I have prayed this over and over and over again, and I will continue to petition the Lord. I pray that his heart will be softened, and his eyes will be opened to what he has done, and is continuing to do. I know God hears me, but I just wish it would happen soon. This is going on 7 years.

I'm sorry, MariaStevie, but I disagree with your statement. I do not expect my children to repent. That is between them and God. I am happy to have my children back in my life regardless of whether they feel they have done wrong. I will not allow them to mistreat me or disrespect me, but I absolutely do not require an apology nor for them to feel remorse. God will work I their lives in his own time. My job is to love them unconditionally, which is what I intend to do.

Thank you for sharing your perspectives. The door is always open for my EC and I would not turn him however, my belief is that real reconciliation can only happen with repentance....and yes, we can only love them unconditionally as God loves us.

I tend to agree with the true repentance theory. If we look at us , we repented to God our sins and turned away from them with shame. We stumble but we are aware of our sin and what the consequences are. I think the prodigal son repented to God and his earthly father because he hit rock bottom and he came to his senses. That is why the father says he was lost and now is found, he was dead and now is alive again. It send a bigger message though about us and our heavenly father. Does a murderer repent but keep on murdering? no
Only our Heavenly Father can call them to himself, if he does not call them they do not hear , they do not see.
It speaks of this in the bible.

My prayer is for reconciliation. I pray that our ED will be first repentant to God and that He will work in her heart and show her the truth of how much she has dinner against and her the family. It is His work. Yes, we would accept her back unconditionally. I love the prodigal son story as our example.

Agrandmother you bring up such a great point about unconditional love too - thank you for reminding me of God's unconditional love.

The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant

21 Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?”

22 Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.[g]

23 “Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. 24 As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand bags of gold[h] was brought to him. 25 Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.

26 “At this the servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ 27 The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.

28 “But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins.[i] He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded.

29 “His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it back.’

30 “But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. 31 When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything that had happened.

32 “Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. 33 Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ 34 In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.

35 “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

I expect sons and daughters would also be included in this parable.

The topic of forgiveness has got me thinking. From my perspective, the problem with expecting people to repent is that often they don't even know they did anything wrong. I'll give you an example.

I have 3 sisters who tend to exclude me, ridicule me, and view me with disdain. One of them is the root cause. She is a gossip and she has always disliked me and so I am often the target for her malicious rants. She is an extrovert, I am an introvert. So, she spreads ill will between me and the other sisters.

Ok, so she, and by extension the others feel I've done something wrong... they always feel I've done something wrong. But, honestly I usually don't have a clue what I've done. I'm not mean spirited and if I've offended someone it is never done intentionally.

I forgive them. I truly do. I can try to prove them wrong until I'm blue in the face but they will always feel I've done something wrong, and they always feel they are in the right. I am the black sheep of the family. I am the scapegoat.

I have a choice. I can be unforgiving and hateful, or I can forgive and leave it up to God to work in their lives. I choose to forgive. This gives me freedom. Freedom from hatred, freedom from anger.

They choose to remain spiteful, angry, mean people. I leave that up to God to deal with them.

For me, I have peace.

And, I feel the same about my children. I love them, and accept them, and leave the rest up to God. They are adults now, not children.

We all pray for reconcilation. We forgive as Jesus does. As we listen to the Lord He will guide us in His way. We all desire peace as believers. I, personally, would find it difficult to have true reconciliation if the offending party did not show repentance. Jesus forgives us when we repent. Zaccheus showed by his actions that he was sorry for what he had done.

We can not make anyone repent. That is God's work. We can pray that our EC will come to that place.

Luke 17: 3-4 includes something interesting that the same passage in Matthew doesn't..."…3"Be on your guard! If your brother sins, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him. 4"And if he sins against you seven times a day, and returns to you seven times, saying, 'I repent,' forgive him."

The dividing line for me is whether the offender is a follower of Jesus. My ED claims to be and so does her husband. They refuse to repent even though I tried repeatedly to rebuke them, as this passage also tells us to do, and though we have a limited relationship presently, it is not reconciliation. Is is a "concession" on our part. A false kind of peace, if you will, for the sake of my own broken heart. I have been the rebel in my own youth, sinning against my own parents. I know what true remorse, repentance and reconciliation looks like. What i have with my ED right now is not it. If someone is not a Christian, we are not permitted to use the same standards to "judge" their actions as we are other believers. I honestly don't know what true reconciliation would look like in that case.

For myself, my son was willing to talk to me, but not willing to change how he acted towards me. Ultimately, I could see through our several conversations that he is unable to see my distress, or to feel any empathy for me. Because one of my most deeply held values is that people should be self-aware, able to take responsibility for their actions, and compassionate towards others, I was severely distressed to see the lack of empathy in my own son. And since I taught empathy towards others the whole time he was growing up, and modeled it in so many ways, I realized that I cannot be the agent of change, in softening his heart towards me. It will have to come from another person, or from God, or from his life experiences. Perhaps when he has his own children, he will change. I am not counting on that, but it might be one way he could see how much power he has to hurt his mother, me. I plainly told him that adult children don't realize how much power they have to hurt their mothers, and I explained it the best I could. But nothing I said made any difference, nothing I said or did created any change in the actions of my ES and his wife, my DIL. So, for me, I really do require some kind of repentance on his part, before I would have a relationship with him again. Or at the very least an understanding that he had hurt me, and felt bad about that, even if he doesn't understand how he hurt me. That was sort of the crux of it for me, that he just had no empathy or compassion for my pain. Since I grew up with very abusive, cruel, and negligent parents, I don't have relationships with people now, who are not capable of empathy. I kind of wasted a lot of time in utter disbelief, because I couldn't understand how my son came from me, but I finally realized I don't have to understand why or how he changed, just that he did, and there is nothing I can do about it, and I spent 3 years doing everything I could think of, walking on eggshells, taking other people's advice, trying to buy their love, etc. And nothing I did or didn't do made any difference whatsoever. My son feels justified in how he and his wife treat me, and there is nothing I can do to change that. Understanding that has brought me peace. I still love him, and his wife, if they were in trouble, I would help them, if they let me. But trying to interact with them brings me nothing but pain, and so I have stopped trying to make that happen, and I fall on the side of that the prodigal son came home repentant, and genuinely wanting to be back with his family, and that is what I am hoping and praying for. I don't count on it happening, but that is what I would need, to feel safe having a relationship with my ES and DIL again.

In your case I don't see any other action but what you have done. We may never get repentance but I think each side has to at least meet half way. I don't really see true reconciliation without some sort of remorse, and the motivation to make amends. Jesus says to forgive them but he does not say to be a door mat for people who go out of their way to hurt and damage you. Sometimes I think forgiveness is for our sake so we can let go and hand it over to God to deal with.

above reply meant for Agrandmother

ejrinpain, I know what you mean. I don't think either of my son's have any kind of remorse or empathy at all, and they will have to answer to God with explanations because of it. I remember a time when I was so hurt and tears were rolling down my face , my son just looked at me smirking as if he was enjoying it. You can not force someone to love you and care for you if they don't. I truly believe only God can change such hearts and I think often times prideful people have to be broken into pieces before they see the light. Often times it takes something very drastic to happen in their lives for them to change.