When you feel rejected, start accepting yourself,

and then go out and accept someone.

-- Sondra Ray

There was once a mother who felt rejected when her children grew up and needed to separate from her.

She felt hurt when they pushed her away and no longer wanted all the love and caring that she wanted to give them.

She thought, What's wrong with me?

Encouraged by her friends, she began to ask herself another question: What's right with me? The more answers she found to that question, the better she liked herself.

The better she liked herself, the more she was able to see her children's need to separate from her as their own natural and healthy urge for independence, and not the result of her shortcomings.

Our good points may seem undesirable to others, but that's not our fault.

Sometimes, too much of a good thing can be inappropriate, but that doesn't make it bad.

It isn't for the moment you are stuck

that you need courage, but for the long uphill climb

back to sanity and faith and security.

-- Anne Morrow Lindbergh

It's not just major challenges that require courage. Even the minor skirmishes with life demand some deep breaths, perhaps hushed prayers, and lots of hope.

We'd glide more easily through every day if we'd accept that struggle is part of the process of life; that it offers more opportunities for us to realize our individual potential than any other dimension of life.

Struggles strengthen us, enrich our character, temper our emotions.

They enhance our being in untold ways, and yet we plead to be spared them.

How ironic that we each long for greater success, at least some recognition for our accomplishments, but recoil from the very experiences that guarantee these personal satisfactions.

Today's struggles are gifts in disguise.

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11/04/2024