Invisibility, Welcome here. I also have an ED. We are all in different stages of our estrangement journey. It is a sad journey. There was a time that I tried everything to break open closed doors with our ED. You are right. It falls on deaf years that God has not yet opened. All we do is get ourselves depressed and stressed which affects every part of our life.

I have found that giving out EC to the Lord to work on and praying for them is best. It does not mean we do not care. Of course, we do. Then, the key is keep them in prayer.

Please be kind to yourself and take it one day at a time with the Lord's strength.

I don't know what the answer is. I feel the outcome is the same if you keep quite with them or try to reason it out. My son told me I was a terrible Mother and an even worse GrandMother. Not true at all.i did try to say lets sort this out but to no avail.m

I am very grateful to have found a place to connect with others dealing with the same pain. One thing I have realized… It must hurt God as much as it hurts us to have us when we abandon our relationship with Him.

I was thinking the same thing today about how God must hurt to have us abandon our relationship with him. Unfortunately, your story is all too common. I have no idea why people make up these stories about abuse. My husband and I raised our kids in the Lord...took them to church and I was a stay-at-home mom when they were little. I poured my heart and soul into raising them...now our middle child wants nothing to do with my husband and me and his siblings. He claims my husband sexually abused his grandson and there is no proof to support any of these allegations plus CPS did a complete investigation at our request and found nothing. Trying to reason with our ES is useless. I am trying to find things I enjoy doing and move forward with life. I am sorry you are having to deal with this pain but God will see you through this. Some days are better than others when dealing with this heartbreak.

Welcome Invisibility, all of us here on this site understand the pain you feel. My ED also lies terribly about how she was raised.

Please stay strong, stay in prayer.

Everyone has such great advice. Our son was estranged for almost 8 years and only came back because his father had terminal cancer. Now we are trying to rebuild our relationship. God has helped me to remember that he gave us 2 ears and only 1 mouth for a reason. So I ask Him to help me not voice an opinion because I don't want to give him another opportunity to alienate me again.

I found that when I though of him as just "detached" and not gone - meaning he was detached for just a while, it was easier for me to spend one day and the next and the next getting involved in my life - MY life - as God said we are to love him first, our spouse second (if we have one) and our children third.

I will keep you and your daughter in my prayers. Not sure why we have to deal with this.

Oh yes, the lies sommersmom but worse than the lies is the even greater devastation of who is believing them! People who KNOW you and they don't even question what they are hearing!

I love your advise Norske1. "Detached" is a lot easier to stomach than gone. And I have decided that I have devoted 25 years to THEM and now I want to discover ME. Thanks for the reminder and encouragement!

Butterfleye, I think the lies are the hardest for me because it evokes a feeling that I need to get revenge…. a terrible feeling for healing a relationship.

invisibility, what do you mean by "how to fight the self- hate I feel for letting this happen."? What did you "let" happen. Did you really have complete control of what "this" is?

Sending you big hugs invisibility....do not worry what your daughter and others say or think of you. They have their own sins. You have said you were sorry and that is all God requires of you to do. It is your daughter's choice to forgive or not. None of us can re-write the past...we must push forward to the future.

To me there is no difference from 'detached' or 'gone' ----- either way they do not want us in their lives and we do not want them in ours unless God reveals to us in our hearts that they have changed. With our 2 children we walked away from the abuse and disrespect the same as I know God would.

Romans 8
35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

36 As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.

37 Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.

38 For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,

39 Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

I really like what Billy Graham's wife said: "We mom's are not in the business of changing hearts .... only God can do that."

Most of us did not make the decision to estrange ... it's on them ... I didn't teach my ED that ... and none of you did either ..... They aren't little children anymore ... they are adults and their decisions and consequences of them are theirs. It is what it is ....

These EC's are estranging for seemingly insignificant infractions ... sometimes not even anything we did or didn't do .... it just is and it's wrong IMO, but I don't think it is anything we can fix .... It's in God's hands, only He can change their hard hearts.

" I am at a loss as to how to pray, how to stay out of the deep depression I face daily and how to fight the self- hate I feel for letting this happen."

Invisibility, you did not let this happen. It happened because of the actions of others, over which you had no control. You need to let go of any feelings of self-hate and accept the forgiveness which is yours for anything you did do, and let go of the things being said about you that are untrue. It takes a very long time to achieve this. For me it took a few years (and I have fully arrived there yet). We all make mistakes in life, that's just part of being human.

My suggestion is to read the Psalms and pray for peace. The stress this causes us is not good for our minds, bodies, or spirits. Only God can remove the hurt, anger, and bitterness; and replace it with peace, joy, and strength.

I have mentioned it before that in Revelation it says that the young wIill be hard hearted, lovers of themselves, disrespecful to parents... Need I say more.

Butterfleye, I chose to divorce their father. My children believed that they lived in a perfect, happy, family. The blow was too devastating for my daughter and I feel enormous guilt. I've accepted responsibility and asked many times for forgiveness. It has given her the fuel to make up abuse stories that never happened, and she feels she can call me any awful name she wants.

I am accepting that I have to pay the consequences for my actions and I'm just praying that God will heal her heart and the relationship.

So true! Just to add that the enemy is so pleased over estrangement. He wants destruction within families and he wants us to go down with it. It is not of God. It is opposite of what His Word says parents and children should be. It is not a grey area.

We can fight the good fight and come out with victory in His strength with time and lots of prayer. We can press on.