I also had to make a break with my family. I speak to them, and call my parents regularly, however, I have stayed away from situations which I cannot control–by that I mean I make sure I have some kind of escape, where I don't have to be trapped in a situation which I have decided I don't want to experience anymore.

I feel that I have forgiven my family for the things that happened as I was growing up, and which still continue to happen when I am in contact with them. For my own protection, I have just had to put some distance between me and them. I am confused by those who have the attitude that if a person who has been badly hurt by their own family were just more "spiritual" these things would not bother them, and they would just keep doing things as usual. I think part of the reason I am not able to do that is that the hurtful treatment started when I was very tiny, and children have no other point of reference than their parents–who else are they to believe? Then as adults, we know better, but these thoughts were ingrained at such an early age, they are truly a part of who we are. When unkind behavior and comments continue to be directed to me and (one of) my children, I can't seem to willingly put myself into those situations.

That said, I believe that these experiences have caused me to have a soft heart toward others. I know I am less judgmental, and I also believe I have forgiven my family. Complete reconciliation is impossible, however, because I don't want to have these negative, critical attitudes in my life anymore. So I can visit with them, talk on the phone, have them over, but the closeness and trust will never be back unless they would ever agree to talk it out with a counselor, which I have actually invited them to do. So far, they are not interested.

I have a dilema which I hope someone can help me with. My mom is the problem here. My dad just came home from a two month stay in the hospital. My sister-in-law and I were able to work together enough to get him out of there and home, instead of into a nursing home, which would have been the end of him. I want to be respectful to my parents, and even do what they want, however I am getting mixed messages, that make me feel like they don't want my help, advice, or even the food I send over. I request that my mom call and let me know what the nurse says, etc., but she has not called once since my dad got home. So I call. I know it sounds petty, but when someone has messed with your mind for years it just makes it hard for me to know—should I go visit? Should I stay away? Should I keep calling, or does she just not want to talk to me? Should I bring any more food, or should I give them some money to buy what they want? She is hinting I should come stay with my dad so she can go shopping, but I am afraid I will be getting into one of those situations that I don't want to get into.

When I read about the indecision that goes with this kind of family I really saw myself, and it was a revelation.

How have others dealt with this? I could use some help. I hate to say anything about my parents—that's why I have to go to a website. It seems it would be very disrespectful to let any one in our community know what they are like, plus, I don't think anyone would believe me, anyway.

Thanks in advance for the help. I have come to the realization that my family won't change, and I accept that. I just need to know how to handle this new issue with my dad.

Just wanna echo the support and encouragement of the others, and let you know that if you're ever in northern Wisconsin, Faith Evangelical Free Church in Woodruff is wonderful. Very warm and welcoming.

Also, just a perspective that has helped me — don't forget that although God's people are flawed and can greatly disappoint us, God is perfect and will never fail you. As long as you keep turning for Him and home, He will keep running forward with open arms to bring you back into His fold.

God bless you and yours. I will be praying for you.

The body of Christ is so vast and thanks to the internet can unite like a virtual small town in more ways than we ever thought was possible. Don’t you love these new neighbors Nima? It is such a a blessing getting to know you. There is an Irish expression that states, “A man is greater than his birth” Do not permit those sad heavy times from your past to define who you are today. Gather up the love that others have expressed here and hold onto that love like a warm blanket on a cold night. The mind is the battleground that Satan loves to enter only for the purpose of tripping us up. One Christian book that has really helped me along the path to wholeness is Hinds’ Feet on High Places, by Hannah Hurnard. It is a gentle story of God’s love and the main character’s name is Much Afraid. She had to leave her family, who were seldom looking out for her best interest and follow the Good Shepherd to the high places. The catch is she is lame and not quite up to the journey. She meets companions along the way that teach her some deep lessons. Guess what there names are? Suffering and Sorrow. It sound so cliche, but I promise you is true. “You are not alone” We love you and are lifting you up to our Father! Colleen
Psalm 107 (The Message) (My favorite)
The Message (MSG)
Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson

Psalm 107

1-3 Oh, thank God—he’s so good! His love never runs out.
All of you set free by God, tell the world!
Tell how he freed you from oppression,
Then rounded you up from all over the place,
from the four winds, from the seven seas.

4-9 Some of you wandered for years in the desert,
looking but not finding a good place to live,
Half-starved and parched with thirst,
staggering and stumbling, on the brink of exhaustion.
Then, in your desperate condition, you called out to God.
He got you out in the nick of time;
He put your feet on a wonderful road
that took you straight to a good place to live.
So thank God for his marvelous love,
for his miracle mercy to the children he loves.
He poured great draughts of water down parched throats;
the starved and hungry got plenty to eat.

10-16 Some of you were locked in a dark cell,
cruelly confined behind bars,
Punished for defying God’s Word,
for turning your back on the High God’s counsel—
A hard sentence, and your hearts so heavy,
and not a soul in sight to help.
Then you called out to God in your desperate condition;
he got you out in the nick of time.
He led you out of your dark, dark cell,
broke open the jail and led you out.
So thank God for his marvelous love,
for his miracle mercy to the children he loves;
He shattered the heavy jailhouse doors,
he snapped the prison bars like matchsticks!

