Tag: acceptance

Acceptance

~ K ~ Leave a comment

I once had a counselor who told me that people want two things in life: to be accepted and to be right. The acceptance part is especially true for me. I work in a position where I want so desperately to be accepted and yet I feel like an outsider. I’m not a regular member of the staff and it positively kills me to be excluded. I’m simply a contractor without the burdens and headaches of being a regular staff member.

Acceptance has always been a regular theme in my life. Even when I was in high school, I desperately wanted to be accepted and part of some group. To the point where I joined a group of people who made fun of me—all in the hopes that I would be accepted.

Not being accepted is like standing outside in the bitter cold looking in at a family in a cabin happily playing a board game by the fire. It feels that isolating.

And that’s how I still feel today at times in my professional career. The person I report to is not a friend but merely a business acquaintance. (She uses colons in her emails to me, which is a sign of formality, not friendship.) For some strange reason, I look for acceptance from her too, but I don’t know if I’d ever be satisfied.

That’s the other thing about acceptance. How do you know when you are well and truly accepted by a person or an organization?

Day 23 of Enjoying God: Acceptance

~ K ~ 1 Comment
Image from http://www.rcc.org.au

Now may the God who gives perseverance and encouragement grant you to be of the same mind with one another according to Christ Jesus, so that with one accord you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, accept one another, just as Christ also accepted us to the glory of God. —Romans 15:5-7

I struggle with acceptance. I rarely ever feel accepted anywhere. For as long as I can remember, I live this rat race of trying to gain approval and acceptance from others and it’s never enough. I never feel loved enough, cared for enough, wanted enough, appreciated enough—nothing is ever really enough. Proverbs 27:20 says “the eyes of man are never satisfied.” One could also say the heart of man is never satisfied either.

But according to Romans 15:7, Jesus Christ accepts those who come to him. In Jesus, people are accepted and loved. To quote Elyse Fitzgerald from her book, Because He Loves Me, “we are… more sinful and flawed than we ever dared believe, but more loved and welcomed than we ever dared hope.”

To fully enjoy the love of God, I need to recognize that He has accepted me through His son Jesus Christ and the finished work of Jesus on the cross. I need to bathe in that fact so that my desperate need for approval from man wanes and my knowledge of acceptance from God waxes strong.

Midnight ramblings

~ K ~ 3 Comments

When it comes to looking at other female Christians, I’ve always felt like an outsider. Through the lens of my “doo doo” eyes, these females tend to be white, wholesome, and happy. Now that I run with the 30 and older crowd, they also have babies or toddlers. I tell myself I’d die if I were a mommy blogger. I don’t mind being a blogger who happens to be a mom but adding “mommy blogger” to my job description would just about kill me.

Or maybe not. Because I have no problem being a sellout because I am that desperate for acceptance. On a forum I frequent, someone posted a link to a job description as a reporter for a popular politically conservative website. I’m not particularly conservative politically but I’m not liberal enough for the Huffington Post either. But I’d spout conservative principles if I had to just for the opportunity to write for a living. Unfortunately, on the liberal side, I’d only go so far since the abortion issue is a big problem for me. If I could blog as a pro-life liberal, I’d be okay on that end.

My counselor in Kentucky used to say to me and my husband, “People desire two things in life: to be right and to be accepted.” I so would prefer to be accepted than to be right. If all the conservatives hated my political views but thought I was an otherwise cool chick, I’d be ecstatic. I don’t care if my friends think I’m a total idiot as long as they love me anyway.

The only time I’ve ever felt accepted by a group in my entire life was when I joined a sorority at the first (secular) college I attended. In a sense, I feel like I earned the ability to be accepted. I left the college shortly after so my feeling of acceptance by my sorority sisters was short-lived.

The feeling of acceptance decreased ever since. I attended a fundie Christian college for a few years where I stood out like a sore thumb in various ways: my shirts were too tight or too see-through (even though I didn’t think they were all that bad); I didn’t have a plethora of skirts or dresses I could rotate through; I didn’t look or think as wholesome as those other homeschooled Christian girls; I wasn’t as naive (or maybe I was). I moved joyfully to the melody of hymns during church services while the few friends I had desperately crowded around me to make sure I didn’t get in trouble for moving in time to the rhythm of the music. (I called myself “Bapticostal” during that time.) What was wrong with dancing to music? Didn’t David dance joyfully while worshiping the Lord? Gosh, I was such a freak.

I still think of myself as a freak. Continue reading “Midnight ramblings” →