Acceptance

Easter Sunday our pastor handed out a little booklet about four different people who were all looking for acceptance. I read it the other day and felt compelled to write a bit about it. I feel like all of us are looking for acceptance through out life. From our parents, our bosses, our friends. We want to feel accepted. Social media has made it even worse with people that "like" your status or now can even "love" your picture. I'm sure we can all relate. The more "likes" you get...the better you feel. Why is that? It's all ingrained in us to want acceptance and some of us will spend our whole lives searching for it. In the booklet there are 4 different types of people. Glen- the man living to die. Looking for acceptance through parties, drugs, alcohol and feeling good for the moment. Then there's Ted. The guy next door that does anything for his neighbor. He wants to be Better than everyone else and feel he is doing his part to be good enough. Next is Sarah. The women who volunteers for everything at church and is the head of PTA. Bakes all the cookies, and is the leader for many church events. She is searching to be accepted by doing everything she can. The last one is Mike. He feels accepted already and is living his life based on what God calls him to do. He will tell you about his God and how he is a Christian if you go to lunch with him, but does it in a humble way. He knows it's not about him.

Ok, so who are you in this group of people? I kept thinking to myself that I have been every single one of them. A few years ago I was staying at home with no child. I felt so inadequate and had to volunteer for everything. I loved it so much. But now that I think about it I may have been doing it to be accepted by God. I wanted him to be pleased and felt like I had to earn it.

At this time of my life I finally feel like Mike. I'm not trying to say that I'm the best Christian ever. I just feel so safe and secure in my faith that I am not looking for anyone to accept me. Right now in my life I have been struggling so much since I'm not able to volunteer as much as I would like. I felt inadequate for awhile. God has really shown me so many things in my time of being at home and being a mom. I have a friend that is singing in the choir at church and she wants me to get involved. If she would have asked me a year ago, I would have jumped up and said, "YES>>>Right now!! I'm in" but since I've been moving so much and not able to jump in the last two years it's taught me that I don't have to volunteer to feel good about my faith. This is not to say volunteering is bad. Because it's just the opposite. It's the best feeling in the world. However, I don't know if I was doing it for me or to feel accepted by God. Sometimes I felt that what I was doing here at home wasn't good enough. I have a whole new perspective on this now. I'm taking my time and want to get involved soon. I realize that God wanted me to give all my time to this little man right now and that was good enough for him and should be good enough for me.

So Glen will never find happiness in those parties. Ted will always find someone better than him and he will keep striving to beat someone else. And Sarah will push herself until she breaks. Acceptance is real. Everyone needs it. Who are you looking to get accepted by? God accepts you for you. You don't need to DO anything to be loved. Such a great feeling. :)




Yesterday M and I went to the little park by my house and we sat in the car for a bit and snapped some photos. He is so much fun and loves to give me big smiles now! Hopefully I can get some good 2 year old photos of him soon!

I knew he loved corn so last night I made us some corn on the cob. He had so much fun trying to eat it and was cracking me up. Hopefully he won't have corn stuck in his teeth for weeks to come.

I made some fun little cookies before his nap. 2 ripe bananas, 1 cups of oats and a handful of chocolate chips. They are actually pretty good and Micah thinks they are cookies. I hope he will eat the rest of them or I might!!

Happy Thursday.