I’d come a long way with all the lessons on love. My view of a lot of things was changing, and because of it I’d become more loving and compassionate. In Acceptanceville it was all turned up a notch when a side lesson, while studying the gospel of Luke, showed me some of what I hadn’t been seeing. It ended up changing my whole outlook on life and how I viewed myself and others.
It started with something I read in our weekly lesson that challenged me. Jesus said in Luke 6:37 “Do not judge, and you will not be judged”. I didn’t take it as that God would judge me, I already knew I had been forgiven through faith in what Jesus did on the cross. But I was looking for a better life here on earth, so I took it to mean “Do not judge, and you will not be judged by others”. It got me to wondering if I had something to do with the criticism that had come my way. Had I somehow brought it on by judging others? I didn’t know how it all worked exactly, but I was at the point where I was willing to find out. So, trusting Jesus, I decided to start looking at my own thoughts.
At first, whenever I would notice a judgmental thought I would stop and call it what it was. “That’s a judgmental thought” I would think to myself. Just interrupting the thought in that way would most times cause it to go away. The more I began to recognize my judgmental thoughts, especially those about other people, the more I felt bad for thinking them and wanted to change. So, I decided that whenever I noticed a judgmental thought, I would change it to something more positive. If I saw something that I didn’t like about someone I would immediately try and find something that I did like about them. At a certain point it occurred to me that it took some sort of judgement to determine a good thought from a bad one. So, for a while, I tried to chase away all judgmental thinking. Then I remembered that in the beginning God judged everything as “good”. That’s when I decided that “good” thoughts could stay. Slowly, my thoughts began to change from negative to positive, from critical to complimentary. That’s when I felt myself searching for the good in people, and in situations, instead of always first looking for what’s wrong. I started seeing more of what was right and good in everything.
From there I began to see how I had been judging everything according to what I thought it should be. Then one day while going over some artwork with a client, I noticed something he said quite often. Whenever there was something that couldn’t be changed, something that needed to be there in a specific place and size, my client would say “it is what it is”. Thinking about it later, I thought what a great way of accepting things as they are. I liked it and decided to adopt it for myself.
Later on, I thought why couldn’t I apply that same phrase to people too. People are what they are. Who am I to try to change them? I started to think that by me judging someone, I was trying to make them into what I wanted them to be. And when I couldn’t get them to fit into what I thought they should be, I’d get frustrated and conflicts would most always follow. I started to see how much people don’t like feeling judged, it makes them mad. It makes me mad. And it makes me feel bad about myself, like there’s something wrong with me. That’s when I realized that we all want to be accepted for who we are, and it hurts when we aren’t.
Laying down my judgmental thoughts not only allowed me to begin accepting people and things the way they are, but something else changed too. My own guilt and inadequacies began to fade and I began to accept myself. Instead of being focused on the inadequacies of others, my eyes began to open to their uniqueness and what I could learn from them and enjoy. I was also much more able to see their needs and how I could possibly be of help to them. I started to view everyone as a forgiven child of God whether they realized they were or not. I started to see that everyone has potential whether they display it or not. And once I started to see it in others, I couldn’t help but see it in myself.
After accepting myself for who I am, I noticed a change that I hadn’t expected. I didn’t feel the need to compete or compare myself with others as much. There didn’t seem to be any reason to defend myself either, if only in my own eyes. Everyone and everything became friendlier. I discovered how much fun it is to help and encourage others and to work together to bring about good. A lot of what I had been frustrated with, to the point of anger, seemed to change on its own, and most of the time I was the one who ended up changed.
No longer seeing things as an enemy, or something that needed to be changed allowed me to see the way things really are instead of how I thought they should be. More importantly I saw that by looking at things as how I thought they should be, I was limiting everything I saw. Judging things through only my own knowledge and understanding had kept my life to only what I knew. Not judging, opened me up to the greater possibilities that I didn’t know and couldn’t see. My life began to open, to enlarge, and to brighten.
There were so many lessons in Acceptanceville, each one changing how I viewed life in ways I could never have anticipated. The truth is, I never would have found my way there if I hadn’t first just did what Jesus said to do. It’s not something I could have understood unless I had experienced it for myself. It’s almost like the very thing I was to overcome there was the thing that kept me from finding my way there in the first place. It was there all along, I just couldn’t see it. Some of the stuff Jesus says is not easy to understand. That’s why the most valuable lesson from my journey through Acceptanceville was letting go of my need to understand everything up front. I learned that if I just do what Jesus says to do, I’ll begin to understand in a whole new way. It’s all so amazing. Seeing all that I got out of that one act of obedience has made me want to trust Jesus to an even greater extent so I’ll be able to see even greater possibilities. I’m excited to see what they will be.
To be continued . . . see Opportunityville
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