FULL ACCEPTANCE

Fred Rogers (‘Mr. Rogers’) (1928-2003) wrote, “Love isn’t a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now.”

Love is an active noun. Nearly everyone has tried to re-make a mate, a child, a friend, a colleague, or some close relationship to be exactly as we are so they might be right and acceptable. One isn’t married very long before one learns that real acceptance is to receive and love someone exactly as they are… and we should have figured that out before we got married. Much conflict and heartache can be avoided if we more easily learn to accept others as they are and that means accepting differences of every imaginable kind.

It always seems like such a shock to learn that there are other ways of seeing and doing things than the way we see and do things.

“Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven.” Jesus