A couple of weeks ago, our church passed around a basket of saint’s names. We were all supposed to pray for guidance, and then dip our hand into the basket and select a saint that we would learn about and pray to throughout the year. I had missed the first time they did this, so I was excited when they passed around the basket again during an all school mass.
I picked out Saint Marthe Robin. I had no idea who she was, or if she was even a she or a he. But at the bottom of the slip was a prayer to St Robin and it said, “Jesus, I give you thanks because you take us as we are and you offer us to the Father as You are.”
“Yes!” I thought. “This!” This is what I have always believed. It is imprinted on the deepest parts of my soul. We absolutely must meet people where they are.
In my teaching days, I had plenty of opportunity to practice this. The homeless man who was either seriously mentally disturbed or on serious drugs who could not speak a single complete sentence to me. The young 19 year old who would come back from break with red eyes and smelling of way too much Febreeze. The kids who would miss weeks at a time, the girls who enjoyed sharing way too much of their weekend escapades for everybody to hear. Everywhere I turned during those years, there were people who needed to be met where they were.
I could have sat in judgment. I could have sent them away and told them I wouldn’t help them until they cleaned themselves up. Or I could take them as they are and work with them the best that I could. I could accept them, and I could pray that in that acceptance and in that assistance, they might find a better way for themselves.
“Yes,” I thought. This is exactly how I believe we are to embrace others.
But “No,” I heard beckoning in my heart. “That is not what I meant.”
And I started to think, and I started to realize that I struggle deeply to meet every single person on this planet where they are. Except one… myself.
Last year I chose a word of the year. It was progress. This year, I decided in December that my personal word would be acceptance. And I laugh even as I just type that out. Because acceptance isn’t easy for many people. There is a reason that it is at the center of the AA philosophy. It’s because acceptance is so difficult for people who struggle with anxiety or depression or anger or addiction or eating disorders. It’s not easy for people broken in these ways. And there’s a reason for that. Without acceptance, we must either fall into a spiral of emotional disorders or we must find a maladaptive way to cope. We can eat too much. We can eat too little. We can vomit. We can stick a needle in our arm. Really, the maladaptive responses are quite numerous and broken people are often quite creative in coming up with ever newer ones.
But when I felt this conviction, this feeling that God was calling me to seek greater self acceptance, I started to think. And a flood of ideas swept over me.
I’ll be an okay parent when…
I’ll take care of myself when…
I’ll be a capable adult when…
I’ll be better when…
I’ll be worthy when…
I’ll be enough when…
And each of those whens can be followed by pages upon pages of stipulations I put upon myself. I always have hope that I will feel worthy. It is when…
But the problem is that we will never reach the end of that when because there will always be more. We will always come up short. We will always be found lacking. Always.
And so the only choice we come to is acceptance.
When I was a teenager, there were two words that felt altogether horrid to me — contentment and acceptance. Both meant to settle. They meant I would live a life that is less than. They fell short, and embracing them would cause me to fall short.
Twenty years on, however, the effects of those beliefs are starting to wear on my bones. I’ve spent a lifetime trying to live up to an ideal so that I can feel comfortable in my own skin, and I’m starting to realize that my technique is failing.
And so I’ve slowly started to ponder the thought of acceptance. What if I accepted myself the way that I am? What if I decided that I was worthy of self-care even though I am so far from perfect? What if I decided that my weaknesses didn’t deserve constant punishment? What if I believed I could expect respect even though my flaws are so incredibly apparent? What if I could accept heartache and frustration and anger and sadness without needing to run from them and numb them?
What if?
I’ll be honest and tell you that I don’t know the answer. I don’t know the answer because I’ve never fully succeeded in trying it out.
But I always come back to this one idea…
We are all equal. I am fully committed to the belief that every single person on this planet was created in love to be love and to experience love. I believe no one person is better than any other person. I believe our worth is dictated by more than what we wear or what we own or even how we act or how or if we love. It’s dictated by our very being, written on our souls before our physical selves even existed.
And if I believe that, then how can I set myself apart? Can I say God created us all with dignity and purpose and worth… everyone that is but me?
It doesn’t make much sense.
So acceptance. That’s my word for this year. It’s going to be hard. In truth, I think it will be harder than the word I chose last year which was progress (rather than perfection,) and I think it will be a lot harder than the word I chose for our family, respect.
But life isn’t meant to be easy, and we can’t birth out a new existence without pain and trial and effort.
Join me, won’t you? Maybe we can lead a world wide pursuit of acceptance by living it in our own lives and letting our light shine for all the others to see.
At the very least, it’s a nice thought.