RELATIONSHIPS January 1, 1999 ISSUE

Can I be accepted for who I am?

Quinci Coates

Each of us wants to be accepted for who we are, without condition. Then we feel valued, important. We feel we're contributing to society. Often though, people base acceptance on body shape, gender, religion, neighborhood.

But do you have to change who you are in order to be accepted? Sometimes, in the name of “love,” families try to mold us into their ideal of who we should be. And we feel pressured to conform. That's what happened to me.

I felt lonely in school. I didn't fit into any of the social groups. My parents thought something was wrong because I wasn't as socially active as they had been in school. They rejected my personal appearance and demanded that I change. That made me pretty upset and even more lonely, I longed for acceptance, but conforming to something that wasn't “me” seemed superficial. I desperately wanted another option.

At first I was angry and withdrew. My friends comforted me, but their sympathy didn't give me an answer. As time passed, my objections to the labels that had been attached to me grew. Since nothing else comforted me, I turned to God and prayed,

I asked myself, “Is there someone who will accept me as I am, with no strings attached or criticisms?” The answer I finally came to was “Yes.” That someone is God, my real Father-Mother. I'm His/Her beloved child.

I remembered what the early Christian writer Paul said in the Bible: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28 ). So, I concluded, I could define myself as God does: as pure, free, happy, fulfilled, loved.

At the time, I was working as a pizza delivery driver. A large part of our delivery zone was considered a bad neighborhood because the crime rate was high. It was frustrating work. As drivers, we rarely got tipped and were often harassed. Each of us had been robbed at least once.

I thought the area was bad because it was low-income. But no sooner had I satisfied myself with that, than I would get a generous tip from a family of very modest means. I then thought that the robberies occurred because the area was mostly black and Hispanic — only to have these same people provide me with a multi-bike or auto escort in and out of the neighborhood. Once, a group stood in a protective circle around me while I changed a flat tire after a late-night delivery.

I then thought, “Well, this neighborhood is unsafe because the people are uneducated, or unemployed....” But every time I placed a label on this neighborhood, I was proved wrong! I was beginning to see that labels were barriers, blocking out the real definition of these people as God's children, as “heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ” (Romans 8:17 ), as Paul also wrote.

Gradually, this discovery moved into other areas of my life. I made a not-so-pleasant discovery: I had put a “better” label on myself, which was as wrong as what I saw others doing to me.

I lived in a very diverse neighborhood. Armed with the spirit of Paul's words, and free from the burden of labeling others, I became family with my neighbors. Now I could extend Paul's list to encompass my own neighborhood family. It would probably read like this: “There is neither Latino nor Anglo, gay nor straight, Catholic nor Baptist, rich nor poor, smart nor ignorant, old nor young, married nor single: for we are all one in Christ Jesus”!

Have people stopped labeling me? No. Have they stopped trying to change me? No. But I don't feel helpless about these labels anymore. I feel accepted and loved by God for who I am. You can, too.:)

Quinci Coates
Worcester, MA, USA

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RELATIONSHIPS
No more loneliness
January 1, 1999
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