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Self-Acceptance

Autumn Jones

My name is Zane. One day I got sick, like really sick, with a fever and a sore throat. It caused me to have a respiratory infection, which affected my breathing. 

This then caused me to get otitis media, which is an infection that is located in the middle portion of my ear.

This gave me hearing loss and made me wear hearing aids to hear. I do not like them at all. Everyone says that they are there for me, but I feel so alone.

My parents try to help me, but I just tell them that they do not understand. Same for my best friend, Daisy, and my church family. Pastor Miró keeps telling me that Jesus is always there for me, but I do not see him anywhere.

My parents and Pastor Miró even tried to help by telling me the meaning of my name. Zane is Hebrew and it means "Gift of God." I do not even feel like a gift, I feel like a burden.

At school, Daisy always comes up to me and tells me that she is there for me, but I tell her to leave me alone or tell her that she does not understand. 

Then, one day, everything changed. I was sitting in church with my parents and I decided to listen to what Pastor Miró was saying for once. His sermon was called Self-Acceptance.  

He was talking about how God made us the way that we are and we should accept ourselves. The sentence that made me have a realization was: "It is not enough to just embrace the good, valuable, or positive attributes of yourself, but you also need to embrace the less desirable, the negative, and the ugly parts of yourself."