feel such hatred or cry so many tears.
Patience is the perfect offense and the perfect defense.
With patience to sustain you under trial, the unholy spirit
which drives your parents cannot get through you to hurt
others ever again.Your patience can free even those who try
to hurt you with their impatience.
       Parents are like oversized kids who have never outgrown
their selfishness. Your patience is the love which might
help them to see that. Regardless of whether they ever see
it or not, your patience will keep you safe from the sick, un-
speakable thing that has made a home in them.The naughty,
love-starved child (in you) is corrected each moment you
stand firm with patience. Each precious moment in which
you give to others the patient love that you would have them
give to you, you will find welling up in yourself the substance
of good for which you have always hungered.
       Slowly but surely you will be set free from the mental
torment of getting either too much attention or not enough.
When you do not reach out for the love of the world,
when you begin instead to have compassion, God rewards
you with the infilling warmth of His friendship.You see, seek-
ing the ego-supporting affection of the world has made you
an enemy of God.
       When my father died, I cried. I missed him.There was
an emptiness in my life; I couldn’t believe he was gone. In
futility, I sought him in other people. Then one day a pro-
found thought occurred to me that saved me from sadness:
the man who died was not my real father. God is my only true
father. It was He who revealed this truth to me; believing
in it comforted my soul, and I have been growing in His

5