Acceptance

This week, a student nurse came to me with a problem.  The patient he had been assigned to had opened up to him and shared that she was depressed about being at the end of her life and that she wished she would just die.  The student was beside himself.  How was he supposed to respond to something like that?  I asked him, "What did you do?"  He said, "I just sat there.  I didn't know what to say."

I explained to him that, in spite of our natural tendency, as nurses, to want to heal people and to "fix" things, the best way to respond to a situation like this is to simply listen.  We cannot solve problems like aging and death.  People have a right to be depressed, or angry, or whatever else they may be feeling.  Our job is to encourage the patient to trust us with their thoughts and feelings, and to accept them as they are.  We help by validating their feelings, and therefore, validating them as a person.

This made me think about how we treat others as Christians.  We want to bring people to Christ.  We want to let everyone know that Jesus loves them.  But so often, especially corporately, as "the church" we fail to accept people as they are, to validate them.  When we should be telling them, "Jesus loves you.  He created you, and you are special, just the way He made you," we send the message that "Jesus will love you once you become one of us."  We expect them to change who they are, when it is really Jesus that changes people.  It is not our job.  We are to listen, to share, to encourage people to trust us with their thoughts and their feelings and to validate each and every person as a true son of God, equal in standing to every other son of God.

Imagine what an impact we would make, as Christians, if we were all loving, accepting, comforting, and encouraging toward everyone.  If God is love, then we should, as the body of Christ, be love, too.  Leave the "fixing" to Him, and just accept our neighbors and friends, and our enemies, too, as children of the King of the universe.