My Need for Acceptance

Reading Henri Nouwen’s book and thinking about many things lately have brought to my attention a hidden weakness in me. It is my constant need and desire to be accepted. I have come to realize that there have been times in the past where this need for acceptance has been the source of motivation for what I do. The questions that I asked myself yesterday have helped to illuminate this weakness. Have I been caring for others as well as serving people so that they would think better of me? Am I doing things because I want people to accept me and appreciate me more? Like Henri Nouwen, I have tried again and again to look for a relationship to fall back on when things were not going smoothly. When one relationship is not going too well, I would go to another relationship for approval and affirmation. When something happens in one relationship, I find comfort in the fact that I have other relationships. When I am not accepted somewhere, I remind myself that there are other people elsewhere who accept me.

Is this hidden need the reason why I am so concerned about whether the new CF committee members are interested to have me as an advisor? When the opportunity for me to serve as the advisor came, I asked Leona to get the opinions of the upcoming committee members before I make up my mind. Is it because I am afraid that they will not accept me? Is Christ not enough for me?

As my reading of ‘The Road to Daybreak’ comes to an end, I would like to insert a portion of Henri Nouwen’s reflections in his epilogue here. I believe that there is a message for me in this treasure of a book as I look to embark on this new adventure with God. Just as Henri Nouwen found it difficult to adapt to his new home as well as to find acceptance in his new vocation where he lived among the handicapped, I will need to learn to acknowledge the fact that the love of Christ is sufficient for me as I move on in life.

It was the affective wounds of the handicapped people in my own home that opened the door to my own wounded affectivity. Very soon, I was asking myself, “Do I really care for these people? Am I really willing to make them the center of my life? What do I mean when I say to them, ‘I love you’? How faithful am I really? Am I capable of lasting relationships? Or, is my attention for these broken people little more than my way of feeling better of myself?” Very few stones remain unturned. Care, compassion, love for neighbor, promise, commitment, and faithfulness… I turned and turned these concepts in my mind and heart, and sometimes it felt as though the spiritual house I had built up over the years was now proving to be made of cardboard and ready to go up in flames. Often I doubted if there was any solid ground under my feet.

But, hesitantly and even reluctantly, I am coming to see the mystery that the community of Daybreak was given to me precisely to offer me a ‘safe’ context in which to enter into the second loneliness with Jesus. There is nothing charming or romantic about it. It is dark agony. It is following Jesus to a completely unknown place. It is being emptied out on the cross and having to wait for new life in naked faith. But the same cross that calls for dying from what seems so good and beautiful is also the place where a new spiritual community is being born. The death of Jesus was the dying of the grain destined to bear much fruit. My life will never be fruitful if I am not willing to go that same painful but hopeful route.

I express this with fear and trembling because I am just starting to see the light of a new day and I still do not know if I will have the courage to walk the long road ahead of me. But by writing this down I am able to look directly at my own words and that in itself is a step forward. ~ Henri J. M. Nouwen