Respect

Today I was given an arm band, think yellow livestrong for this. (Quick side note for those of you who do not know, I really like arm bands. They give me an opportunity to connect with others I believe.) The giver told me to think about myself when I looked down and saw the band looped around my arm. I kind of thought the giver was a little strange for giving me the band and I honestly did not think I would put it on, but I told her thank you and pocketed the band anyway. The band has written on it one simple word, RESPECT. There first thing that comes to my mind when seeing or hearing that word is that Aretha Franklin song here, you know the one I’m talking about. Google will pop up about 221,000,000 hits if you search the word respect. That is huge! How does one word have that much information? This post has a point but to see the point you have to try and follow along with me. So here it goes.  How often on any given day are you given a chance to show respect to a stranger, a close friend, a brother, a sister, a mother, a father, a teacher, a student, a co-worker, an employee, a child, yourself? The list could go on and on. From my own experiences with respect, I tend to give people around me a lot of it. I believe that everyone deserves respect. It is not something to be earned like a medal or an award. You deserve respect and that’s what you’ll get from me. You can however lose respect. It takes a very talented person to lose respect in my book and only a couple of people are in that book. My biggest challenge is respecting myself, the person God created. So today and everyday hence forth I am going face this challenge head on and respect the person God created me to be and all the other people, places, and things God created. I challenge you to do the same. You may mess up and fail but keep on trying. RESPECT!