Acceptance

As a young, childless teacher in my early twenties, I believed that all of the problems that I saw in my students' behavior could be easily cured with proper parenting. At the age of 28, my soul invited into my life a beautiful baby girl. The adoption agency warned my first husband and I that she had a few possibilities for scary health issues in her genetics but because I firmly believed that the correct environment was all that was needed to create perfect children, I paid little heed to their warnings.

It was not long before it became apparent that this little one was not well...by four months old she was diagnosed as "Failure to Thrive". This turn of events did not fuel my theory that "proper parenting could save the children of the world," so I redoubled my efforts to coerce this tiny human to eat, grow and flourish. By seven months old she had almost completely stopped eating... by thirteen months she was in the hospital for a calorie count to determine if she needed to be put into an eating disorders hospital. I was devastated. I began to wonder: could it be that the more I tried to control her to get the desired outcome - the more she fought against me?

With the help of an excellent pediatrician and some wise counselors, I learned to accept this precious little one for what she was - a sovereign child of God who had the power of choice. I began to honor what she was trying to tell me by her refusal to eat... I began to work with her to help to find her healthy weight. By the time that she was three years old, she was still tiny but she was very healthy and happy. Needless to say, this small addition to our family transformed my beliefs about life and taught me about acceptance.

As children of God, our lives are closely monitored. Only those people and those things which will help us find our true Heartsongs are allowed into our lives. This is hard to embrace, especially when we have difficult people in our lives and our favorite belief systems are being challenged, left and right. However, it seems to me that life is much like being the mother of a strong-willed, failure-to-thrive baby. The more we fight against difficulty - the greater the difficulty will become. When we honor the difficult situations and difficult people as lessons, and learn what they are trying to teach us - we become wiser. Life becomes easier.

It may be too much to ask you to embrace the people and situations in your life that are making you crazy right now... but perhaps you can begin to relax and ask: "what are these people and situations trying to teach me?" This question will move you to your true essence and to your Sacred Heartsong.