I remember clearly a conversation between a father and his teenage daughter. The daughter was asking permission to go out this weekend with friends. She was excited and jabbering on about how her friends parents were out of town for the weekend but were allowing all the girls to come to the house for an unchaperoned sleep over. They were going to get together with all of their boyfriends for a night out, dinner and a movie and then go back to the girls house without the boys and enjoy the weekend.

The father with his daughters best interest at heart said. “You have permission to go out together with friends, but I do not feel that it is a good idea for you to stay the weekend with a group a of girls when all the boys know that the parents are gone. So when they head home for the night, you are to come home.

The girl shouted in her fathers face. “DON’T YOU TRUST ME?”

To which the father replied. “I trust you, I just don’t trust the boys!”

The girl continued in an escalating manner until she reached that out of control temper tantrum reserved for two year olds and teenagers. Then raged off to her bedroom in a flurry of screams and slamming doors.

I watched as the father sat down in his chair where the TV no longer interested him. Lost in his thoughts you could see he was feeling unloved, misunderstood and untrusted. He softly spoke to no one there, “Why does she always behave like this?” He was totally feeling like a victim.

In my mind I could imagine the teenager crying and raging in her bedroom, and realized that she too was feeling like a victim… unloved, misunderstood and untrusted!

Life really is a mirror.

If you feel that things are not clearing up, go after the times you behaved in the very way that is upsetting to you and ask to be pardoned for it.