will ever put a gun to your head and force you to believe. I’m shocked by how angry and hateful atheists get at their fellow pedes who bring up prayer or faith. You are acting exactly like liberals, going in to a post just to hate-reply. It’s sad. All we are doing is praying snd encouraging others to pray. If you don’t want to, that’s fine. There’s no need to harass those who want to. We are all on the same team here.
Where i used to work, a group of people got together by the flagpole every day at lunch. They didn’t demand anyone join them. They didn’t force the company to make prayer mandatory. They just got together and prayed, and everyone else moved on about their day.
There’s no need for the infighting. God bless
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It boils down to respect. My husband was an atheist and I'm a religious Jew. In 30 years this has NEVER led to conflict in our relationship. And we've never hid our thoughts on the subject. It's not something we have to tiptoe around. We've had a lot of deep conversations and we've never gotten frustrated or fought over it.
It works because he loves and respects me. My faith is part of me and he loves that too. I love and respect him. Until recently, I've always been in awe that he has the personal strength and resolution to tackle life without faith. (He did find his limit in that area a few years ago. Now he has faith, but he came to that on his own. I didn't nag him or debate him into it.)
And that's your daughter's problem. It's not that she's lost her faith. It's that she's lost respect for you as a person. I can guess that she's lost a lot of respect for her fellow human beings in many other ways. Respect for political differences. Respect for lifestyle choices.
People can grow. They can temper themselves and mellow with time and become respectful.
But respect MUST be a two-way street. If you don't respect her journey, then she won't be able to respect yours.
One of the hardest parts of being a parent for me was learning to respect my own children once they were grown. Gd entrusted me with these two beautiful souls and made me responsible for them... for eighteen years. After that, it became HIS job to teach and guide them. Not MINE. And I had to accept that and not interfere with His parenting.
When we were first married, I was praying for my husband to find faith one night (because in the beginning I didn't have full respect for him and - although I didn't nag - I did hurt that he didn't have faith.) I literally heard a stern, powerful male voice growl into my right ear. "MY relationship with MY son is none of your business!"
I had the distinct feeling that I'd been a very bad girl. After that moment I had total respect for my husband and - once they were grown - my children. (When I think about it, that moment probably saved my entire marriage. That lesson bled over into every aspect of the relationship.) It's my job to live by example. It's my job to love them while they're working it out and to honestly answer questions when they come to me, and to allow them to talk it out when they're feeling the faint call to Him and don't understand it.
It's NOT my job to parent these grown people and to force them to 'see the light.' That is their Father's job. He has a plan for them and I need to truly have faith in that.
We have free will and we can truly jack up His plans when we put our minds to it. I know that others hurt my relationship with Him when I was young by relentlessly pushing and how hard it was to find my way back home because of it.
I never, ever, criticized or directed her adult decisions even if I disagree as for me that is a matter of respect. She moved in with her boyfriend and I sent a housewarming gift. She went full SJW and cut off her older brother. She grandstanded about how awful we were at my mother's funeral. Totally nuts, but when she asked me to change who I am I told her that we raised her to be tolerant and we don't tell other people who to live. I would never do that to her and expect her to not do that to me. She even went to my childhood best friend to try to get her to intervene on her side and my friend told her that unless she could talk to us face to face she didn't want to hear about it. We only ever got nasty emails.
I am, by nature, very live and let live. My prayers have all been that through her experiences she can learn whatever she is meant to in her time on earth.
If she has lost respect for us, it is one way. She would tell me what she thinks I think and not allow me to disagree as if I were a cartoon person. It was so nuts I would ask myself if she had met me. I have enough self doubt and self criticism that I turned to friends I knew would tell me if I was full of shit. All of them told me she was nuts. I don't know if she will stay nuts or not, I miss her.
I believe you. She's lost all sense of respect for her fellow human beings to the cult. smh
This insanity on the left truly is evil. When I read their rantings on Twitter my jaw drops. They have NO grasp of reality.
I kind of get it when a kid is raised by lefty parents and indoctrinated into the lefty cult by the schools, but it does upset the hell out of me when a kid that was raised better falls into it. You think that you can 'bulletproof' your kids by raising them with the truth and it's stunning that they can go completely off the rails like that when they have that foundation. Sadly, you are NOT the only one going through this. I've had many friends who've lost their children to this cult and I'll never comprehend it.
My own children went off the rails in different ways, but they had to go, fight, fail, learn, and come back to us on their own. And I was insane with worry the entire time! I've met enough fucked up 40-60 year olds to know that there's no guarantee that they're going to come out on the other side. smh
I think all we can really do is pray, read and reread the Prodigal Son, hope, and have our arms open when they do decide to walk through the door.
Please know you're NOT alone in this. Not by far.
Dear Lord, we MUST take our educational system back. That's the root of the problem. smh
Aww thanks, she was homeschooled, but went to college. The internet really messed her up, she got into all kinds of gender confusion there. She now considers some of our views inherently abusive.
UG!
I homeschooled mine until highschool. A year after they started, my daughter was a mess. We went through two years of hell, then she REALLY went off the rails. My husband was deployed and she lost it so bad I worried that she was going to get herself killed. I shipped her off to her aunt's in another state for a few months in the hopes that she was just rebelling against ME. She adored her aunt and I thought she'd behave for her.
WRONG!! Three months later and my sister called me hysterical. Both my daughter AND my niece had gone off the deep end. Running away at night. Boys. Drugs.
I told her to hang on.
Two weeks later 'daddy' came home from Afghanistan.
My sister put my daughter on a plane home, then shipped HER daughter to her father's house.
The men saved the girls.
My husband picked our hungover child up at the airport. He'd had security go with him to the airplane door. The five of the men marched the little lady out to the truck as one unit.
When they got home, he had her stand at the front door and strip down to her undies and remove all of her piercings. He passed the garbage bag of goods to me and said, "Go through it and make sure there's nothing valuable then throw the rest away." He gave her a t-shirt, sweats, socks, and tennis shoes. Then off to the gym they went. By the time they got home, she was too exhausted to aruge. She ate some dinner then went to bed and passed out.
And that was her life for the next six months. She went to the gym with daddy, went to work with daddy, ran errands in the office, wrote essays for daddy, read books on honor, leadership, and biographies on great military leaders, ate lunch with daddy, went to the gym again after work, ate dinner with daddy, then slept.
She told us later that two of her 'friends' showed up to 'rescue' her one night. She was so exhausted she was just pissed. "I'm freaking tired and I've got to get up at five AM! Leave me the hell ALONE!!" She said that it didn't even occur to her that she could've run away that night until weeks later.
She had other issues later, but nothing horrible. Some poor life choices. A very short marriage that left her a single mother. She was able to learn, grow, and now she's in a great position.
I'm no fool. I lucked out by the grace of God.
The thing that makes me sick is that I couldn't do anything for her. I had no choice but to surrender her to her fathers. (Both the earthly one and her heavenly one.)
Sadly, your child may have a longer journey to find her way back to you. I'm so sorry. I do know your sadness, your fear for her, and your pain. More than you realize.