I've Lived on Both Sides of Estrangement

I never imagined that one day I would be writing about estrangement. For most of my adult life, I was known as a homeschooling mother, Christian author, and Bible teacher. I raised nine children, wrote books about teaching God's Word, and spent decades encouraging families to build their lives on biblical principles. I believed deeply in the importance of family, and I still do. But behind the books, the Bible studies, and the family photographs was a story I never expected to tell.

I know what it feels like to be the child who leaves home because staying is too painful. And I know what it feels like to be the mother who watches her adult children walk away. I have experienced estrangement from both sides, and those experiences have challenged much of what I once believed about family, forgiveness, responsibility, and reconciliation. Most importantly, they have changed the way I understand God's work in the middle of suffering.

I Was Once the Estranged Daughter

My childhood was not the loving, secure beginning every child deserves. My father left when I was three, and my mother struggled with serious problems that made our home a painful and unpredictable place. The one steady source of love in my early years was my grandmother, a Salvation Army officer who opened the Bible with me and became my lighthouse in every storm.

By fifteen, I could no longer safely stay. I packed a duffel bag, found a job and a room, and supported myself. A few months later, when I asked to come along on a family trip, my parents said no. I had left their home, but I never stopped wanting to belong to my family.

As an adult, I chose to honor my mother with weekly calls, visits, firm boundaries, and prayer. We had contact for many years, but we never had true reconciliation. That taught me that being in touch and being restored are not the same thing.

Then I Became the Estranged Mother

Years later, I found myself on the other side. I poured my heart into raising my children and teaching them God's Word, and some of them walked away anyway. I know the silent holidays, the questions that circle at four in the morning, and grandchildren seen only in pictures someone else posted. I also know the joy of a child coming home, and the heartbreak of losing that relationship a second time.

Some of the distance in my family grew from my own failures, and I own them. Some grew from lies told about me and believed. Many families carry both.

What Both Sides Taught Me

• Distance is not always rejection. A child who has stepped away may still long to be wanted.
• A child's account is not always the whole truth. I know that because mine wasn't.
• Only God sees the whole story. I do not have to be the judge.
• We decide what we pass on. We cannot control what our children do with their pain. We can control what we do with ours.

Why I Wrote This Book

When my mother could not love me well, God took me in. He became the Father my heart needed, and He led me back to His Word, where I found broken families on nearly every page and a God who never stopped working in their stories. When the Bond Breaks is the book I wish someone had handed me at the beginning. I cannot promise that your child will come home. But I can tell you that even when we cannot change the relationship, God can change what the waiting does to us.

"For my father and my mother have forsaken me, but the LORD will take me in."
Psalm 27:10

Robin Sampson