other_ points of view
than insisting upon our own. That is the way we shall grow in wisdom and
knowledge. And, too, that is the way we shall all get close enough
together to really see the truth about things.