You may not be able to ease their pain, honestly. Some religions believe that theirs is the one true way. If that is the case with your family, then they are concerned for your 'eternal soul'. Kind of hard to convince them that you'll be OK without their God/religion. I think that a more gentle route might be to just ask them to allow you to find your own answers, but that you will always have the foundation that they gave you. Just a suggestion.

Hi Miranda, you live and worship (or not) the way you want to but dont shove it in their faces :o)

If they do get over it, maybe it will be from the passage of time. They may at least accept it. What you can do now is just try to avoid the subject and so lessen the conflict.

It may help if all of you read Romans 14;1-23. It does not matter as long as you are following JESUS and love GOD. Luke 9;49-50 is good too. I wish it did not case them pain, I would be grateful my child had a relationship with GOD.

you may be muslim...mohammed knew of jesus, just did not recognize him as god's son. god loves us all.

Just do what you're going to do. They can't be in THAT much pain. I think you're probably over-estimating yourself. Personally, I say abandon religion all together, but you're going to do what you're going to do, so just do that and let your family cope with it in their own way.

You obviously want to respect your family's feelings in this and that's wonderful. Of course you want to do this while being true to yourself. Understand that while their feelings are in reaction to the choice you've made, *you are not responsible for how they feel*. Also, you are not responsible for making them feel better. It's their job to come to terms with this themselves, as adults. All you can do is reassure them in a way that might help them complete this process. Here's some things they might be feeling and how you can try to help. - They feel like they're losing you. Time will heal this. You will still (I assume) participate in family gatherings, meals, activities, all that stuff. You will still talk to them. They will see this in time - that you are not leaving the family, that you still love them. - They feel like you're rejecting their beliefs, and whatever beliefs they've taught you. It's probably natural to take this personally at first, but again, they should get over this. Let me guess - are you still fairly young? Are they still getting used to the idea of you developing a life of your own, with your own choices and decisions? If so, keep that in mind. You're creating your own path that they will have to accept and (at least pretend to) respect. You have the right to do this! Just continue to treat THEIR traditions with respect when you're with them, and that should ease things along. - They might have negative stereotypes of the religion you've chosen that lead them to believe that you will change, personally, to match that stereotype. The only thing I can think of for that is to carefully introduce them to others of your faith, maybe bring them to a service. The purpose is not to convert or even to win them over on the religious aspect but simply for them to see that the other people are just people and maybe not very different from them. - They are worried about you facing eternal damnation. Yeah, uh, I'm still working on that one myself, so... *scratches head*