Silas
Beloved of All
Your burden for your daughter and your grandchildren is clear, and your grief for them is understandable. To watch someone you love carry so much, to see anger and depression settle over a home, and to feel far away and unable to help as much as you want to help is a heavy sorrow. God sees that sorrow, and He sees this family that you love.
Much of what you describe centers on anger. A son who explodes at any word, who curses and screams and expects everyone to revolve around him, a home filled with yelling and disrespect, a daughter who is overwhelmed and a granddaughter who has grown cold. Scripture speaks very plainly about this kind of anger. It is not a small flaw. When Jacob gathered his sons he still rebuked two of them years after their violent outburst, saying cursed be their anger for what it had done. Anger left unchecked destroys. One of the wisest principles in Proverbs is that the discretion of a person defers his anger, and it is to his glory to pass over a transgression. Love covers a multitude of sins. That does not mean anger is ignored, but it means we must not answer rage with rage or try to correct a child while we ourselves are angry. When we are angry we almost always overreact, we punish too harshly or speak too harshly out of our own hurt and fear. In a home where shouting has become the pattern, the most powerful thing you and your daughter can model, even from a distance, is a different way, not meeting explosion with explosion, but deferring anger, speaking calmly, setting a steady boundary, and showing that love does not have to yell to be strong.
You are also seeing a deeper rebellion, a deliberate pushing away of God. You have spoken to them about the love of God and they reject it. That rejection is not unusual. Jesus Himself was rejected in His own village among His own people. Rebellion against God is described in Scripture as being like the sin of witchcraft, it is an evil that seeks its own way and refuses to let God rule. When a person persists in that, the cruel messenger of that rebellion is the enemy of our souls who takes advantage of it. This family has known great hurt, a miserable marriage marked by unfaithfulness and violence, then a sudden death, and now the children turning against their mother. Hurt can harden into rebellion if it is not brought to God for healing.
Yet the same Scripture that warns about rebellion also gives hope that God can change a hard and angry heart. When Jacob was about to meet his brother Esau, he was afraid because of his brother's long held anger. Jacob prayed by reminding God of what God had promised him, return to your country and to your family and I will deal well with you. He did what he could in faith, he sent gifts ahead to seek peace, because faith is not passive, but he trusted God to do what only God could do. And God did it. He changed the heart of Esau so that what could have been a bitter meeting of recrimination became an embrace where both brothers wept together. The same God who softened Esau can soften an angry teenage boy and a wounded daughter and a distant granddaughter. Keep praying in that way, reminding God of His promises, asking Him to do the heart work that you cannot do from four hours away and with visits only every few months.
You mentioned that they had counseling right after the death but none of them really let themselves be helped, and now they are all depressed and angry. Sorrow that is not brought to God dries up the bones. Solomon, who wrote much about the body as well as the soul, observed that grief and great emotional trauma can break down even physical strength. The Lord also tries the heart as silver is tried in a furnace and gold in a fire. He uses these painful seasons to purify and to show what is inside, not to destroy but to cleanse. Your daughter saying she prays but praying mostly out of anger that things would get easier is honest. God invites more than that. He invites her to bring her sin and her pain and her helplessness to Him for pardon and cleansing through Jesus Christ alone, to be brought from being a stranger to God into being part of the family of God, washed and made an heir of His kingdom. That is the only foundation on which a home can be restored.
You are right to be concerned about the drinking. Even when it is not every day, alcohol works against the body that God created. It overworks the liver that must process it, it harms the nervous system and the mind, it destroys clear thinking and it brings a person under its influence so that they cannot make wise decisions for themselves or their children. It should not be excused or minimized. To love your daughter is to be truthful about that with gentleness, to encourage her to seek help, to find a local church where the Word of God is taught faithfully and where she can be supported, and to seek continued counseling when she is willing.
It is also painful to think about your son in law who died. Many people are tormented by the thought of loved ones who may have died without Christ, forever separated from God. Scripture is solemn about this. Those who continue in rebellion and refuse the invitation of God to receive pardon through Jesus will face His judgment and be excluded from His kingdom. God does not delight in that. He weeps over the wickedness of men who remain hard in their rebellion. We can entrust your son in law to the perfect justice and mercy of God, who knows every heart, and we can let that urgency make us even more faithful to pray for those who are still living and can still respond.
Do not be discouraged because they reject what you say about God's love. Sow the seed anyway. Continue to speak the truth in love when you have opportunity, but even more, live it and pray it. Remind the Lord of His Word, that He is able to keep and preserve those who turn to Him even through times of great judgment and confusion, and that He has promised a restoration where what is now broken and desolate can be made fruitful again. We do not see the world or people now as God intended them to be. We see a world suffering under sin and rebellion, and people bearing the wounds of that rebellion. God intends to make all things new for those who are His.
Keep bringing this family before the Lord by name. Ask Him to break the power of anger in that home, to lift the depression and give a desire for help, to deliver your daughter from dependence on alcohol, to teach her to pray not only for an easier life but for a clean heart and strength to do what is right, and to draw both grandchildren to Himself while there is still time. Do what you can in faith when you visit, a calm word, a consistent boundary, an offer of practical help without taking over, an invitation to church or to speak with a pastor, and then trust God to change hearts in a way that only He can. He is able to turn a tense and bitter meeting into an embrace of forgiveness, and He is able to make those who were once far off into beloved members of His own family through Christ.
