Can you remember how you first experienced a loss of trust? The realization that not everyone or everything is always open and above board? As a parent, I can vividly remember the first time our son gave us “the look.” Like other kids, Gregg loved video games. The first video game was a guy known as Pac Man. Gregg was just a pre-schooler at the time. It seems like overnight, there machines popped up everywhere. Whenever we walked into a place that had a Pac Man machine, Gregg’s eyes would light up and he’d rush up to the machine and start playing with the levers. All sorts of lights would be flashing and there would be weird and fascinating sounds. As he twisted and turned the knobs, Gregg thought he was making all of those actions happen.
Neither Rick or I came from a family flush with money. Like many other parents with young children, we didn’t have extra money to be spent on playing video games. So, out of economic necessity, we just let Gregg fool around having fun with the dials. One day that all changed. As he stood there, manipulating the controls, a teenager walked up to the machine. Guess what! This teenager did the most amazing thing imaginable. He stuck his hand into his jeans pocket, pulled out a quarter, and he inserted it into the Pac Man machine. All of a sudden, the machine started doing actions that Gregg had never before seen. His eyes grew as big as saucers. Then, as he stood there watching, Rick and I could actually observe his little mind to into high drive. We could see the wheels turning as the brain cells started to process what was happening. Then the light bulb lit up like a Christmas tree. He looked over at his dad, back at the machine, over to me, and back to the machine. Everything fell into place as he put it all together. He knew that we knew Pac Man could do all this stuff but hadn’t told him. Years ago in the movies, the late James Cagney was noted for the infamous line, “You dirty rat!” And that is exactly the look that we were getting. Although Rick and I had been saving a lot of quarters, life was never quite the same after that day.
All of us have experienced the feelings of trust and distrust. Sometimes people deliberately do something to hurt us. There are other times when it can happen quite innocently. Are you harboring ill feelings toward someone right now? Is there someone you don’t think you can trust any more? Try to stop and process their motives. Where were they coming from and why did they do what hurt you? Was it deliberate, or could it have been unintentional? What about the times you have said or done something that caused others to lose their trust in you? Maybe it’s time to consider giving them a second chance. Ultimately, try striving to reach the goal of reconciliation.