Grieving parents (2) - follow up of previous post

In response to my previous post, someone wrote me an email asking whether I had found some helpful material that could be passed on to parents who struggle with the heartache of prodigal children.

Over the years, I have read a lot of books about parenting, also about prodigals and how to deal with this. Yet with respect to most of these books, in the end the prodigal always comes home, as long as you pray hard enough. That's what I have against most of these books, since we have no assurance that this will happen.

We can learn from books about parenting: "Growing kids God's way, Shepherding a child's hearts, yet most of these book come across with the message: as long as you push the right buttons it will come all right, even though this may happen via the detour of a child for a while turning his or her back upon God.

One of the better book I have read on prodigals is: "Come back, Barbara..."  It might be out of print, but you can still order it at Amazon. A review can be found at  http://www.cpyu.org/Page.aspx?id=163098 I have given this book to many struggling parents. The drawback, however, is that also Barbara comes back.

Knowing by own experience the heartache of children, who have left the church. I like to make a few comments.
First of all, keep the door of communication always open. Don't cut ties. After all, how otherwise can we keep reaching out to these wayward children with the gospel of salvation.
Don't preach, but in your contacts/visits use the opportunities when they arise. Keep radiating love and live by example. In case you share a meal at the house of your wayward children, do what you normally do: pray aloud and ask if you can share Scripture with them. Also, keep inviting them to family get togethers. Try to draw them in, even though they will feel that the bond is different to what is was before.
I'm afraid that at times we highlight the sentence "let him be to you like a Gentile and a tax collector", yet forget that the Form for excommunication also reads "warn him as a brother!"

Due to what happened in our own family, I receive a lot of questions re how to deal with prodigals, especially in view of some members of the church, who indeed believe we have to cut ties.
I think it would be nice if we could share each others heartache a bit more and also pray for one  another. In this context, I have thought that perhaps once in a while we could come together as parents who suffer these heartaches, share and pray together.
If reading this post, you think this will be a good idea, just let me know and then I will see what we can do in this area.

In general, over the last years I have to come to realize that it is better to share some of your sufferings (also in other areas) with people who struggle in a similar way, than just putting up a brave front. A good cry at times can be very helpful!