2/1/10

Monday Manna - Respect

03-PS21-7~Respect-Posters
I, like many people, have always believed in the quote "Respect is not just given...it is earned"  That is until I grew up. 
I am pretty much a people pleaser.  It bothers me when people don't like me or are unhappy with me for any reason.  I avoid conflict at all cost for this same reason. I've gotten a lot better at it over the years but there is always a part of me that wants to make everyone happy.
Knowing this fact about my personality, I found my relationship with my mother to be very confusing.  I think I originally started out trying to make my mom happy, but for reasons too long to list in this post, combined with my estrogen driven teenage years, I somehow lost a lot of respect for my mom which in turn made me a disrespectful, ungrateful little brat.  I'm sure I've caused my mom many tears and lots of anguish with the blatant disrespect that I've shown her throughout the years and that realization breaks my heart every time I think about it. 
I have not just come to this realization.  It happened in my late teens/early twenties when I left home for college.  Me leaving home was honestly the best thing for our relationship.  My mom started opening up to me.  Not too much at first, but over the years, she exposed a lot of herself to me and all of a sudden things started making sense.  I now understood why it felt like she loved my brother more than she loved me.  I understood the drinking, the low self esteem, the anger, and the hurt.  It all made sense now.  I began to be angry at myself for adding to her struggles instead of making them better. I wanted more than anything to go back and right my wrongs but I couldn't.  All I could do was start from scratch to rebuild a relationship that was damaged for no good reason. A simple "I'm sorry" would never be enough. 
respect
You see, sometimes people may not earn your respect in your eyes, but they should be respected no matter what.  Certain titles demand respect.  Take for instance, Barack Obama. You may not like the guy, and you may have hundreds of reasons why he shouldn't be our President but bottom line....he is our President and that title deserves respect especially since we call ourselves The United States of America.   You may not like it....but you gotta respect it!
Sometimes our lack of respect for others is because of our pride in ourselves.  We think we have a better personality, people skills, potential, etc. which causes us to judge others by this standard.  We conveniently forget that we all have imperfections and focusing on character flaws in others makes us feel better.
Of course God is not pleased with this behavior.  God loves ALL of his children and is not happy when we disrespect those that He loves.  We should show love and respect to everyone because we are all made in the image of God so we all should be respected as God’s creation.
Respect

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