The gift of acceptance

This past Sunday, my congregations once again did "Star Gifts" - an exercise in noticing what gifts God has already given us. Each person was given a paper star with one of God's gifts on it, and charged with the task of noticing how, through that gift, God is made manifest in their lives.

Last year, I was given the gift of time. It was a great gift for me to notice, and noticing it in fact helped me to make positive changes in my life, changes which still benefit me. It was a nice, concrete gift to focus on, very accessible. I enjoyed it.

This year, I got the gift of acceptance. And the first emotion I felt about it was fear. "Huh," I said, then quickly hid it so no one else could see.

Why did I feel fear? Because my first thought about acceptance is that it is required when you are faced with something you don't want to happen, and you have to accept it. As in, it is the final stage of grief (not that I have ever experienced grief as linear, but you understand what I mean). And you know, there are a lot of things I want right now, like really, really want, more deeply than I have ever wanted before, and I do not want to accept that I will for some reason not get them. The possibility of having to experience acceptance in anything more than a trivial way this year frankly terrifies me.

But today, I started thinking about acceptance a little more broadly. First, I thought of acceptance in terms of call. I accepted a call to ministry about nine years ago. Three and a half years ago I accepted a call to serve Bethlehem and St. Martin Lutheran Churches. These were big decisions, but they weren't all that hard for me, and they were far more life-giving than scary. I felt a healthy amount of anxiety, yes, but not fear. In these cases, acceptance was a good thing.

Then I started thinking about it in terms of generosity. The year I spent as a volunteer in Slovakia (a Young Adult in Global Mission), I thought I was there to serve, but instead I found that I relied heavily on the generosity of others. As it turned out, some of the best "giving" I did was instead graciously receiving - receiving meals, receiving care, receiving a free room to live in. Being willing to receive, or to accept, a gift from someone else is sometimes the most generous thing you can do. Being willing to accept requires a level of vulnerability, an ability to admit I can't do this alone, and I depend on the love and care of others. Acceptance.

Then I started thinking about it in terms of being accepted. There was a time in my early teens when I suddenly no longer felt accepted by my peers, and it was some of my most difficult years. Though I floated between social groups and people didn't mind my being around (and maybe even liked it - I may have a negatively skewed perception of this time), I didn't feel particularly accepted into any one friend group. I didn't feel I truly belonged anywhere.

Except in my church youth group. What a gift it was to be a part of that group, to be with them and be able to be fully myself, and to be loved and accepted for that. They loved me and held me through my cancer treatments. When we went to the western states youth gathering in the midst of my chemo treatments, and I had to wear hats and bandanas to hide my bald head, they all brought hats and bandanas to hide their own hair under, so I wouldn't be alone. In that group, I truly felt the gift of acceptance.

I guess it isn't such a terrifying gift after all.