W.OW, please be moichel me, I didn’t mean for you to cry. And please don’t blame yourselves, like I said before you can’t go backwards only forwards. You did what you thought was best at the time. How could you possibly have known what he wasn’t truly sharing with you? That’s all water under the bridge. I only pointed this out to you so you would have a deeper understanding of life from his perspective and his point of view.
When he says things to you or does things, please do your utmost NOT to take them personally. They are not designed to hurt you, he is only doing what he thinks makes him feel better. Without knowing the depth of his pain and suffering how could you possibly understand that? When your other kids question his actions you can honestly say he must be treated like a “choleh”. Because he is going through a tremendous nisayon right now and unfortunately he feels like his emuna and bitachon was stolen from him. We can’t even imagine no never even know what it feels like to lose one’s emunah and bitachon, how frightening that must be. So scary that he doesnt want to talk about it or even face it just run away from it. He is going to make a lot of mistakes because without bitachon he doesn’t know or believe that Hashem loves him and is always by his side to help him. He feels alone and that is why he is searching for something that he himself does not know what it is. Eventually, and we don’t know how long it will take, he will realize that Hashem never left his side and watched over him through his entire journey. But until he comes to that realization through his own journey, we will have to be loving and patient so that we don’t push him into the arms of the goyim and into dangerous situations. We have to be the best loving, kind, simchadik, caring, yiddin and role models we can be for him and his friends so that maybe we can help shorten the dark journey they are on and they can find that what they are searching for was inside them all along.
W.O.W., he is your son no matter what, no matter how hard it gets, whether he has girlfriends and even if he eats treif, no matter how low he falls he is still your baby, your gift from Hashem, so never give up on him. That is your nisayon as a parent. Hashem did not give warranties or guaranties when he gave us these special gifts. What Hashem did give us is forgiveness and the ability to do teshuva. Did Hashem ever give up on us his children? Did he ever turn his backs on us and say “gee, how many chances do these stupid kids think I will give them? I’m g-d, they can’t fool me, who do they think they are kidding? Seriously, I should just give up on them and start from scratch.”.
Well obviously, our society has fallen pretty low on the morals and value scale. Many of us wouldn’t blame g-d if he felt that way, but WE are very lucky, we get to do teshuva every day and try again. This is our ultimate role model in parenting. Never give up on your children, the tomorrow will come for forgiveness and healing. If there is a chance that the sun will come up, there is a chance for teshuva, reconciliation, forgiveness, reconnection, etc.
So W.O.W. we daven to Hashem to help us through these hard times, to keep our pained children safe, and that he rebuild his connection with our child very soon. Then we look for a support system because no one can go through this alone without losing their mind. Then we try to keep the family together and move forward as normally or next to normal as we can.