Psychologist John Trent tells of one of the greatest disappointments of his life. John's father abandoned the family when John was just a baby, so his mother raised John and his brother by herself.

One day, in his junior year of high school, his dad called. Both John and his brother played high school football, and their dad had seen their names in the local paper. He wanted to meet the boys after the game that week.

John says that he barely slept the night before the game. All his life he had dreamed of meeting his father. He didn't know how to feel now that the dream was actually going to come true.

The next evening, the Trent boys played as hard as they could, hoping that their dad would be proud of them. After the game, they waited in the stands with their mother. They searched the …