This is a difficult story to write but it needs to be shared. My husband Eric and I have 6 adult kids between us from our previous marriages. Their ages are from 27 to 38 years old. Three out of the six kids are estranged for different reasons. Those 3 are mine.
My youngest daughter was the first to walk away, over 10 years ago when she and her husband decided to get married without us even knowing when or where it would be. That decision was absolutely all her husbands ruling. He is very controlling. She did tell us they were getting married at first and we actually went to a bridal salon near us with my other 2 daughters one day for her to pick out a wedding dress. It was quite an emotional day for all of us, but they did not know when or where they were going to get married at that time but thought it would be in a few months. Then sometime after that, I found out from another family member that she did actually get married. I called her husband directly to ask what was going on and when they actually were married. He said to me, "It's not your business." That was the beginning. He was never involved with our family or wanted to visit. She came to see us 2 or 3 times over 10 years. Then, in 2020 I encouraged her and her husband to come visit us. They live in Texas and we were in Florida. I offered to pay for his airline ticket and eventually, he agreed to come with her to visit us for about a week.
All was good for the first day. The next day we had a family get together at our home and my sister in law asked him what he thought about BLM. The summer of riots was currently happening. Things heated up with my son in law and my brother for a while. My husband asked them to stop multiple times but they didn't listen. Eventually my brother and his wife decided to leave and the conversation continued with my son in law outside toward me and my husband. We spoke for a few minutes and things heated up again. Her husband called me some nasty names. My husband reacted by telling them to leave and go back to my other daughters house where they were visiting. I cried my eyes out having to do that but he was so disrespectful. I'm grateful to my husband who protected me and did not allow my son in law to continue his disrespect in our home. It was not my daughter who was disrespectful. It was always him, but ever since then she refuses to speak to me and has blocked me from calling her. She just gave birth to our youngest grandchild 9 months ago and I have not met her yet. I may not ever meet her at this point.
My other daughter has estranged herself from me on and off since she got married about 4 years ago. No matter what I do or not do, it is not acceptable to her and she doesn't like the fact that I pray for her or that I'm a believer in Jesus Christ. She wrote a beautiful book in high school when she was a believer. Her husband is amazing and I have a beautiful grand daughter from them now. I've tried so hard to understand why she doesn't like me and want to make things right but there is nothing I can do other than continue praying that God would heal our relationship. I love her and have always been there for her over the course of her life.
Then there is my son who I am so very proud of who has recently stopped communicating with us also. We had a huge disagreement about 6 months ago and my heart is so heavy with how things turned out that night. I believe it was more of a misunderstanding between us that turned into a bad evening. The one thing that kept me hopeful before this incident occurred, was that I knew I still had a good relationship with my son. Obviously, not as good as I thought. I believe that this generation has been so indoctrinated by TikTok and other internet platforms that they actually believe there is no need to honor their parents. We as parents are apparently narcissists, according to so many of our adult kids. No, most of us are not. When God commands us to honor our parents, it's not because we are "know it all's" or that we are to be worshipped. God wants us to honor our parents as we would honor Him. If we can not or choose not to honor our parents, we will not be able to honor our God. It's just the way he created us to be.
Forgiveness is so important here. We know that sometimes in rare situations there are some evil parents who may have done the unthinkable to their kids. In that case, we are to forgive our parents but not necessarily stay in their lives unless there is a complete repentance and turn around of that parent who hurt you so badly. I'm not speaking of those cases. Forgiveness toward those who hurt us is really for our own good. Also because we all need forgiveness for our own actions during our lives. If we can't forgive, why should we expect God to forgive us? He wants us to be like Him. Loving, forgiving, humble, peaceful and caring. He says we need to love our neighbor as ourselves. If you love God, you will seek to do what He desires. What He desires is going to bring peace to our own lives.
if you are currently in an estranged situation with one of your adult kids, continue to to pray for them and love on them.
Just as we have a heavenly Father who we are to honor, God created family with parents that we are commanded to honor. Ephesians 6:2-3 Why wouldn't we? After all, even though all parents are imperfect, God designed us to honor them. I grew up with a beautiful mom who became a Christian when I was about 10 years old. I started going to church with her and gave my heart to Jesus at the age of 12. Right around that time, my Dad, who was not a believer struggled to stay with my mom and left us.
This was a difficult time for us as a family. My father has since then apologized to me and my siblings and even my Mom for leaving. Eventually he did end up getting remarried to another woman and had 2 more kids. He knows he made a mistake many years ago. I still remember watching him walk out of the house with his suitcase and leaving us. I remember feeling so so sad and empty because I loved Dad and couldn't understand how he could walk away. Even though we all went through painful times back then, we forgave him and understand now, as adults, how things can fall apart just because we are broken people. All of humanity is broken and many of us grow up in hurtful situations due to our parents growing up in hurtful situations. That is life.
