Crown and Covenant Coffee & Tea

My family and I are estranged.

There is grief in those words. There is history, disappointment, and pain. But there is also love.

I love my family.

And I am not writing this as the innocent person in a story where everyone else is the villain. I have made mistakes. I have hurt people. I participated in the very dysfunction I eventually learned to recognize.

For years, I played a role in my family I didn’t fully understand. I carried messages. I defended people. I got involved in things that weren’t mine to carry. I thought I was helping the people I loved.

Maybe that’s why I recognize those patterns so clearly now.

And strangely, recognizing them has given me compassion.

I can understand someone’s brokenness without volunteering to be wounded by it.

I can have empathy without surrendering my boundaries.

I can love without returning.

And I can forgive without reconciling.

I forgive my family.

That doesn’t mean I never get angry or that old wounds don’t hurt when they’re touched again. Sometimes I have to bring those feelings right back to Jesus and choose forgiveness again.

But I do forgive.

I pray for my family every day. I don’t want revenge. I don’t want God to “get them.” I want Him to heal them.

And I want Him to continue healing me.

What I have finally learned is that forgiveness and reconciliation are not the same thing.

Forgiveness can happen in my heart before God. Reconciliation involves more than one person. Trust, honesty, accountability, repentance, respect, and changed patterns cannot be produced by one person alone.

Forgiveness does not mean pretending something didn’t happen. It does not mean unlimited access. And it should never become a Christian word used to pressure someone back into a relationship that continues to wound them.

One of the hardest parts of this journey has been having my faith questioned because I won’t reconcile on someone else’s terms.

I’ve been told that a “real Christian” or a “true believer” would do differently.

Those words used to send me spiraling.

They don’t anymore.

Not because I am the authority on Christianity.

I’m not.

But neither is anyone else in my family.

Jesus is.

And I will answer to Him.

That means I have to be willing to let Him correct me too.

If there is pride in me, Lord, show me.

If there is unforgiveness, show me.

If I owe an apology, give me the humility to give it.

If my heart becomes hard, soften it.

I don’t want God to prove that I’m right.

I want God to show me what is right.

My feelings don’t get the final word.

Neither do anyone else’s.

God’s Word does.

I think one of the deepest griefs of estrangement is realizing that sometimes people are reaching for who you used to be rather than getting to know who you are becoming.

The old me was familiar.

She adored her family. She gave and gave. She defended. She returned. She absorbed things. She believed keeping everyone together was part of loving them.

There were beautiful things about her, and I want to keep them.

But she also confused love with obligation, forgiveness with continued access, and keeping the peace with actually having peace.

I don’t hate that woman.

I have compassion for her.

But I cannot become her again just because other people were more comfortable with her.

God has brought me too far.

I’m still not “fixed.” God is still pruning, correcting, healing, and teaching me.

I haven’t arrived.

But I know I’m far from where I was.

Part of that growth has been accepting something I should have understood long ago:

I cannot fix another person’s brokenness.

I can recognize it. I can have compassion for it. I can pray over it.

But I cannot heal it.

I had to face my own brokenness, and that was already a full-time assignment.

I am not my family’s savior.

Jesus is.

Whatever light I brought into my family was never really mine either.

It came from Him.

Maybe people became accustomed to the warmth I gave—the attention, loyalty, encouragement, understanding, and love.

Maybe losing the version of me they knew hurts them too.

I can have empathy for that.

But I cannot recreate the old me so no one has to feel her absence.

The best parts of her are still here.

My love is still here.

My compassion is still here.

But my deepest devotion belongs to Jesus now.

And whatever light He has placed in me must point back to Him.

Jesus Himself knew what it was to be misunderstood by people who knew Him. When He was rejected in Nazareth, He did not spend the rest of His ministry trying to force people there to understand who He was.

He kept doing what His Father sent Him to do.

I need that reminder.

I cannot spend my life trying to convince people to understand my heart.

At some point, I have to entrust being misunderstood to God and keep walking with Him.

And through all of this, one truth remains:

I love my family.

Estrangement didn’t erase that.

Boundaries didn’t erase it.

Pain didn’t erase it.

I don’t need to make monsters out of anyone to justify walking away.

They are human.

So am I.

They have wounds.

So do I.

They have made mistakes.

So have I.

But compassion does not require access.

Love does not require proximity.

And forgiveness does not automatically restore trust.

Most days, I have peace.

Then sometimes the old dynamics come knocking again—the accusations, the guilt, the questioning of my faith, the pressure to explain myself one more time.

I’m learning that I don’t have to answer every knock.

And I don’t have to return to an unhealthy relationship to prove my forgiveness is real.

But I do have to guard my heart.

Because boundaries can become bitterness.

Distance can become pride.

Pain can become self-righteousness.

I don’t want those things either.

So I keep bringing my heart back to Jesus.

I used to think love always meant holding on.

Now I understand that sometimes love releases.

I release my need to be understood.

I release my responsibility for fixing anyone.

I release the role I once played.

And I release the people I love into the hands of Jesus.

There is nothing victorious to me about losing family.

It is sad.

I wish some things had been different.

But wishing the past were different cannot become a reason to recreate it.

I ask forgiveness for the ways I contributed to our brokenness.

I don’t know what God will do from here, and I don’t need to.

I release them to Him.

I release myself from trying to do what only He can do.

And I will keep walking with Jesus.

My peace isn’t found in how far I’ve gotten from them.

It’s found in how close I’m becoming to Him.