Abandoned by their father, now suffering under a cruel step-father

I know of a family, a good family, that had a loyal and loving mother and a father who watched over them as all fathers should.  Life was far from perfect; there were numerous problems, some of them serious, along the way.  Yet they were still an intact family.

But it became more and more obvious that the father's thoughts were elsewhere and the nurturing work was left almost entirely to the long-suffering but ever-faithful mother.  The father was around most of the time, and he did keep a little discipline, but his troubled youth started to come to the fore which found him starting to say things that were contradictory.  And the children were confused. Their mother taught one thing; their father something seemingly different.

As they struggled to stay together the youthful sins of the father were becoming more and more prevalent.  He could be found one day speaking gently and kind to his wife and family in the morning and in the evening found carousing with those who hated everything he and his wife stood for. And soon, little by little, the patrimony of this good family was frittered or bargained away by the father who never recovered from his ill-spent days at school, a school that seemed to twist his thinking in some strange way.

Please pray for this family.  The father left his wife and children.  He abandoned them.

The poor woman could not raise their many children herself so after a time and after the religious and legal formalities were observed she remarried.  The annulment she received was questioned at the time but it was granted and she was free to remarry.  Alas, her new husband, who had a happy, jovial and indeed most pleasant personality, turned out to be cruel and heartless, even while protesting how understanding and tolerant he was.  He turned a cold shoulder toward his wife's children, those who clung to her fervently the more so after having been so heartlessly abandoned.

The cruel step-father was totally unsympathetic to their culture and their family traditions.  He caroused with his cronies every bit as much as the former father did but he made no pretense about it. Things were going to be different from now on.  The children were horrified by the creepy and unsavory kind of people their step-father brought to the house.  They were self-absorbed and libertine.  And they were cruel and indifferent like their step-father.  When one of the boys was caught praying by his bedside one night, hands folded and eyes directed toward Heaven, the step-father rushed in and yanked the folded hands apart, castigating the terrified boy for putting on airs. So disgusted was the father by this that he asked one of his cronies to meet with the boy and inform him that these pietistic acts have to end now.  Mortified and hurt the boy went silent even as his brothers and sisters watched in horror what was now happening.  Everything they had been taught to believe was a subject for mockery by their new father.

The faithful mother remained silent during all this.  Some friends tried to comfort her, some tried to talk with her new husband to ask him to respect what had gone on before but most of these interventions were weak and far too respecting of the new father's position.  The children are all but resigning themselves to the fact that they have been abandoned a second time and that their step-father is about to turn their entire lives upside down.  They pray silently for this tyranny to end.

I know this family very well.  Please pray for them as earnestly as you can.