It's not fair.

So much can be revealed in a  late night conversation with a 15 year old daughter. A daughter who suddenly feels the weight of the world on her shoulders.

I am blessed in that my daughter will sit with me in our living room and just talk. Sometimes we talk about current events, the ones you will find in the entertainment news, not so much the ones on the evening news. Other times we talk about family and friends, about something funny, about something sad. We talk about the future and sometimes we talk about the past. On occasion we might even talk about God.

Tonight we talked about life.

My daughter has some very close friends that are going through difficult times and she hurts for them. Through the tears she shared with me her concerns for her friends. She was vague in the details and I didn't probe. My "Dad Senses" have been honed well enough to know when to just listen and how to determine when probing questions are critical...tonight they were not needed.

The care and love she has for her friends has been a characteristic of hers since she was four years old. Her burning desire to help others has been evidenced just as long. Tonight she felt helpless. Some problems, many problems are too big for a fifteen year old. She wanted to fix the problem. I told her that sometimes the fix belongs to someone else, it is out of our hands. But when we can't fix, we support. We provide shoulders to cry on, ears to listen. We become momentary respites for those we want to help. And although their problems are still there, for just a moment you take their mind off of it, for just a moment you let them catch their breath...by just being there.

I steered our conversation towards a time when she had helped other friends that had faced problems. I remembered a young boy that had become addicted to drugs at a very young age. The problem had elevated to a point with legal consequence and he was arrested. Sara (my daughter, in case you haven't met her) stayed by his side. She was hard on him about his habit, she showed concern for his future. She checked on him, she cried with him. She helped him. She was his friend.

Our conversation stayed on the subject of addictions. We talked about her Mom. We talked about my father and my baby sister. We talked about her friends and others that she has known in school that have battled or are battling addictions. We talked about choices made that lead to a life controlled by substance abuse. I told her that addicts, like her Mom, say and do things because of a drug. The addict makes decisions, bad decisions, because of a drug. I told her that inside of the addict is a good person trying to get out, we just can't see them.

Her tears began to flow again. She said, "I am only 15 years old and I  already know too many people who are addicted to some drug. I already know too much about this subject. It's not fair."

All I could do was sit silently. This problem was too big for me, It would have been so easy for me to say that "life's not always fair.", to offer fatherly wisdom with words like hope, faith and God. But I didn't. Instead I just gave her a hug and told her I love her; because she is right, "It's not fair!"

At fifteen she should be worried about what to wear to school and boys. She should be thinking about her future and boys. She should be making plans for slumber parties not plans on how to keep a friend from becoming homeless. She should be sharing her life with her mother, not waking up from bad dreams with anger towards her Mom being reignited.

I told her we would help her friends in every way we can, and then I told her to be sure to pray for them . She will.

I prayed tonight and I told God....it's not fair.