I hope you had a good Christmas and a smooth start into 2026. Maybe you had family and friends around and enjoyed the familiarity and warmth. However, according to the lead article in Psychology Today, December 2025, many adults have no more contact with some or even all members of their family.

While the reasons for those cut-offs differ a lot — and usually it is not just the one occasion that is later blamed for the break — in most cases it causes a lot of pain and in contrast to grief caused by death, this type of loss keeps hurting some of the affected for many years.

Just a week before I read this article, I had learnt that a friend of my children still is not on speaking terms with his parents and sister. While I knew that there had been some difficulties in the relationship with the parents, I was surprised to learn that even two years later they had not found ways to reconcile.

When my bride and I experienced a similar situation a while ago, we did not give up trying to reconcile and overcome the separation. I know it hurts a lot. The famous marriage counsellors, John and Julie Gottman, call “stonewalling” (next to defensiveness, criticism, and contempt) one of the four apocalyptic horsemen of relationships.

The article in Psychology Today thus became for me very actual, and I learnt some new insight into the problem, which seems to be more common today then in earlier times, and also how reconciliation could look like.

If you are interested and the magazine is not available, you can find the whole article here.

While causes for estrangement are manifold, reconciliation according to the article may best work when the parents make amends and “ … find a way to abandon the need for others to validate their version of past events”. It also states that “estrangement does not erase love [but] it conceals it under layers of hurt and misunderstanding”.

From a theological point of view I was surprised to find that God must have read the article about 2,000 years ago as well, as God seems to follow the advice of the psychologists on how to reconcile with the estranged offspring and offer a new beginning.

Jesus’s parable of The Prodigal Son (I actually prefer the more accurate and less blaming title: The Lost Son) in Luke 15:11-32 demonstrates the attempts to overcome the rift.

God tries to reconcile with us

God offers in Christ a new beginning for us, erasing what had happened instead of dwelling on hurts, disappointments and setbacks which is only repeating the pain again and again. God offers forgiveness and grace without demanding us to perform anything from our side first.

God accepts us as we are, even with our flaws. There is no pressure of performing first, of being extraordinary or perfect. God knows who we are and he loves us the way we are. We have peace with God because of Christ. All we have to do is trust this promise and claim it for us personally by accepting and acknowledging the gift.

The apostle Paul wrote about it in Romans 5:1-5 (as it is a poetic dens text I chose the easier New Life Version):

“Now that we have been made right with God by putting our trust in Him, we have peace with Him. It is because of what our Lord Jesus Christ did for us. By putting our trust in God, He has given us His loving favour and has received us. We are happy for the hope we have of sharing the shining greatness of God. We are glad for our troubles also. We know that troubles help us learn not to give up. When we have learnt not to give up, it shows we have stood the test. When we have stood the test, it gives us hope. Hope never makes us ashamed because the love of God has come into our hearts through the Holy Spirit Who was given to us.”

I like this text as it admits that even for Christians who are reconciled with God there may still be difficulties and troubles. Faith is unlike a vending machine: put in a coin (prayer), press the right button and receive the goods.

Of course, 2026 will bring its own challenges for most of us, whether in our personal life, professionally, financially, health, socially or politically.

There might be misunderstandings, hurts and disappointments. However with God on our side we can conquer those troubles. They teach us not to give up and be resilient and grow closer to Him and others.

We can see the challenges as tests that we can master and thus find new hope. It can help to adjust our expectations on others and ourselves.

Being normal is perceived as failure.

In the named article one of the authors says: “There’s an expectation of being exceptional if you just do the right thing. And young people feel the burden of explaining why that isn’t happening. College students tell me that being normal is a failure: ‘I should be extraordinary.’ That feeling of Why am I not more than I am? contributes to a sense of injury and of thinking, ‘My parents didn’t do something for me that they should have done’.”

The article also points out that in our society there has been a new interpretation of what is neglect or abusive. Millennials often may have a different view than their parents, who often are baby-boomers and some misunderstandings are perhaps preprogrammed that way.

In Part 2 of the article Joshua Coleman, PhD, says under the heading A New Model of Family: “Today’s parents face a new reality. Parent — adult child relationships now operate under what British sociologist Anthony Giddens calls ‘pure relationships’: bonds sustained only if they align with an individual’s ideals of happiness, growth, and — more than ever — mental health.”

He contrasted that to what the parents may have experienced: “In past generations, ties were maintained through cultural frameworks such as honouring parents, respecting elders, and prioritising family unity. Today, nothing compels an adult child to stay connected beyond their own desire to be in a relationship with that parent or family member.”

As a consequence, Coleman writes: “This relational shift means parents must cultivate a greater degree of psychological awareness and communication skill than that required of prior generations of parents.”

Let’s use the new year to reconcile

It hurts to see families hurting this way. Family (with few exceptions where families actually were unsafe and abusive) used to be the bedrock of society, an institution that helped us to form safe bonds and taught us how to network to create win-win relationships.

Like in all relationships that includes at times having to respect and tolerate different views and opinions, without questioning the underlying love and care. Maybe we can practise more awareness of each other in those family relations. Perhaps it’s possible to see each other eye to eye, not through a screen.

While FOMO (fear of missing out) keeps us glued to the smart phone even when being together with the most important people in our lives, we could switch to JOMO (joy of missing out) and switch off the devices while sitting together and enjoying each other.

Aren’t those who are next to us right now and in person more important and maybe more interesting than some influencer or “friend” we might follow on social media?

We actually can make small changes one day at a time and thus finding new ways to connect and re-engage with joy, unconditional love and thanksgiving enabling us to make a shift to a sense of “we-ism” instead of “me-ism”. This allows us to be ourselves and at the same time unite with others in our community, to make this world a better place for all, in love, grace and peace to you and your loved ones in the name of Jesus Christ.

• Karsten Decker was the pastor of Peace Lutheran Church in Bermuda from 2010 to 2017, and after returning from Germany is now the temporary pulpit supply at Centenary United Methodist Church in Smith’s