Accepting Acceptance

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. -- Plato

We live our lives checking off who we are to others. Are you a new patient--check. Have you enjoyed your experience--check. Caucasian--check. 

I can always appreciate when someone tells me they enjoy my company. Not necessarily through words, but through simple acknowledgments that I am accepted. No matter what place in life we are, we all are looking for solid relationships. It is so crucial to our everyday life because everyday life seems to knock us down quite a bit. I have recently been putting more of my focus on acceptance. I used to have this box of understanding. I also have another box of, "I'll figure that our later." But recently those two boxes overlapped!

Before I speak in specifics I will clear up and confirm my experiences and views of God. I've experienced the comfort in being a child of the unconditional Father and maker of our heavens and our earth. I've experienced God in a personal and loving way. He has offered me a choice to have eternal life through belief in his son Jesus Christ, who lived, died, and resurrected providing a way for his children to be with him for eternity. Because of the acceptance I have had from God, I feel compelled to give others that same love. God does not expect me or anyone to be perfect. In fact he knows we won't achieve perfection. 

God has designed us with all different skin tones, voices, body types and genders. Yet we still have two things in common--our desire for love and our inability to achieve perfection. Which takes me back to the topic of my boxes. I understood that as a follower of God, it is frowned upon to be a person who is gay or lesbian. I also understood that all people are created equal and in the image of God. I understood that everyone has equal rights to worship God in our country. I too understood that no sin is bigger than the other in God’s eyes. In my box of "I'll figure that out later" was the idea of a person who had my same "box of understanding", agreed with everything within that box, but also happened to be gay. Then recently these two boxes overlapped and I was silent with my thoughts--realizing what this meant to me. 

I now had a choice to eliminate one item out of my "I'll figure that out later box" and could move it to my "box of understanding". But how? I know that no one deserves to suffer and feel rejected by people when they have already been forgiven and accepted by their Savior. If sinful actions are actions themselves, but being gay for most men and women is not something they choose, then is it in a box of sinful actions? Or knowing you are pretending to be a heterosexual person when you know you are not more of a sinful act? Can you be a believer in Christ as well as accepting yourself as a person who is gay?

I was given this link and if you are interested to learn more like I did, please take a look at this website from two sides of believers in God and their openminded and accepting views of the gay and lesbian community. www.gaychristian.net

I will close with two statements from this message that really stood out to me:

"Parties on both sides must be ready to say we can be wrong."

                                    and

"Each has to say there is something to be learned here."


Here are some facts that Americans have today about their views of gay rights. Gallup released its annual findings on sexuality that tell how we have changed. As of a couple weeks ago, more than 50 percent of Americans now accept gay relationships. What's more, 78 percent of Americans now believe gay Americans should be allowed to serve in the military, while 48 percent believe gay Americans should have the right to marry. Read more at: www.oprah.com