Do you have a question about faith, family, or feelings? Let’s talk. Let’s pray together. Send your email to tseller@daretobelieve.org and mark it “Dear Friend”. Today a mom and mother-in-law responds to Friday’s post, Holiday Blues.

Dear Suzie,

After reading your devotional on family and holidays, I am right where you are. We have a young grandbaby that we rarely get to spend time with. Her mother is jealous of any relationship my son may have with us and finds every excuse imaginable to stay away from us. She only wants to share her time with her parents.

We have spoken in love with both of them, they only say that they don’t have time and are busy they both work. I work, but we always time we have for them. I have prayed and asked God to help me accept this, but I am so very depressed that things are this way .

Can you please pray for our family? I have told my husband I either just want to leave or not even live. It is so hurtful the way she treats us. Our son allows her to be the leader of their house. My husband has tried to talk to him alone, but to no avail. I am so lonely for the love of my son and his family. Our son lives only 15 minutes away.

Will you lift us up in your prayers and if you have any advice, please send it my way. Hurting mom and grandma.

Dear friend,

I hear the hurt in your email, but may I be honest? I also hear the disappointment and anger toward your daughter-in-law.

I’m going to make a bold suggestion. I’m going to ask that you begin to pray that God would place a love for her in your heart that equals that of a precious daughter, rather than a daughter in law. Love in your words over her. Love in your belief in the person she is and can be.

You see, we can’t change others, and we often spend a lot of time trying to “fix” what we do not have the power to fix. And that makes us angry, or feel like a failure, or frustrated, or even in the worst of cases depressed.

Today, pray that God would help you refocus from what you don’t have (and I’m not minimizing that) to what you do have. The love of a husband. The love of a Heavenly Father. Health. Breath. The ability to praise God. The ability to help others. Simple, yet profound things we often overlook when disappointment comes in.

As that miracle begins in your heart, my prayer is that your daughter in law can’t help but feel the love you have for her, and that it touches her heart. But more so, that God fills your heart with renewed joy.

And on a practical level, ask if there is a different date that would work for a holiday. No pressure. And then make it fun. Love her with open arms, as a daughter. Don’t see her as “the leader of her home” or someone who is taking your son away from you, but as a daughter of your heart. Will this be hard? In the beginning, yes, but God is a miracle-working God.

I appreciate so much your honest email. Today I am praying with you!

Suzie