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Weeks had passed since my adult daughter had moved to a new city, and each Sunday that she missed church brought me the same concerns. Would she ever return to church? I tried everything I could think of to get her there: encouragement, logic, pleading, acting as her personal alarm clock, prayer, fasting, even calling her bishop. Since we lived 2,000 miles (3,220 km) apart, it was difficult for me to attend with her, but I even tried that!

I continually imagined that if I could just tweak the situation a little, my daughter would reestablish her spiritual trajectory. I felt I just needed the right person—her visiting teacher, her bishop, a friend or family member—to be placed in her path to say or do just the thing that would steer her back. But nothing was working. My head spun with worry, and my heart filled with guilt and anguish that I had failed her as a parent.

Many others share my experience. When children leave the gospel path, it can be very difficult for parents who remain faithful to cope. One mother was so upset by her daughter’s choices that she said it felt painful to breathe. A father shared that he felt his children were rejecting him and his way of life. A young mother worried that her own young children might someday question themselves out of the Church.

How do we cope with these painful feelings when family members choose to leave the Church? There are several things we can do.

How do we cope with these painful feelings when family members choose to leave the Church? There are several things we can do.

Chap wrote:

How do we cope with these painful feelings when family members choose to leave the Church? There are several things we can do.

And one of those might be to ask yourselves how it could be that those decent, loving and intelligent young people you raised might have come to the conclusion that the CoJCoLDS is one of the things they would rather leave at home when they move out into the world.

Maybe even consider the possibility that their perspective might not be completely unreasonable and perverse?

Talk with them about it, even? (As in' "Talk with them", not as in "Bear testimony at them, weep at them, lament that you must have failed as a parent, ask them why they want to break their parents' hearts" and so on.)

Lemmie wrote:Her daughter is an adult, but the Mom (in the OP link) tattled on her to the local bishop?

Clearly only one adult in that relationship.

Many others share my experience. When children leave the gospel path, it can be very difficult for parents who remain faithful to cope. One mother was so upset by her daughter’s choices that she said it felt painful to breathe. A father shared that he felt his children were rejecting him and his way of life. A young mother worried that her own young children might someday question themselves out of the Church.

How do we cope with these painful feelings when family members choose to leave the Church? There are several things we can do.

annie wrote:

Many others share my experience. When children leave the gospel path, it can be very difficult for parents who remain faithful to cope. One mother was so upset by her daughter’s choices that she said it felt painful to breathe. A father shared that he felt his children were rejecting him and his way of life. A young mother worried that her own young children might someday question themselves out of the Church.

How do we cope with these painful feelings when family members choose to leave the Church? There are several things we can do.

My mother called and read this article to me as she sobbed on the phone. And then she apologized for not raising me with a strong enough testimony.

Maksutov wrote:I'm sorry you went through that, annie. What a mix of feelings.

I tried everything I could think of to get her there: encouragement, logic [...]