What Goes Around....

….comes around.

My heart is grieved when I see teenagers and young adults mistreat and disrespect their parents.  I have lived long enough to see what happens in the next generation.

Many years ago my mother talked to me about a family she knew well.  She was saddened to watch A’s mother say and do disrespectful things toward A’s grandmother.  She said that A would treat her mother the same way someday.  A is now an adult, who goes way past what her mother did to her grandmother.  Although her mother is still living, she has no relationship with her, and has declared that as far as she is concerned, she has no mother.

I have seen this in my own family.  The children who lied to me, swore at me, and were generally awful to me as teenagers have had terrible struggles with their own teenagers.  One has asked me more than once, if I wished it on her.  NO!  NO!  No matter how hurt I was, I never once wished that revenge for me would come through my grandchildren.  I never wished it, but with great sadness, I knew it would happen.

I am currently trying to convince someone of this.  She is behaving most cruelly toward her mother.  In a few days, she will be looking lovingly at her own child.  She will convince herself that this sweet little babe will never break her heart.  She cannot see into the future and know that everything she dishes out will fall back into her own lap…probably multiplied.

It is futile for me to hope I am wrong.  It may be better for me to hope, that I don’t live long enough to see it.