The pain you carry for your children pierces the heart, and rightly so. A parent’s anguish over a child’s loneliness and struggles is a heavy burden. You see them isolated, wounded by past cruelty, and you long for them to find shelter in the company of the faithful and, above all, in deeper communion with Christ. This desire is good and holy. But consider carefully the foundation of the friendships you seek for them. I have said before that we often lock not our shields one with another, seeking friendship from relationship, long acquaintance, or mere neighborhood, rather than from godliness alone. The friendship that saves is not merely the friendship of shared age or circumstance, but the friendship forged in the common pursuit of virtue. Keep not friends for them who are enamored of the table or the passing entertainment of youth, for such persons retrench their friendship when the season changes. Those who associate for virtue’s sake remain continually, enduring every change. Bring your teens to the assembly, yes, but pray and labor that they find companions who will hinder the things which lead away to hell, who will be as a fortified city built by brother aiding brother.
Do not despair, though the struggles are many. See how even the centurion, a man of such great faith, accounted himself unworthy, and yet Christ marvelled at him and gave more than he asked. Your children, especially your youngest who bears a heavier portion, may feel their weakness keenly. This very lowliness of mind, if turned toward the Physician, becomes the soil for great grace. Seek the kingdom for them first, and these other things, healing of heart, godly friends, a spirit less turned inward, shall be added. The Deacon cries out, calling the holy to the holy things, separating the healthy from the sickly to protect the flock. The Church is a hospital for souls, and it is right to bring them there. But remind them, and yourself, that the sick become healthy and the healthy, by remissness, grow infirm. Neither let the one on the stave of his difficulties despair, nor the other who may one day stand in confidence think himself beyond peril. Watchfulness is needed for all.
Your children take medicine, you say. This is no shame. The Christian often shines out more brightly in hardship and poverty of spirit than in ease and riches, for wealth misused breeds arrogance and a multitude of sins, while need strips away pretense and can make the soul more sober-minded and equitable. The very lack of worldly friends, the very sting of old bullying, can become the goad that drives them not to the world’s hollow comfort but to the feet of the One who makes the whole man healthy. Do not judge their present condition by mere appearance, as though their solitude or struggles are a sign of divine neglect. The command that seemed to break the Law was sometimes the very means of fulfilling its purpose. God’s healing often comes through paths we do not expect. Pray without ceasing, guide them gently toward that fellowship which is rooted in godliness, and trust that the Shepherd who separates the scabbed from the healthy for their own cure will make them whole and present them as holy.