More and more adult children are cutting off their parents. Today's guest says that everything a mother's instinct tells her to do in that moment is wrong. And she would know.

Marit Welker has been on both sides of estrangement. First with a parent. Years later, her adult child cut her off. Both relationships are happily restored. But Marit walked through fire to get there. Today she works with Christian mothers who are navigating that silence, helping them heal, find their identity, and step into purpose and peace on a new path, one that also prepares them for the possibility of reunification.

Marit is a certified life coach, a speaker on three continents, and the host of Still Here., a podcast for mothers walking this road. She studied scripture in Jerusalem, served as a missionary in South America, and teaches from a Christ-centered foundation informed by neuroscience and personal development.

Marit, you say a mother's instincts after being cut off will make things worse. Walk us through that.

Welcome to 12-Minute Converse with Jesus Believers.

God chose first to have a conversation with us, his creation.

Our prayer is that this listening space brings growth and transforms your life forever.

Praise God for you, Marit.

What part of the world are you in today?

I am in Boise, Idaho, USA.

Please walk me through the importance of a mother's instinct.

Any mother becomes a mother through service and love, not just by birth.

Any adopted mother can tell you that.

Foster moms can tell you that.

It's something that comes to you as a gift from God, and with it comes that protection of her instinct.

I believe being a mother is an important part of God's plan for his children.

When a child walks out the door and cuts a parent off, for whatever reason, that mother's instinct is to fix it.

She wants her child back, she wants her child okay, and a child, no matter their age, unless they have their own children, cannot understand how deeply that mother loves the child.

You know, the idea of, I would do anything for you, I would give my life for you, is a nice idea and you know it as a fact, but until you've experienced that intensity of love for someone, you don't understand.

I work with women who have been cut off by a child.

The child has cut their parent out of their life, and Christian mothers I work with want to fix it.

So they reach out and they apologize, and they reach out and they are trying to explain their side of the story, and they reach out and they even sometimes kind of want to make deals.

Well, I'll stop doing that if you'll just come back, but all of those things are the wrong thing because your child's brain is in a crisis mode at that time.

And I mix Christianity with neuroscience and personal development to help women walk through the road I've walked through successfully, not making the I made, which is all of them.

And so these moms want to reach out and do this, but it's the last thing they should do.

And Jesus Christ himself showed us exactly what we should do in the Bible.

He gave us the story of the child who rejected their parent and cut them off and moved out of the country and moved far away to a faraway land.

And then just like the parent probably knew what happened, they spent all of the money, half of the parent's money, before the parent was done using it, and they wasted it all in riotous living.

And then the parent was left on the other end, heartbroken, waiting, hoping they would come back.

But the prodigal son's father, who is the hero of the story, didn't send his servant after him to stop him.

He didn't keep him from going.

He didn't withhold the money.

He gave it to him.

He let him go.

And then he didn't even write letters.

He just let him go.

And in the interim, what he did was wait.

And he gave that child the space they requested.

And during that time, what did the father do?

He worked on himself.

He waited, and he might have been a phenomenal parent who didn't need to do a whole lot of work, but he was still ready.

Because when his child came back, and most children do, he was ready to receive him with open arms, not demanding an apology, not expecting the child to do things differently or pay him back or anything like that.

He was there waiting and running to meet him, putting a robe around him, a ring on his finger, and serving him this huge feast with all of their friends and family to honor him, because this son, who had been dead to him, came back.

Now, most children do come back.

The question is, what will they find when they come back?

You don't know when that phone's going to ring, and it might be six months, and it might be 30 years.

But most of them do come back.

And so the parent's job is to wait, to give them the space, and to work on themselves so that they are ready when that door opens.

What did it take for you to come to this realization for yourself?

I think I knew it before the separation, which helped me tremendously.

I'd been through a lot of difficulties beforehand.

I think the biggest had been when I was bedridden for 18 months and broke.

We had been through a bankruptcy because we had been embezzled previous to that, and it was just a financial disaster.

And so here I had built up this new business, and I couldn't get out of bed, and I couldn't do my work, and I couldn't care for myself.

I couldn't care for my children, and I laid there, and that's all I could do.

And after about two months, I realized this isn't going away soon.

And so I turned to God, and I said, okay, this time, this struggle that I'm facing, I'm not just going to be patient, I'm going to be cheerful.

And I don't mean saccharine positivity, because you have to be in touch with reality, you have to be grounded.

When my son was separated from me, we have reconciled, but when my son was separated from me, I needed to keep that as a reality, and then look for the positive.

And that's what I was able to do.

I decided, and that was the biggest part right there is the decision, because you can't go anywhere without a decision.

And so I made the decision that I was going to be cheerful throughout this trial, and I was.

And I didn't know how, but I didn't know if I was going to live.

No one knew what I had.

It wasn't discovered yet.