Now that I'm in my late 50's, I understand this even more. God knows this better than we do and still wants us to honor our parents. It's His first commandment with promise. Of course, we will never be in total agreement with everything our parents do. We are all different, even as we grow in our faith, we naturally have different opinions about many things. God still knows that having children and raising them the best we know how will still have us fall short yet He expects us to honor and respect our parents.
So, what does it mean to Honor our parents? Remember, God does not say honor them if they do everything right. He says, honor your parents regardless because they chose to bring you into the world and raise you. For example, many of us honor the military for their sacrifice and dedication to our country. They are not perfect but they are doing something super amazing in my view. Really, having some consideration and respect while in your parent's home or having conversation is simple and not that complicated. It takes time, resources, commitment and unconditional love to care for our kids. It takes true sacrifice to be a good parent. Life is all about giving and building a strong family foundation so our kids will learn and grow up to do better than we did. That is what most parents want and strive for. A better life and legacy that we can pass on to our kids.
If you are struggling to love and honor your parents, I pray that God will give you a desire to forgive them and see them differently even if they hurt you in the past. Forgiving does not mean you agree with what they did to hurt you. You are not suggesting that by forgiving them, they are right. Forgiveness is always for our emotional and spiritual benefit because then you will have peace in life. Holding a grudge and being bitter about how someone hurt you is not going to make things better. It only hurts you. Pray for those who hurt you, including your parents. Remember that you are not perfect and have made mistakes also. The same way God gives us mercy and grace every single day, we need to have a heart of forgiveness and grace toward others, especially our parents and family members.
Recently, this topic has become very popular. I know this because it is happening in our family and started for me over 10 years ago. More about that later... Because our blog is about Christian families, I knew I had to share my heart on this but took some time to really do some research and pray for wisdom. While on Facebook a few weeks ago, a Christian Mom's group for estranged adult kids with almost 5,000 mom members just popped on my screen even though I was not looking for it. That is just one group but there are many more like that available to join. I joined it immediately and I have to say I was shocked at what I read. I always thought I was alone in this situation. But, so did all the other moms in the group, until we began reading each other's posts . Finding out that I was not alone in this painful situation actually helped me so much. This particular group is very encouraging.
if you are not in this situation, you may be wondering why an adult child of ours would want to estrange themselves from Christian Moms? They must have done something horrible to their kids right? Not necessarily. In fact, most of us are not even aware of what we have done wrong to make our kids want to estrange themselves completely from us. We know we are not perfect. We know and are aware that we may have made some minor mistakes or normal disagreements, etc like any other mother and child relationship. We are not claiming to be perfect. Whatever the issue may be, I'm sure we would all want to make things right. Many of our adult kids grew up in the church and are now not interested, fell away or just stopped believing that Jesus, or any other religion for that matter, has any importance or authority in their lives anymore.
What is causing them to walk away? I believe it is the enemy, the devil, who wants to kill, steal and destroy our lives, families and relationships. Many of our adult kids who are in this group have shared that their kids are watching and sharing on social media these sick videos mostly on Tiktok but also on Youtube and other places that encourage separation from your parents emotionally and relationally. These videos are influencing our kids that parents do not need to be honored, respected or listened to about anything at all. They are encouraging total disrespect since we are apparently narcissistic and don't deserve anything. It is an evil lie from satan himself who wants to destroy the family unit and is being hugely successful right now in our society.
Break down the family. Encourage abortion. Encourage marriage between same sex couples who can not have a biological child between them. Teach kids that they were born the wrong sex and teach them in school that they can be better if they trans gender themselves. In fact, just don't get married at all. Having no God fearing, loving families in our community will work perfectly in a broken down society where God is not honored. We need to pray for our kids!
One thing I want to encourage is that we continue to pray for our kids. This is so important. While we wait for God to really draw our kids back to Him and us as their parents, we will trust that He will do it. We will not take things personally and remember that the enemy may have a foot hold on them but we are believing God to heal and restore our kids back to the Father and us because we love them unconditionally.
Next, do not allow the enemy to bring you condemnation and guilt. If you have tried to make things right, or you know what you have done may have been hurtful to your kids and want to make things right, take that step to do so. If they refuse to talk to you, forgive you or even listen, then put them in God's hands. Keep praying, keep loving and believing God for a miracle. We all know God is capable and desires that our families are at peace and blessed. Right now, the enemy is trying so hard to destroy us, trample us with guilt and destruction but we must continue to fight back in the spirit! Stand your ground. Do not pussy foot around your kids because you think they will not like something. You raised them. If you are a God fearing Mom, continue to be who God made you. Repent when you are wrong or have made a mistake and ask forgiveness but do not tip toe around them. Live your God given joyful, full of faith, praying Momma life without apology.
Check out Part 2 of my estranged parent story here.
God bless you and keep believing and trusting our Heavenly Father to restore our families back to us! Let's do this together!
