I'm happy for you Chocolatecat. I believe that you should just accept that the Lord is working on her. She may never apologize for her behavior. As long as she has asked our Lord for forgiveness that should be all that is required. I don't know how one starts a reconnect but you seem to have found the answer by having everyday chit chat on the phone. If my ES phoned, I probably would be mute.

Blessings to you and your daughter.

Chocolatecat, I'm with sallyannlass. If my children simply took the time to phone, email, text…whatever…. I'd be happy with that. God will work in their lives and hearts. Our job is to love unconditionally, in my opinion. If your daughter is being respectful of you, please be thrilled with that. I wish you well and hope this is the start of a normal relationship for the two of you. Congratulations!

Chocolate I am so happy for you. Our ES has called us and said he wants to bring his family to visit us. He made no apologies either. Baby steps. But my DH and I are just holding back and letting him take the lead. We'll see where this all goes.

When there's no apology there's no closure because it feels like if they are not sorry for what they did, they could do it again. I'm happy for you, but I would want that apology, even if I never got it. The apology itself does not guarantee it wont happen again, but would make me feel safer anyway.

I have heard that in order for reconciliation you have to swallow your pride and not demand an apology, even if you were not wrong. Just for a start in reconciliation, you have to be willing to put that aside. For me though it feels wrong to forget something horrible someone did to you and pretend it never happened. I guess it is a one day at a time circumstance.

Yeah, you could not demand anything for sure, but in my heart it would not be over unless they did apologize. I would always feel like they werent sorry. I sure wouldnt say anything though, if my son would just come back into my life.

Hi, yeah, we will definitely not say anything about it to her at all! It was just kind of an observation on our part. The Bible teaches that true repentance would include asking forgiveness from those we've wronged, but we are not about to point that out to her. The most important thing is asking forgiveness of God. Maybe later once she starts reading her Bible again and goes back to church she'll connect the dots. I guess I was just thinking out loud that although it was exactly what we were hoping for there seemed to be something still not quite right. That was it, but we'll certainly gladly move forward regardless.

You are so right, cc.... (hugs) to you

Thanks Paws4lt and all friends here!

You're welcome. My wish/prayer for all of us here is that our loved ones would come back to us. May God bless you.

So wonderful that your ED called. Most wonderful that she rededicated her life to The Lord. What an answer to prayer. Asking forgiveness shows repentance and may come. God is working in her life. What a blessing.

Chocolate , clad your dtr called and you were able to have some conversation with her. I understand what you are saying about no apology. I would feel the same.

I am so glad to hear too that your daughter has rededicated her life to the Lord. I know you were just observing the fact that she didn't apologize, but there is much more to the issue than most realize. Biblically, repentance is a prerequisite to forgiveness. We do our children, ourselves, the church and our Savior a disservice in practicing the popular doctrine of today which states: "against God alone have I sinned". My ED and her husband have and still are trying to use that one on me. If this were true, then God would not have sent Nathan to David with the story of the poor man's sheep to convict David of his sins against "His servant Uriah", if God was satisfied with David's current act of "repentance". Without repenting of specific sins to the parties that were "offended", we still feel as though we "got away with it" and never really learn to take responsibility for our sins or the heavy weight and repercussions of sin. If none of us are accountable for our sins against each other, then why did Jesus Himself teach that "unless you repent, you too shall perish" and "So watch yourselves. If your brother or sister sins against you, rebuke them; and if they repent, forgive them." Our act of forgiving them without their repentance is for OUR sake, for our sanity. If they have not repented of their sins against another when it is clearly pointed out to them, then their sin is still on their heads. If we truly loved our brethren and our children, we would preach the Word without compromise. I cannot go against my own conscience and teach my ED nor anyone who may be watching our situation that we can sin with impunity. It is a complex issue but I believe it is at the heart of all of our estrangements. Our EC's may not be ready to hear us yet, but for their sakes, they need to some day, with much prayer on our part, repent of their sins against their parents. I never thought my pledge to God would bring me to this point, but I pledged my children to Him. If it takes my ED's whole life to come to "the knowledge of the truth", then I will have accomplished my goal. I would rather trade my lifetime of having a "walking on eggshells" , partial relationship of compromise on my part with my daughter than to know she will die in her sins, misled by too many (including me) and end up in Hell. Only the TRUTH can set anyone free, and Jesus can do a mighty work if His soldiers will not negotiate with His enemy who hates the truth. If there is no true repentance, there is no true "re-dedication". I know, since I was once a prodigal myself. If our children truly know Jesus and have His Holy Spirit within, we can pray the Lord will convict them, and they will repent. I was compelled to seek out people I had wronged when I came to the Lord. Sorry for the length, I'm a preachers daughter and this issue has been heavy on my heart for a long time.

Rosearch, You state your opinion very well, and you are entitled to your opinion. My opinion is that our children will simply turn away again if we start expecting them to apologize. We each are likely responsible for the estrangement to some degree. Have each of us parents repented for the part we played in it? In the eyes of our children, it we-not they-who are responsible. It is God's work to show each of us our own sins. My opinion is that we are each responsible to remove the logs in our own eyes and let God work on the specks of dust in the eyes of others, including our children now that they are adults. I don't see kindness and love as compromise anymore than I see the kindness, mercy, and love of God as compromise.

Rosearch and CanadianMother, I think you are both correct in what you are trying to say. I would like to give an example from my own EC situation that might bring better clarity here. Many times in past reconciliations that never lasted, my EC would come and ask us to forgive and forget. They were being taught that if you said you forgave someone, you would never bring that sin up to them again because God forgets, we are to forget too. So we were expected to forgive them on that basis and all the problems that led to the sins, were not allowed to be discussed by either of us again. Unfortunately after many failed reconciliations and irreparable damages done to our relationship with each other in the way of respect and trust, we still had the same problems with each other and now parts of our relationship were so damaged, we could not manage to repair them.

Finally after many years of forgiving and forgetting, DH and I came to see that there had never really been any repentance of what kept causing the problems because their behavior never changed... and since repentance means change it finally dawned on us that they meant they forgave us as they never saw a need to change, and we thought they were asking our forgiveness since we had not done anything to cause the Estrangement in the first place so we did not change.

I see now that there was sins on both sides that needed to be recognized, repented of and forgiven if the reconciliation was going to last. To do that, there needed to be acknowledgement from the individuals involved before the injured parties. For my family, forgiving without repentance on the part of the person who sinned did nothing but sabotage the reconciliation.

For my DH and I there will have to be true repentance the next time before we can risk putting ourselves into one more reconciliation with our EC.