And I laid there, looking at, hmm, well, I can't look forward, present's not so great either.

I'm going to look back.

I've lived a great past.

Well, I started adding up all the good things.

And man, when you are looking at your life, and you see all of the great things you've done, all stacked up on top of each other at once, it's remarkable.

It wasn't a matter of, I've had great blessings.

It was, I've had all the blessings.

Every dream I had in high school had been accomplished except for one.

And so many that I had never imagined.

And so during that time, I learned how to be grateful.

And an example of that was, now, this is an extreme example I'm making up, but let's say I was in a car accident.

If I was in that car accident, and I lost both my legs, they were amputated.

I could say, I was in a car accident.

I lost both my legs.

I'm so grateful for the doctors who saved my life.

So it's not a matter of changing the story.

It's a matter of where are you going to put the emphasis.

And that is a choice you can bring to every situation.

With that, and a strong understanding of my identity going in, I was able to navigate it.

And I still reached out, I tried to, you know, control my child and make him come back a little bit.

But primarily, I was able to stay close to the Lord, and wait.

I saw that one of the things you've done is travel to Jerusalem.

Have you seen a similar scenario occurring where mothers experiencing the same trauma from their children stepping away as you've seen in the US?

I didn't in Jerusalem.

And that's a pattern that has increased substantially over the last 20 to 30 years.

I was in Jerusalem 35 years ago, when I was a college student.

I spent a semester there.

I lived in South America as well.

Freudian psychology teaches that your parents are responsible and your past and your upbringing is responsible for your current pain.

That's been proved false.

Yet, some therapists and most of current culture is going with that theme.

And they are blaming the parents for the pain that they're experiencing now.

And the definition of what is trauma and what is abuse and what is narcissism has shifted over the last 20 years, substantially.

Again, another medical analogy, what used to be trauma was a gunshot wound to the chest.

Again, this is just an analogy.

But now the definition would also include a sprained ankle.

And so because of that changed definition, our children are realizing that they've experienced abuse by the new definition.

And they've experienced trauma, and their parents are narcissistic by the new definitions, but not by their real definitions.

And there's huge movements online that are supporting this and encouraging children to step away.

And they are calling it self care and putting themselves first and congratulating them.

And it's definitely the enemy at work, trying to break up families.

It's so coincidental, I was having a conversation with a friend this morning, we had the opportunity to travel across 48 states in Canada, and there were homes that we stayed at.

And I remember visiting one home.

And at that specific time we were visiting, her son was actually leaving for college.

And it felt as though they were celebrating this.

Now, in the Caribbean, it's not something that we would experience the way that occurred.

Yeah, where you're celebrating a child, well, a young child.

Yeah, to me, it's a young child that's that's leaving and picking up and going into an apartment.

It was weird for us.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, I'll tell you, it's a new stage of life.

And it's a very exciting thing for that child, that student.

And they may be living in a different location, but I will tell you that that parent and child are still very in touch with each other.

In most cases, if there's a good relationship, a good foundation, you know, I know what my kids are doing, because I'm involved in their banking app, or their, their other things.

I follow them on social media, and we're in touch every day.

When my children are younger, as they're older, I have to learn to be a parent.

That's a problem with mothers also, is we learn to parent children and teens.

But we have to learn how to parent an adult.

And that means stepping back, is if you're giving them parenting advice, and they're married with kids, don't do it.

The two words that come to mind, Mark, as you're speaking, tough love.

Yeah, it's tough love, isn't it?

No, it's letting go.

It's rolling with the punches.

It's tougher on mom, but letting them go and live their life, and be involved as much as they want, and loving them throughout and praying for them.

Because they are in God's hands.

And that's what you have to remember, you are both in God's hands, and He knows their path.

How difficult is it working with women, and getting them to the place that you're in now?

No matter where their starting point is, if they are fully committed to getting there, they can get there.

Because learning to be positive, learning to view the truth, but always see it from a positive angle, was the hardest thing I ever did.

Bar none.

When my child left, that was the most pain I ever experienced.

Bar none.

But learning to rely fully on the Lord, and also take full responsibility for your actions and your thoughts, it's Herculean.

That's powerful, because even with the conversation that occurred with the prodigal son, his moving back actually came from the memory of, hey, my father, servants are better off than I am right now.

He treats them better than I am actually treating myself by making these decisions.

Let me get back to him.

Well done.

Love that.

One last thing about the prodigal son, is that he came to himself.

He came to himself, and 80% of children come back to their mothers in this lifetime.

And I believe they all have that chance in the next.

So remember that they are in God's hands.

If you're listening, and if you are cut off from your child, remember that your child is in God's hands.

Remember that God loves them more than you do.

And remember, if and when they return, they will have hopefully come to themself, and remember the good from your relationship.

And you have no control over that.

So leave it to God and work on you.

All right, this has been a great pleasure.

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