There is a tender honesty in your prayer, and gratitude is a fitting place to begin, for it shows that faith, though quiet, is still alive within you. You speak of hurt and confused parts seeking to be reconciled with that quiet faith, and of a desire to be kind and brave while health and trial press upon you. This is not a small thing, and the Lord who sees in secret marks it.
You have been grieved, and rightly so, by two children made to shape their lives around the chaos of their parents' strife. To have helped one of them, even briefly, in study, and to have prayed for them from a distance, is not nothing. Never think that prayer from a distance is a powerless thing. When a man can talk with God as his covenant God, every arrow sticks in the centre of the target. The Lord hears the prayer offered in secret, and He who is the God of hope can fill those children with joy and peace in believing, even when their home knows little peace. Continue to bear them before the throne of grace, for that is the best help you can give where you cannot order their circumstances.
Now you feel drawn into the escalated battle itself, and you desire to remain calm, unscathed, unfettered by those who would bully and use you. Here is wisdom from the example of Daniel. He sustained the energy of his outward profession by constant secret communion with God, and when an unjust edict was passed, he did not hide his faith nor seek a quarrel, but he openly went his way as before and prayed before his God. So let it be with you. You need not oppose outward falsehood with inward truth only, but with a quiet, distinct avowal of your own convictions. To tread in His footsteps wherever He goes, to be much with Him whether in private or public, this is your strength. You need not be drawn into every controversy. As our Lord said to the woman, Your faith has saved you, go in peace. Sometimes strength is to sit still, and sometimes to leave the place of controversy and go in peace, for the joy of the Lord shall be your strength.
You say you want to be brave and to come through unscathed, to crawl quietly back to yourself and do more of what you have been doing. Let me gently turn that desire a little higher. Our business is not with self, but with Christ. Perfect peace is not found by staying within ourselves, but by having the mind stayed upon Him because we trust in Him. You will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on You. Leave your sorrow with Jesus. Bear your sorrow with Him and for Him, and you shall enjoy peace even with sorrows surging round. Your health mishaps and treatments are known to Him who never faints nor is weary, and they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. A man apart from God sees his strength dry up, but a man with God in him makes hell tremble. Wait upon Him, not with a hurried minute in the morning only, but with often slipping aside to get a word with Him in the midst of the day, and He will renew you.
You also confess the difficulty of remaining kind when surrounded by insensitivity and cruelty. Our Master continually connects forgiveness with faith, and tells us to overcome evil with good and to forgive seventy times seven. No man can pray successfully while he is in an unforgiving frame of mind. This is a hard saying, and you rightly feel you cannot bear it in your own strength. Increase of faith is needed for such peace principles. Pray then as the apostles did, Lord, increase our faith, that you may be enabled both to forgive and to pray, and to find that the peace which comes through believing chases fear away and fills the great vacuum which sin and sorrow have made.
The Lord does not promise that you will be without trial, but that trial, rightly borne, will work patience, and patience its perfect work, till you become more complete in Him. Count it not strange that you have fallen into divers trials. Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ, but do not take upon yourself burdens which God has not laid upon you. Be kind where you can be kind, be present where God has placed you, and where you are pulled into strife that is not yours, you may in meekness step back and commit the matter to Him who judges righteously.
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope. May He strengthen you with strength in the Lord, that your faith may breed expectation, and that whether in sickness or in health, in quiet or in tumult, your desires may find their pasturage around the Great Shepherd's feet and you may abide at home in peace. We will pray that you are kept calm, clear minded, and kind, not by your own resolve alone, but by power received through waiting upon Him, and that those precious children are kept under the shadow of His wing until this storm passes.