17-22 Some of you were sick because you’d lived a bad life,
your bodies feeling the effects of your sin;
You couldn’t stand the sight of food,
so miserable you thought you’d be better off dead.
Then you called out to God in your desperate condition;
he got you out in the nick of time.
He spoke the word that healed you,
that pulled you back from the brink of death.
So thank God for his marvelous love,
for his miracle mercy to the children he loves;
Offer thanksgiving sacrifices,
tell the world what he’s done—sing it out!

23-32 Some of you set sail in big ships;
you put to sea to do business in faraway ports.
Out at sea you saw God in action,
saw his breathtaking ways with the ocean:
With a word he called up the wind—
an ocean storm, towering waves!
You shot high in the sky, then the bottom dropped out;
your hearts were stuck in your throats.
You were spun like a top, you reeled like a drunk,
you didn’t know which end was up.
Then you called out to God in your desperate condition;
he got you out in the nick of time.
He quieted the wind down to a whisper,
put a muzzle on all the big waves.
And you were so glad when the storm died down,
and he led you safely back to harbor.
So thank God for his marvelous love,
for his miracle mercy to the children he loves.
Lift high your praises when the people assemble,
shout Hallelujah when the elders meet!

33-41 God turned rivers into wasteland,
springs of water into sunbaked mud;
Luscious orchards became alkali flats
because of the evil of the people who lived there.
Then he changed wasteland into fresh pools of water,
arid earth into springs of water,
Brought in the hungry and settled them there;
they moved in—what a great place to live!
They sowed the fields, they planted vineyards,
they reaped a bountiful harvest.
He blessed them and they prospered greatly;
their herds of cattle never decreased.
But abuse and evil and trouble declined
as he heaped scorn on princes and sent them away.
He gave the poor a safe place to live,
treated their clans like well-cared-for sheep.

42-43 Good people see this and are glad;
bad people are speechless, stopped in their tracks.
If you are really wise, you’ll think this over—
it’s time you appreciated God’s deep love.

Please continue to keep in touch with us here on John's blog so we know how we can pray for you? All I can give you for now is a cyber-hug (((Nima)))…but know you will be in my prayers. Oh, by the way, I live in NW Ohio. John has my email address if you ever wanted to get in touch with me so we can write back and forth. I don't know if you live near me or not, but I welcome you and your husband to come with me to church. I can give you real live person-to-person hugs that way

I had only heard about how God punished you. He waited for your every wrong to slam his Hammer of Hate upon your head and demolish you. I never heard that God just loved me as I am. I heard, “he can’t love you if you are bad, if you do this or that that does not please him he with holds his blessings, he loves you but it’s your problem to you overcome your (name whatever sin you were supposed to be doing). It was all up to me to be perfect for God to love me. I gave up. I walked away and tried alchohol, light drugs, sex, money. Nothing filled the big fat hole in my heart. But I was terrified to return to a vengeful God who waited to say “I told you so, you are not good enough”.

I believe I was raised in wrong Christian thinking or a cult. I saw such weird stuff and people being told whom to marry by one minister who made all the decesions. I was afraid to become a beautiful woman so dressed ugly and hid my femininity so I wouldn’t be forced to marry some old man. So I ran. When my mother rejected me it hurt too deeply and I gave up on her. I had given up on my father(s) who cared nothing for me as a person. Just another pair of hands for housework.

But I started to believe in my self after comtemplating suicide one day. I was ill with a very serious problem and was getting no help whatsoever and instead of dying from agonizing pain I decided to get a gun and die. I talked to myself and prayed God to help me and forgive me if I did it and I wondered what Hell was going to look like since He hated me anyway. I did not pull the trigger but it was the most difficult 3 hours of my life. At that point I made a decision to get my life changed somehow even if I could never trust God again. I got a divorce from a man who left me at home for days at a time supposedly “working” yeah sure, left my family home state and went to find a new life.

Things didn’t change fast but with my new husband I thought, if this guy loves me like he says I might not kill myself. I tried very hard and it tested his patience. He was non church attending Christian but not what I would call a deep bible reading one. He said he read it twice, believed and lived his life. He showed me what NONE of the people who told me they were Christian could. UNCONDITIONAL LOVE. As a police officer he had seen all the pain this world has and understood my background and had long patience. I asked him why stick with a loser like me? He said, “I can see the potential of what you will become when you heal”. Wow! I never heard any professing Christian ever tell me that before. All the Christians I had tried to go to and ask for some kind of guidance were very very busy helping the poor people in town with delivering groceries and other physical items. They didn’t want to get “involved” in helping someone see they aren’t trash. They just gave at a distance and felt they did their Christian duty. Or they were soooo busy with their Christian meetings 4 times a week they didn’t have time to come and talk to someone who was seeking God.