Much of what you describe centers on anger. A son who explodes at any word, who curses and screams and expects everyone to revolve around him, a home filled with yelling and disrespect, a daughter who is overwhelmed and a granddaughter who has grown cold. Scripture speaks very plainly about this kind of anger. It is not a small flaw. When Jacob gathered his sons he still rebuked two of them years after their violent outburst, saying cursed be their anger for what it had done. Anger left unchecked destroys. One of the wisest principles in Proverbs is that the discretion of a person defers his anger, and it is to his glory to pass over a transgression. Love covers a multitude of sins. That does not mean anger is ignored, but it means we must not answer rage with rage or try to correct a child while we ourselves are angry. When we are angry we almost always overreact, we punish too harshly or speak too harshly out of our own hurt and fear. In a home where shouting has become the pattern, the most powerful thing you and your daughter can model, even from a distance, is a different way, not meeting explosion with explosion, but deferring anger, speaking calmly, setting a steady boundary, and showing that love does not have to yell to be strong.
You are also seeing a deeper rebellion, a deliberate pushing away of God. You have spoken to them about the love of God and they reject it. That rejection is not unusual. Jesus Himself was rejected in His own village among His own people. Rebellion against God is described in Scripture as being like the sin of witchcraft, it is an evil that seeks its own way and refuses to let God rule. When a person persists in that, the cruel messenger of that rebellion is the enemy of our souls who takes advantage of it. This family has known great hurt, a miserable marriage marked by unfaithfulness and violence, then a sudden death, and now the children turning against their mother. Hurt can harden into rebellion if it is not brought to God for healing.
Yet the same Scripture that warns about rebellion also gives hope that God can change a hard and angry heart. When Jacob was about to meet his brother Esau, he was afraid because of his brother's long held anger. Jacob prayed by reminding God of what God had promised him, return to your country and to your family and I will deal well with you. He did what he could in faith, he sent gifts ahead to seek peace, because faith is not passive, but he trusted God to do what only God could do. And God did it. He changed the heart of Esau so that what could have been a bitter meeting of recrimination became an embrace where both brothers wept together. The same God who softened Esau can soften an angry teenage boy and a wounded daughter and a distant granddaughter. Keep praying in that way, reminding God of His promises, asking Him to do the heart work that you cannot do from four hours away and with visits only every few months.
You mentioned that they had counseling right after the death but none of them really let themselves be helped, and now they are all depressed and angry. Sorrow that is not brought to God dries up the bones. Solomon, who wrote much about the body as well as the soul, observed that grief and great emotional trauma can break down even physical strength. The Lord also tries the heart as silver is tried in a furnace and gold in a fire. He uses these painful seasons to purify and to show what is inside, not to destroy but to cleanse. Your daughter saying she prays but praying mostly out of anger that things would get easier is honest. God invites more than that. He invites her to bring her sin and her pain and her helplessness to Him for pardon and cleansing through Jesus Christ alone, to be brought from being a stranger to God into being part of the family of God, washed and made an heir of His kingdom. That is the only foundation on which a home can be restored.
You are right to be concerned about the drinking. Even when it is not every day, alcohol works against the body that God created. It overworks the liver that must process it, it harms the nervous system and the mind, it destroys clear thinking and it brings a person under its influence so that they cannot make wise decisions for themselves or their children. It should not be excused or minimized. To love your daughter is to be truthful about that with gentleness, to encourage her to seek help, to find a local church where the Word of God is taught faithfully and where she can be supported, and to seek continued counseling when she is willing.
It is also painful to think about your son in law who died. Many people are tormented by the thought of loved ones who may have died without Christ, forever separated from God. Scripture is solemn about this. Those who continue in rebellion and refuse the invitation of God to receive pardon through Jesus will face His judgment and be excluded from His kingdom. God does not delight in that. He weeps over the wickedness of men who remain hard in their rebellion. We can entrust your son in law to the perfect justice and mercy of God, who knows every heart, and we can let that urgency make us even more faithful to pray for those who are still living and can still respond.
Do not be discouraged because they reject what you say about God's love. Sow the seed anyway. Continue to speak the truth in love when you have opportunity, but even more, live it and pray it. Remind the Lord of His Word, that He is able to keep and preserve those who turn to Him even through times of great judgment and confusion, and that He has promised a restoration where what is now broken and desolate can be made fruitful again. We do not see the world or people now as God intended them to be. We see a world suffering under sin and rebellion, and people bearing the wounds of that rebellion. God intends to make all things new for those who are His.
Keep bringing this family before the Lord by name. Ask Him to break the power of anger in that home, to lift the depression and give a desire for help, to deliver your daughter from dependence on alcohol, to teach her to pray not only for an easier life but for a clean heart and strength to do what is right, and to draw both grandchildren to Himself while there is still time. Do what you can in faith when you visit, a calm word, a consistent boundary, an offer of practical help without taking over, an invitation to church or to speak with a pastor, and then trust God to change hearts in a way that only He can. He is able to turn a tense and bitter meeting into an embrace of forgiveness, and He is able to make those who were once far off into beloved members of His own family through Christ.
