My quest for acceptance changed direction

I believe that God wants, no intends, each of us to have a life of contentment and joy. I just don’t know very many people who seem to have found that as a normal state of life. I know that I didn’t. And still don’t, at least not to the extent that I would like. I have tasted this contentment and joy at times, and like any good addict, I want more and more and more.

For almost as long as I can remember I have lived as a hunter, seeking to fill an inner yearning I didn’t quite understand. Trying to fill the God-shaped hole in my life that I didn’t even know I had. That emptiness in my life forced me, when I couldn’t bring myself to see God as the answer, to look everywhere, anywhere, for people who would love me. My desire for the acceptance of others transformed me into a performing monkey, making myself miserable and destroying my life doing whatever I could to find that fleeting moment of satisfaction, contentment, hope for love in the praise and attention I found in others.

But no matter who or how many times I found “love” and acceptance from others, no matter how much attention I received, it never satisfied for long. I don’t believe it is possible to find lasting fulfilling peace while continually trying to prove myself to others, to be who or what someone else wants or needs. This desire to be loved and accepted that drives me all too often is a symptom of the root of my emotional pain, my need for self-worth.

My significance, my validation, my self-worth can not be found in the acceptance or attention of others. It must come from knowing that I am special to my God. My Higher Power wants me to have a life joyous, happy, and free. But that happy, joyous and free life is lived in a real world filled with pain, rejection and failure. So God never said that happy, joyous and free meant problem free. I can not find that wondrous trio if my expectations take me to an unrealistic place of thinking my life should be, will be, or even can be problem free.

No, life is a voyage through problems and stress that interfere with my personal search for value and worth, but a life worth living is experiencing the love, forgiveness, and power of God in my life in the midst of these problems and stressors. It’s not life without storms, but the freedom to dance in the rain.

My life today, that life worth living doesn’t consist of being able to avoid problems, but on my ability to apply specific solutions to those problems. Not solutions of my own design or birthed from my own ideas, those solutions have failed time and time again over the years. No the solution that works in my life today is the one that comes from my relationship with my Higher Power.

Today, thanks to the tools God has given me and the relationship I have found there, my idea of self-worth goes far beyond the idea of simply feeling good about myself. While I am not entirely there yet, but more and more each day, more than I ever have before, I am finding my self-worth based on a more truthful picture, an image that has both strength and humility, my strong points, which do exist, as well as my character defects which are also still there. I don’t need to inflate my ego by enlarging the perception of the strengths, nor do I have to beat myself up over the shortcomings. I am who I am today. Tomorrow I hope to be a better man. But regardless of if I succeed or fail to improve over the next twenty-four hours, I know that my God loves me, just as I am right now, and that is the attention and acceptance I need today. I can love myself because of that love I know my Higher Power has for me. I don’t need the attention, acceptance, or approval of other people to determine my self-worth today, and for that I am grateful.