Big-time Acceptance
Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash
Some time ago I jolted awake at 2 am from a gripping dream.
I don’t recall all the specifics, but an image lingered from what I’d been working out in dreamland. And because of the dream, while only half-awake, I had an image flash through my mind: a scene from my childhood, a time when my dad came across me and my older brother fighting in our kitchen, doing Saturday lunch cleanup, while Dad and Mom were trying to nap.
Dad was furious at my brother, sure that Kevin was at fault for our arguing. He picked up from near the back door a yard-long stick cut from a tree, what people used to call switches, and began hitting my brother on his ankles and calves with strong harsh strokes. While my dad’s fury was directed at my brother, I inwardly cringed at the lashes, and have never forgotten that picture. My dad could be snappy sometimes, but rarely punished out of pure fury. My brother went out to the back yard and just slunk around that afternoon, mad at all of us. Part of me felt some guilt—was my being a brat part of a sibling fight for which Kevin bore all the penalty?
As I shook off sleep, that image arose as I recalled in a flash something that had happened during the day just behind me: I had gotten a rejection notice for an article I had submitted for publication, a literary and arts magazine. And now across the screen of my mind the editor hitting me with the kitchen switch.
A part of me chuckles at the intensity. Talk about taking an editorial pink slip personally! Perhaps you’re thinking, “Do you really think that occasional rejection isn’t part of the life of any writer? Any person?” I’d had a couple of pieces rejected by them before. I thought I had come closer to the kind of writing they looked for. But for some reason this rejection hit me harder and it affected me the rest of that day.
And as I lay in bed the next morning, it occurred to me why I had been down and blue the day before: I was feeling rejection—not just of what I wrote, but of me.
As I chatted with a writer friend the next day, confessing how my ambitions intermingle with a desire to serve God, I realized that part of what drives me is indeed a desire for notice, for fame, for approval. My friend, though, nailed an insight: “It’s not fame you’re really after, but acceptance.” I wish it didn’t have to be so. But I think philosopher Alain De Botton had it right: “To be shown love is to feel ourselves the object of concern: our presence is noted, our name is registered, our views are listened to, our failings are treated with indulgence and our needs are ministered to.” That’s what we want, but I was wrongly thinking I could get it from an acceptance letter.
The good thing about the bizarreness of my weird half-dreamed image is that it has freed me a bit: It has helped me see how I do try to find worth through what I write and how I’m received. I try to derive well-being through my ministry. Through everyday interactions in which I’m alert (maybe too alert) to how others react or respond.
Yes, the dream tells me, I do want to be published and read by others. I’d rather be liked than despised. Who wouldn’t? But what I long for goes deeper. Ultimate affirmation must come from a higher reality and more sturdy, reliable Presence. I won’t get that from whatever I may find in my email inbox.