A Family Divided

  • Christian Chat is a moderated online Christian community allowing Christians around the world to fellowship with each other in real time chat via webcam, voice, and text, with the Christian Chat app. You can also start or participate in a Bible-based discussion here in the Christian Chat Forums, where members can also share with each other their own videos, pictures, or favorite Christian music.

    If you are a Christian and need encouragement and fellowship, we're here for you! If you are not a Christian but interested in knowing more about Jesus our Lord, you're also welcome! Want to know what the Bible says, and how you can apply it to your life? Join us!

    To make new Christian friends now around the world, click here to join Christian Chat.
C

Christine11

Guest
#1
#1
Hello. I posted in the forum for new posters and received great advice, and more importantly many prayers. I just noticed this Family Forum and was wondering if any of you out there may be going through a similar situation as me. My family is divided, and it seems like it will be permanently. It's like one side against the other. My poor mother gets somewhere stuck on one side or the other, while trying her best to maintain peace with everyone. I've tried many, many times to get along with the "other half" of the family and it just doesn't work. We are estranged, and I don't see it ever getting better. Even if some sort of truce is made, there will never be trust. There have been too many deceptions, lies, and cruel spirited occurences.

What I'm posting all of this for is to see if anyone has a similar situation and if so if you could share how it has been for you and how you cope. I have emerged myself in prayer and it is helping. But, it's like the incidences never stop. Though, i don't have contact with certain people, I still hear about the negativity through other family members that i stay in contact with.
 
RedTent

RedTent

Banned
#2
Oct 31, 2011
8,200
182
0
#2
I have had this to try to handle my whole life, first in the family I was born in, now in my family. I’ve tried lots of ways to cope. I tried reasoning, that doesn’t work at all. I tried crying, and that only hurt me more than the division. I tried being angry about it, that made matters worse.

Finally, I put in God’s hands and only take the situations out enough to ask God if there is anything I can do within His ways. God doesn’t order them around but lets them choose and still loves them. So that is what I do.
 
K

kenisyes

Guest
#3
#3
Maybe knowing it's normal will help: Mark 10:29-30;Luke 12:51-53; Matt. 12:50; Luke 14:26.
 
L

Lucy68

Senior Member
#4
Jan 21, 2011
2,538
22
0
#4
I'm in a similar situation with my family but I'm sure there are differences in our problems. My family has made me, my husband, and our children the topics of their entertainment by ridicule. Ridicule is a form of contempt which is a form of hatred. The family strife is due mainly to my dad's influence over everyone. I think mainly it's because we're Christians.

I've had to just emotionally separate myself from the situation. I live very far from them which helps too. Maybe people who are more emotionally strong can handle these types of problems but I just can't do it. The hurt is too deep. My dad has always been a jerk. He talks to his daughters like they are trash....I start seeing myself like that and go into depression. My siblings and mother have joined him in his gossipy, ridiculing entertainment. I don't know if they just don't realize what damage it has done to the family or just don't care. I think it's the latter.

It sounds like from the other posts that there are others in the same place. I think we just have to find a nice box in our minds, put the situation in there and leave it so we can move on with our lives. Of course, we should bring our family members before the throne and pray for a heart change for them. Their behavior is harming them and they don't even know it :(.

Praying for guidance and strength for you in your struggles with this.
 
C

chuinchoy

Guest
#5
#5
i am not sure whether my experience would help but anyway hope it helps.

My mother in law ( my wife's mother) and my father in law family (my wife father's mother, sisters, brothers) recently started fighting between them. Mother-in law at one side while father in law family on the other. Obviously, my wife, myself and my father in law were caught in between. Father in law choose the 'wise' way, ignoring all of them and whenever free, goes out to drink with friends until wee hours in the morning come back to sleep a while and goes to work again the next morning. This has been repeated for the last 8 months. So left with myself and my wife as sandwitch having to listen one side complaining against the other and vice-versa. The funny thing is what my mother in law complained against my father in law family and vice versa when i or my wife check them out is different story altogether. Both of us ( me and my wife) is confused who is actually telling the truth. One day (can't remember when, it was couple of months ago), i can't tolerate them any longer and said to them if you can't live together as 1 family, then why not shift out and stay on your own then there is nothing more to complain about. Amazingly, after spoken these words, the complain stopped completely. Thank God me and my wife can have some peace from now. However, i am still worried of their relationship. As family, we should have strong bond because when trouble comes, it is only them who will help you, no one else.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.