by Josiah King

Created on: July 07, 2008   Last Updated: October 31, 2008

Oh, what to do with family conflict and you?

This is a dilemma that has plagued every family, I am sure. But, what I want to focus on today is the conflict that happens when to families come together through a marriage, and the conflicts the married couple has to encounter. Now, I can only speak of my own experiences in my life and connected to it. So, that is what I will do.

Today my wife and I are celebrating our two year anniversary, and I wish I could say that everything, related to family, has been good in these past two years. But, well, that would be lying.

Perhaps it would be best to go back to when my wife and I were still dating and looking towards marriage back in 2006.

During this time before the wedding on July of 2006, I was still in college working towards finishing up my degree in Business, and my wife was working as a customer service representative. Naturally, I didn't have much in the sense of money as I was going full-time to college and living off of my G.I. Bill college money. This was a concern for my wife's side of the family. They would often make mention of me finding a good job so I could care for their daughter, and make sure I make lots of money so their daughter doesn't have to struggle through finances. Furthermore, they backed it up with statistics that they may or may not have found, that said that financial issues were the leading cause of divorce and marital problems.

All these things, I believe, came from a true motivation of concern. But, as my good friend and mentor has told me many times before,"People can have true concerns, but those concerns can be truly wrong." Such was the case in this scenario, I believe. You see, the reality of life is there are few things that are guaranteed in life, other than death and taxes. I knew this, my wife, then fiance, knew this, but apparently her father, mother, grandfather, and step-mother didn't.

A good example of this is a night that has since been labeled, The Ambush, by my wife and I. It was a Saturday evening, and my wife and I had just finished church service, and we were approached and invited by my wife's father and step-mother to go to dinner at the local El Fenix down the street. We agreed to meet them there, totally unaware of the snare that awaited us.

When we arrived at the restaurant and had entered, we found that it was not just my wife's father and step-mother who were there, but also her grandfather and mother. We thought little of it though. But, that was soon to

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