CHRISTIAN PARENTS of ESTRANGED ADULT CHILDREN Community Group
Estrangement makes it difficult to talk about with family, friends, neighbors and church members. Christians are NOT immune to broken families. Talk about your experiences with those who know how you feel and get positive support through your Christian faith...."In these last days difficult times will come, for men will be lovers of self...disobedient to parents,...
Yesterday, we held their hands when they crossed the street. Today, they walk alone. They go on their own path and make their own decisions. Sometimes, they include us in their journey and experiences, sometimes they don't. Before, they used to live with us and we saw them every day. Now, they don't live with us and we don't see them often and in some cases they've chosen not to see us.
Our hearts long to be with them and to share their lives with them as we once did. We want to share the joys and the disappointments, The good times and the bad times. The sunny days and the rainy days. We just want to be a part of their lives.
Maybe we aren't right next to them every day. Maybe we aren't included in everything they do. Maybe we don't get daily phone calls, emails or letters from them. Maybe they've even told us not to contact them.
One thing to remember is that sometimes they need to travel alone. As much as it hurts us not to go with them, traveling alone may be what they need to help them reach the place where they need to be. While we may not be walking next to them on that same road and holding their hands like we did in the old days, we are with them in spirit and they can sense that. They've taken the things we taught them on their adventure. Someday, their journey will bring them back to us. Not to stay permanently - because they are now grown adults with lives of their own, but to come full circle to their origin of love, acceptance and family. To bless us with what they have learned on their way home. Their final home we pray is with us and with God in Heaven.
Our hearts long to be with them and to share their lives with them as we once did. We want to share the joys and the disappointments, The good times and the bad times. The sunny days and the rainy days. We just want to be a part of their lives.
Maybe we aren't right next to them every day. Maybe we aren't included in everything they do. Maybe we don't get daily phone calls, emails or letters from them. Maybe they've even told us not to contact them.
One thing to remember is that sometimes they need to travel alone. As much as it hurts us not to go with them, traveling alone may be what they need to help them reach the place where they need to be. While we may not be walking next to them on that same road and holding their hands like we did in the old days, we are with them in spirit and they can sense that. They've taken the things we taught them on their adventure. Someday, their journey will bring them back to us. Not to stay permanently - because they are now grown adults with lives of their own, but to come full circle to their origin of love, acceptance and family. To bless us with what they have learned on their way home. Their final home we pray is with us and with God in Heaven.
Letting go of our adult children and the past- both good and bad- is what we all need to do as parents at some point, I think, After all, they are not really "ours" but on loan to us from God. Guess that is one thing I have struggled with most of my life-letting go- of my life to Him, my past , and now...my adult children.
Corrie Ten Boom once said that we should hold everything in life loosely so that when God has to take it from us it won't be so difficult.
My hope and prayer is that my children and grandchildren do not become eternally "estranged" from Him.
My prayer for all of my children and grandchildren is for their relationship with Him ...that is much more important,needless to say,than my relationship with them. If they have a relationship with Jesus, then eventually our relationships will be healed.