Recently I began to learn to love myself since no one else would. I have been working with Adult Children of Alcoholics and that has helped me know that I am not insane and that I do have coping problems. I want to heal those. It has seemed to me that in Christianity that I have experience in America that it is up to me to fix me and that Christians are just too busy with their perfect happy lives and perfect happy children living in perfect happy homes to ever want to get involved with real hurting people crying out for something to believe in. Many of my friends around me have decided that they are becoming Secular Humanists or Atheists. I cannot do that. I know there is something more out there than just this body and physical world. On person who told me he has given up on believing in any God came from a Christian background. His father is the pastor of a large church with hundreds of people. He lives in one of the finest homes in that town. He has all the money and trappings of money that society calls success. Yet he dumped his kid and his wife. His wife couldn’t have sex so he left her for a pretty woman in the church. His son he gave little to financially and the boy had a background like me, being abandoned by his real father and left to live in a car for some time. He told me his father has claimed bankruptcy to keep his worldly goods and wipe out his credit card debts several times and is now sitting pretty. I told my friend that that is not how Jesus would act or what God is about. He told me his father did everything within the law about his finances. My friend now won’t talk to me because I still believe in God. He is a sad fellow whose friends are abandoning him because he is so angry.

And I wondered, is this the current state of the church in the United States? No wonder we 30 to 40 somethings are leaving. What is there really to believe in if that is the case. But my husband has helped me keep straight. He keeps saying “Christ forgave you on the cross, it is done, take the gift.” He is not happy with how my parents raised me and he even said “your forgiveness will come, right now you are just realizing the incredible wrongs done to you by them”. And we both know how badly their childhoods were. But I stil have to be a bit angry for their rejection of me. I did nothing wrong but be me. God made me as I am and I accept it now and don’t want to destroy the body he gave me. I think it helped when a counselor said that my childhood was one of her top ten worst childhoods in her 30 years of counsel. Suddenly I felt like I could be free. It was not all my fault that all my decisions had been based on what I had to work with and that from here on out I can grow into a loving human being. I might understand what real love is for once. I am not sure I know what love is except by my husband. I told him if all men could be like him then Jesus is alive an well.

What I see is that many of you care, but I finally had to scream out the frustration of where are you Christians anyway? I could use some help. I have asked people in my little town if there are any churches I could attend. No one can give me a name of one that is good. If you weren’t born here then attending a church becomes a bit more difficult. They don’t accept you very quickly. You get held in suspicion. Again I feel like I have to prove I am worthy of God’s love in these churches.
The really odd thing is, the Buddhists in our area reach more to me than the Christians do. And I have been studying their concepts lately along with several other religions and comparing them all. What is so special about Christianity over the others I wondered. I seem to be accepted better into a Buddhist temple than a Christian Church. I dont’ feel I can go into a Church, sit down and ask God for guidance like I can in a temple.

Is Christ free or do I have to do something to belong to a church? What do I have to pay? How much tithe money am I forced to give till I am accepted? My husband and I have tried 5 different Christian churches and we both feel it has become to difficult to be accepted any longer. My husband is allowing me to seek things out to figure out what my heart will know later I think. He is still confident God has his hand on me. Myself. I need to know that Christianity isn’t just another religion of people who go to Sunday services, eat a cracker and wine and think that is it for their God work. I would like to feel that I wouldn’t soil their very lives for asking questions. And if I do ask questions I get shunted off to someone who immediately points out all my wrongdoings and why God doesn’t like me for it. Geez. I can’t even get into the house of God because I am a confused person who doesn’t please him or their congregation. I would rather sit by the water under a tree and thank God for the earth he created.

Nima is a nickname.

Thank you who have reached out. Maybe Jesus lives in some of the Christians in the country. I will keep reading about Him.

"Do not hide Your face from me,

Do not turn your servant away in anger;

You have been my help;

Do not abandon me nor forsake me,

O God of my salvation!

For my father and my mother have forsaken me,

But the Lord will take me up." -Psalm 27:9-10

God WILL be faithful to you in all times and in all places.

To echo Ric, I live in Aurora, Colorado and attend Calvary Chapel Aurora (www.calvaryaurora.com). Please come if you are close- I promise you'll be welcome.

Love and hopeful thoughts flow across the miles from all of us to you.

I'll be praying for you.

Everyone else has said such elegant things. The only thing I can possibly add is my own promise of prayer for you.

God loves you so much, don't give up.

As my blog says, I live in Gambrills, Maryland and I worship at Mid Atlantic Comm Church http://www.themacc.org/

If this is anywhere near you, please come. You will be welcomed any and every time.

1. Jesus offers His love and forgiveness to you as a free gift.

2. Your husband's unconditional love for you is just a small reflection of the source of all that love — Jesus.

3. A church that truly follows Jesus does not require you to give money when you attend, and they will welcome you with open arms to take all the time you need to discover a personal relationship with Jesus.

Maybe you can e-mail John about the area you live in, and he (we) can help you find a church that will make you feel safe and welcome when you ask real questions. You are on your way to learning about the One who knows you best and loves you most!