My teenage daughter is and always has been wonderful. I know that this was how she was created—as the good and pure image and likeness of God. But over a period of time, our relationship had become rocky. Our interactions sometimes felt like a game where her goal was just to aggravate me. Despite my attempts to work with her, nothing was getting better. I tried lots of different parenting strategies, all to no avail.

Even though I still heard great things about her from others, and knew them to be true, it became harder for me to see the good.

Then one day I received an email from a teacher telling me that my daughter had received demerits for playing a computer game in class. This woke me up to what I needed to do about this—pray. That evening I called a Christian Science practitioner. I talked with her about how I’d been caught in the trap of believing that a less-than-harmonious relationship with my daughter was inevitable. 

The practitioner helped me to affirm that there is only one Parent, God. And then she shared something from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy about God’s children: “In Science man is the offspring of Spirit. The beautiful, good, and pure constitute his ancestry. His origin is not, like that of mortals, in brute instinct, nor does he pass through material conditions prior to reaching intelligence. Spirit is his primitive and ultimate source of being; God is his Father, and Life is the law of his being” (p. 63).

The practitioner explained that material belief suggests that we’re all playing different roles, with different scripts—in this case, my daughter playing the part of the uncooperative teenager, with me as the frustrated father. But we can choose to break away from playing those roles, walk off the stage, and discover what we truly are, children of God with a common Parent and the ability to relate peacefully to one another.

At one point the practitioner and I discussed the parable of the tares and wheat from the Bible (see Matthew 13:24–30, 36–40). In that story, the tares are allowed to grow alongside the wheat to make sure the good isn’t uprooted with the bad. We talked about how even when children need correction, it should be done lovingly, so as not to uproot the “wheat,” the spiritual growth that is surely going on, even if we can’t always see it.

I was tasked with seeing my daughter’s spiritual nature and rejecting anything that claimed otherwise.

I also prayed with this line from the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy will be done” (Matthew 6:10). It became clear that this wasn’t about me getting my way or my daughter getting her way, but rather about us both doing our God-directed work in individual ways. As a parent, it wasn’t my job to control a disobedient child; I was actually tasked with expressing God’s love and guidance through all I do. This meant that I was tasked with seeing that my daughter’s true nature is spiritual and rejecting anything that appeared to claim otherwise.

Day by day, I practiced taking time to listen to God and understand His guidance before taking action and making parental decisions. I wanted to ensure that my steps were impelled by God working in me. 

I carefully read the story of Jesus staying behind at the Temple as his parents continued home with the rest of their group. Mary and Joseph began to look for him, and ultimately realized he was back at the Temple. When they asked Jesus why he had stayed behind, he said, “Why were you looking for me? Didn’t you know that I had to be here, dealing with the things of my Father?” (Luke 2:49, Eugene Peterson, The Message). Jesus was doing God’s work at the same time his parents were worried about where he was and what he was doing. I knew that my daughter could hear God’s guidance and follow it, glorifying God by just being what she was as God’s child.  

As I continued to pray about this and work with the practitioner, it became clearer to me what I actually was spiritually—the child of God, or Spirit, and therefore spiritual, not bound by material limitations. This was so freeing, and it was so natural to feel the harmony and peace that came with this. I was able to better express spiritual qualities of God when interacting with my daughter, the rest of my family, and everyone. 

Today my daughter and I have a much better relationship, thanks to an understanding of the natural, spiritual harmony in all relationships. Knowing what we all truly are as God’s reflection, including seeing my daughter as reflecting God, takes away strain and stress and continues to help me grow as a parent.