Acceptance

One of the most important practices for our recovery and healing, for reclaiming our sense of truth and vitality in our lives, is the practice of acceptance. What else can we do but accept our reality, outside and inside?—the external circumstances with which we have little control and the internal circumstances, our feelings.

It’s when I try to change or control what’s outside or inside myself that I experience adverse consequences. Trying to change another’s disappointment, emotional state, or judgement of me; trying to change my anxiety, overwhelm, exhaustion, or depression, are all futile attempts to not accept what is. I may “succeed” temporarily, lifting my mood through looking at something on my phone, or lifting someone else’s mood by people-pleasing or care-taking, but always at a cost. I lose connection to myself and my truth, and lose authentic connection with others. And more than that, I set up patterns of behavior, roles, expectations, habits, that keep me stuck and more and more separate from my true reality.

Every day we are presented with opportunities to practice acceptance—every moment. This morning I chose to take time to connect with myself, my Inner Child and God, in meditation, prayer, and journaling. It felt rejuvinating, and my morning felt ripe and full. However, by the afternoon I felt exhausted. In between doing one thing and another I had some time, an opportunity to either connect or disconnect. Many days I choose the path of least resistance, of turning to my phone and distracting, which offers me a “hit” of stimulation, excitement, and a pseudo-sense of “sanity.” But this is fleeting and doesn’t actually fill me up, but rather takes me further from myself, my feelings and God. Instead, I chose to simply sit with what was there in me—my exhaustion, frustration, sadness, and longing—and touch that place inside, which I often fear and resist and believe will be intolerable, but was actually quite easy. It was just there, and I turned to be with it in myself. I laid back in my chair and simply breathed and held this reality in me, and I felt soothed and restored.

Practicing acceptance with our reality can be difficult, but with practice and with the belief that we can do it, that we can tolerate it, and that we are supported by God in it, we may begin to believe it is possible. And there is our throughway.