Acceptance: Part Two

I've said this before, but once again when I sat down to write this, the fish school of thoughts darting through my mind vanished in all different directions when they saw the shadow of my blog looming overhead! There was a lot on my heart, but now I find my head empty!

I think I will revisit the one little thought minnow that is left in the net of my mind. The concept of "Acceptance." With a capital "A." I wrote a blog waaaaay back when I first started this blog, about the whole idea of Acceptance as a stage of grief, and the notion that I might one day find that stage. So long ago, in terms of what has happened.

I reread this blog about Acceptance, and it made me think quite a bit. I wondered, "Have I come to Acceptance after all?" Because I think that in some ways I find a difference between now and then. A difference in my internal landscape that made me wonder about that.

Well, I still have to say that I dislike the word itself. As I said before, acceptance sounds so acquiescent. Like giving up somehow. Resigned. Words that get my back up right off the bat. Yeah. It is hard for me to think of the word acceptance in this situation with out the word resigned rankling around in my brain, creating resistance to accepting Acceptance.

Of course, as a word choice, resigned makes a sort of sense in this situation. Reluctant acceptance (that word again!) of something you do not like but can not change. Doesn't seem appealing to me.

My dictionary also put in the word "surrender" in the definition of resigned.

Oddly enough, seeing that word made me feel initially more negative about it all, but then slowly as it sank into my skin with all it's connotations, I started to feel better about it.

For, strange as it may sound, I think that I have not become more accepting of Joel's condition and future. I think I have come closer to surrendering it. And I feel better about that. Here is why.

Acceptance means "to willingly receive, regard favourably, receive as valid or suitable." These are the points at which the word brings me up short, and makes me balk at it. I can't regard losing Joel as favourable. I can't receive it as suitable in some way. And to receive it willingly??

Surrender means "to hand over, relinquish, to yield.... " (fill in the blanks on what you yield to). This is what I am slowly learning to do. I am learning to surrender Joel, his health, his death, my pain, all of it. I'm learning to surrender it to God. I'm handing it all over to Him. I'm in way over my heard here. I surrender, not to an enemy, but to a trusted Friend. I'm yielding up something I find too difficult, painful, sad and ugly to work with myself into His hands in the trust that He is great enough, powerful enough, loving enough to take care of it all in a perfect way that I can not.

So when you don't find me in Anger, Denial, Bargaining, etc., in the times I manage to get beyond those states, I hope you may find me, not in the state of Acceptance, but in the state of Surrender.

And in that state I find something else that goes together with it. Peace.