Prayer for Family

Requests about parents, siblings, and the people you did not choose but cannot walk away from.

Family is the set of people you did not pick and cannot resign from. A friendship that goes wrong can be allowed to lapse. A brother who has not spoken to you since the funeral is still your brother at every Christmas for the rest of your life.

The requests here are rarely dramatic. They are about a mother who is getting frail and will not admit it. A father who was never easy and is now also ill. A sister who married someone the rest of the family cannot be in a room with. A household where everyone is polite and nobody is close.

People often apologise before writing these, as though a long-running family difficulty were too small a thing to bring. It is not. Most of what wears a person down over a lifetime is exactly this size.

How people pray about their families

A great deal of family prayer is about changing someone else, and it is usually the prayer that goes unanswered longest. Nobody gets to hand another adult over to be rewritten. What tends to happen instead, slowly, is that the prayer turns towards the one person it can actually reach, which is the one saying it.

That is not a consolation prize. Being less reactive at a difficult dinner, or able to hear an old accusation without firing back, changes the room more than any amount of wishing the other person were different.

The other common shape is prayer for a specific occasion — a funeral where two branches of the family will be in one building, a birthday nobody wants to host, a conversation that has been postponed for years. Praying for one afternoon to go bearably is a real request, and it is often answered.

For a family that has stopped speaking

God, we have not spoken properly in three years and neither of us can remember how to start. Take the pride out of this on both sides. If there is a first move for me to make, show me what it is and let me make it before someone dies. Amen.

For a parent who is getting older

Lord, she is not the woman she was and she does not want to be told. Give me patience with the repeating and the refusing. Let me see her rather than only the work of looking after her. And when I lose my temper, let me come back quickly. Amen.

Before a family gathering you are dreading

Father, we are all in one house on Saturday and I already know how it goes. Keep me from the sentence I always say. Let me be the calm one for a few hours. And if it goes badly anyway, let me leave without carrying it for a month. Amen.

What helps besides praying

Lower the unit of measurement. One civil phone call is a result. Aiming at a reconciled family by Christmas guarantees a failure you will blame yourself for.
Write the letter you are not going to send. Family arguments run on sentences rehearsed for years, and getting them out of your head onto paper takes a surprising amount of pressure off the real conversation.
Decide in advance what you will not discuss. Most family gatherings go wrong in the same three places, and a decision made beforehand holds better than restraint attempted in the moment.
Where there is abuse rather than difficulty, distance is not a failure of forgiveness. Nobody is obliged to be in a room with someone who harms them, and no honest reading of the text requires it.

Questions people ask

Am I obliged to forgive a family member who has never apologised?: Forgiveness and reconciliation are not the same thing, and conflating them causes a great deal of harm. You can let go of the demand for repayment without restoring access to your life. The second requires the other person to have changed; the first does not.
Is it wrong to keep my distance from a relative?: No. Honouring your parents does not mean unlimited access on their terms, and it has never meant staying where you are being hurt. Distance can be the only way a relationship survives at all.
I pray for my family constantly and nothing changes. Why?: Because the thing you are asking for mostly depends on someone else's free choices, and those are the slowest thing there is. What usually changes first, and what is worth watching for, is your own capacity to be in the room without it costing you a week.
Should I name people in my request?: Please do not, beyond a first name at most. This is a public page and the person you are writing about has not agreed to be described on it. Requests that say my brother rather than a full name are just as prayed for.