# How to Make Room for In-Laws in Your Family A viral video says families can plan trips without their in-laws. Pastor Adam Mesa and his wife, Ashley, respond with stories from their own marriage and from the families Adam counsels. Source: Pray.com — https://www.pray.com/articles/how-to-make-room-for-in-laws-in-your-family Author: Adam Mesa Category: Love & Relationships Published: 2026-10-22 Last revised: 2026-10-22 --- ## Key takeaways - **Marriage creates a new family.** Adam taught that when two people marry, the Bible says they become one, so a couple is its own household and not an extension of either set of parents. - **Invite first.** Adam and Ashley see a real difference between a trip built around a parent and one child and a trip that quietly leaves out a spouse. - **Plan ahead.** Ashley's family learned to schedule far in advance so that Adam, whose work leaves little room for last-minute plans, could actually come. - **Boundaries can protect a relationship.** Adam said that when a family is hurting, calmly stating what you will and will not do gives it a chance to heal. - **Explain what is going on to the kids.** Adam's own story shows how children fill gaps in with their own conclusions when nobody tells them why a parent steps back. ## A viral video about leaving in-laws behind The conversation began with a video that has been viewed widely and clipped by many Christian leaders. In it, a grandmother says it is fine to take a family vacation with only the children she raised, without sons-in-law or daughters-in-law. She says this does not mean she loves them less, and she suggests the in-laws might even be relieved to stay home. Pastor Adam Mesa and his wife, Ashley, watched it on their podcast. Ashley, a mother of boys, pictured her own sons as grown men and said she would want her future daughters-in-law included in those memories. Her verdict was blunt: “I think that is absurd.” Adam did not rule out a reason behind the video. He said he would like to know the family dynamic, and he wondered whether the grandmother was trying to hold onto a relationship with her children that she felt slipping. ## What Adam's in-laws did right Adam then described how Ashley's family treated him when he joined it. The family group chat had carried the Elliot name, and someone eventually renamed it to include the Mesas. He called the gesture thoughtful. He also explained the early arrangement he and Ashley made: she could attend family functions without him, since his schedule is full as a pastor, a speaker and someone with outside work. He warned her that if she kept going alone, people might eventually assume the marriage was not good. Over time she started going when he was available. When Ashley's family planned a reunion eight months out and Adam had a wedding to perform that weekend, her mom did not give up on him. She said she did not like that he missed it and suggested planning the next one two years ahead so it could go on his calendar now. For Adam, that is what inclusion looks like: a family willing to change its habits so a spouse can be there. ## Invited, and then free to say no Adam admitted that one invitation stung at first. Ashley's cousins were planning a cousin trip, and he assumed he would be home with the boys. He felt a little hurt, even though he said the trip itself did not interest him much. What he wanted was the chance to say no. He asked Ashley for clarity, and she told him he was invited. A male cousin had also texted him privately to say the family wanted him there. Adam's point was that a spouse can miss many events and feel fine about it, as long as the invitation was real. He and Ashley also drew a line between kinds of outings. A mother and daughter spending a day together, or parents taking the grown children to lunch, seemed fair to Adam. The trouble starts, he said, when a big shared experience, like a Disney trip, is built to exclude the spouse. In their view, that is also where resentment between in-laws begins. Ashley added that she talks with her mom every day, so her family does not feel the need for trips that leave people out. ## Boundaries and honest conversation From his counseling, Adam said many of the people who come to talk are in their fifties and sixties, and he sees many broken families and marriages tied to in-law conflict. He noted that people rarely come in believing they are the problem: “It's very rare that they've ever thought they weren't innocent.” He told of a woman in her forties who came to him about her father verbally abusing her mother. Her mother made excuses for it. Adam encouraged her to set a boundary with her siblings: they would stop visiting until their father spoke to their mother better, while their mother would always be welcome in their homes. He said many families fake it at holidays and birthdays, and then nothing changes afterward. His advice to parents and adult children alike was to “establish your boundaries and stick to them.” Ashley described the other side of the work. Early in the marriage she struggled to explain why Adam could not come to things, partly because she did not want him seen as someone who disliked her family. She told her mom that any celebration near a church service would need to happen in the morning, because Adam had to leave at 2 to prepare. She learned to speak up, and her mom learned to tell Adam things directly. As Ashley put it, “the communication does not stop regardless of in laws or mother or growing older together.” ## What Adam learned from his father and grandfather Adam then shared why this matters to him personally. His father and grandfather had a painful stretch in their relationship. At one point, his grandfather told his dad he could die and he would not show up at the funeral. Adam's dad responded by excusing himself from holiday gatherings and telling his sons they would do their own thing. No one explained any of this to Adam. As a teenager and young man, he concluded that his dad did not care about family. His grandfather did not attend his brother Nathan's wedding, and the grandsons took it all personally. Adam said that kind of silence matters because “young people are like sponges, and that dysfunction, it breeds.” Their parents' relationship was restored, and Adam said it took ten or thirteen years. Now the two go hunting and fishing together. The result for Adam was that when he married Ashley, he had to reshape his idea of family. He said he began by doing it for her, and over time he came to enjoy it. He now thinks of her brother and sister as his own brother and sister. When Ashley's sister said she would love to vacation with the two of them, Adam told Ashley to invite her. ## What this means for you If you are a parent of grown children, the Mesas' conversation invites you to ask whether your plans make room for the spouses your children chose. A trip, a holiday or a group chat can tell a son-in-law or daughter-in-law that they are family, or that they are a guest. If you are a spouse, think about whether you have explained your schedule and your limits to the people who love you. If you are an adult child caught in the middle, ask whether a hard conversation or a clear boundary is what your family needs most. And if you grew up in a family where nobody explained things, consider telling your own children what is going on, so they do not draw the wrong conclusions.