My uncle-in-law is against my relationship with his distant cousin

With Auntie Agatha, gataedo@yahoo.com, agatha.edo@gmail.com, Tel: 08054500626 Dear Agatha, I really appreciate your candid advice to people. May our Lord increase in you the gift more, for service to humanity. Please I am dying slowly in my heart. I have been in love with this lady for over a year now, we have never had any misunderstanding that lasted for 24hours because we both dedicated our relationship to God. Painfully our relationship is about to come to an end as a result of the opposition of my aunt’s husband and my parents to our relationship. My parents are not in good terms with me any more. The reason for their opposition is that this lady’s great-grandfather is related to the great grandfather of my aunt’s husband. Furthermore, this lady’s parents are enemies with the family of aunt’s husband. My question is this; should this be a genuine reason for us to end this solid relationship that has taken the wisdom of God as well as His mercy to build? Please help. I’m dying slowly. Yours Humility. Dear Humility, Your uncle-in-law has no right to exploit the politics of his extended family to deny you and your girlfriend the chance to be happy together. Just like he came into your family to get married to the love of his life, you are also going into his family to get married to the only woman who gives you happiness. To dig up some ancient family misunderstanding between great grandparents who are dead is being wicked and unfair. He is carrying the ancient misunderstanding too far and exploiting his position in your family to deny you and your girlfriend happiness. The two people who generated the cold war are no more so why should the two of you suffer for what must have been a personal and selfish interest preservation between two brothers? He came into your family to get married hence lacks the right to meddle or insist on having his way when it comes to the decision of who you marry. At best his role in your personal life is advisory, not the authoritarian he is assuming to be. Go first to your mother and plead with her that your family isn’t part of the feud between the relatives of your aunt’s husband hence it would be unfair for your own happiness to be sacrificed. Tell her she and your father would be denying you of once in a life time chance to go into matrimony with the woman who loves and really understands you. Really plead with her. Mothers have the gift of knowing when their children are really sad and hurting. If possible, produce tears to drive home your point. Explain the kind of happiness, peace and joy your woman gives you. There is also the need for you to visit your uncle-in-law man to man. Refuse to be intimidated by him. Go to him as a man sure of the decisions he wants to take. Make it clear that your mind is made up but that you have come to listen to his reasons with a view of knowing what really his grouse is beyond the reasons he is advancing. Listen to whatever he has to say before making it clear what he stands to gain by you not marrying the lady. He must be able to come up with a reason that overshadows the issue of this aged long quarrel. Ask him if he can tell you categorically what actually transpired between the two people whose cause he is still pursuing? Take him to the scripture on what God said about forgiveness. Explain to him that history is giving him the opportunity through your love for his distant cousin to reconcile the entire family and that he has the right to accept the rare privilege of being the peace envoy or allowing history pass him by. End your discussion with him by making it clear that you hold the ace in this matter and that since nobody in your family placed barriers on his way when he came to marry your sister, you will appreciate if he accords you the same respect and support to marry the woman after your heart. Follow this discussion with another one with your father. Ask him who is more important to him; your aunt’s husband or you his son. give him some thing to munch on. there is no reasonable parent that will put the love of another above his or her own child. As long as you go about it with a rational mind, not insulting anybody in the process of getting things done your way. However, be sure you are really in love with this woman; that you know her and that both of you are aware of the complications of marriage. This is imperative to avoid the complications and mockery that would follow should there be a major disagreement between the two of you some few months down the road. In addition you have to surrender everything to God because He only has the answers to every of our problem in life. There is nothing you can do if He hasn’t patterned your lives to be together. So begin the battle for the love of your life by going first to God in prayers. If you indeed place Him above everything else, you will succeed in getting your family to support your plans and decisions to spend the rest of your lives together. Good luck.