PUSH: I'm not dead yet! (A treatise on acceptance)

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As is often the case, my title is both a reference to my current state of mind and a nod to popular culture. Bonus points to anyone who recognizes the movie quote (and bonus bonus points for those who say it with a British accent).
For those scratching their heads in confusion, check out:
"I don't want to go on the cart!"

It's been a week since my last post. As my title reassures, I'm not dead. At first, my silence was because I had to recuperate. It's been many years since grad school (and even more since college) and my last post, Fleeing the sheep rustlers, felt very much like writing a critical response. Frankly, it was kind of exhausting to my out-of-shape English-major brain.

This exhaustion only counted for a couple of days last week; sadly, the rest of my silence has been because I've been focused on a crisis with one of my children. I don't want to provide details that would compromise her privacy and, anyway, the details do not really matter. What matters, in terms of this blog, is that I have been praying but it was only when I turned to prayers away from her and onto myself that things fell into place for me.

I was caught off guard by how quickly things escalated that the only words and thoughts I could pull together in prayer were "God, help her" or "God, help us." Slowly, I began to expand on what I needed help with, "God, please give me patience. Please help me know how to help her."

Then, the other night in bed, it came to me (and this was, perhaps, God helping me by giving me a nudge toward this insight). While it's horrible upsetting to see your child struggle, it wasn't only my sadness over her struggle that had me feeling all mixed up and confused inside. What was making my life difficult was my own struggle against the problem. I wanted to skip this part of our lives and go back to the ways things were before. I didn't want to deal with any of it (in fact, my Facebook status on the 3rd was "I do not want to deal with today"). I was stuck because I had not yet accepted the situation for what it was.

Just as we should not confuse humility with humiliation, so should we take care to see acceptance for what it is. Acceptance is not resignation or surrender; accepting a situation does not mean we have to like it (certainly it's much easier to accept situations that we do like!). Rather, acceptance is stillness. We stop railing against what we do not like. Instead of tantruming, internally, about the hardship, we relax into it. We roll up our sleeves with quiet determination and prepare to live fully, even in the midst of crisis. This quiet, determined "fight" is much different than the flailing, internal tantrum we have before we find acceptance.

I'm reminded of an incident early in my relationship with my husband. He was washing dishes and trying to balance a fry pan on the pile of dishes in the dish rack.

The pan kept sliding off the pile. In his frustration, he threw the pan on the floor, breaking the handle. (Yes, he's quite embarrassed about this.)

Why does this remind me about acceptance? When I'm struggling against the realities of my life, I'm like my husband with the pan. I want unexpected problems to balance nicely on top of the rest of my life. I want to set them out to dry, with minimal effort. Of course, like the pan, they do not balance nicely. They slide off repeatedly, reminding me again and again of their existence. Without acceptance, I become frustrated and risk tossing them to the ground, where they break and cause yet more problems.

To carry this analogy further, acceptance is when I accept the problem/pan's inability to balance. Instead of repeatedly setting it, precariously, on top of the other drying dishes, I pause and survey the dish rack. Could I move this plate forward and fit the pan behind it? Could I finish drying the first batch by hand, thereby freeing the dish rack for the pan? Could I set out a towel and leave the pan to dry flat on the counter? In order to problem solve, I need to accept the situation as it is: the dish rack is full and the pan does not fit.

Thanks to this epiphany, I was able to pause my racing thoughts and heart and center myself. My daughter has a problem that will not balance nicely on top of our existing lives. Now that I've accepted it, things feel better. Life with this problem does not feel easy, and I am not happy that she has to deal with this in her young life (it seems quite unfair). However, things feels manageable. My husband and I have not only marshalled support and help, we've allowed her to see us doing it (what a great lesson for her! We're showing her how to find and accept help). Thank you, God, for the gift of acceptance.