I'MA LET HIM HANDLE IT!

How hard it is to accept your current circumstance sometimes.

We spend so much time wishing that we weren’t where we are.

Acceptance isn’t easy. It takes practice. Especially in our society. We are raised to “fight, fight, fight!” “Never give up!” “Never give in!” People think there is something wrong with you if you just throw up your hands and say “ok.”

Certainly there are times when you don’t just give up. One of my personal mantras is, “I will not give up!” But that’s a long-run thing. Sometimes, in the short-run, it is better to concede, to acquiesce to the moment and accept that, in the words of Run-DMC, “It’s like that / and that’s the way it is.”

Confused? Here’s an example, albeit one some might consider a rather morbid one.

Consider you are walking down the street one day or night and someone approaches you, brandishing a firearm, and demands your money. Is that a good time to fight, or would it be better to accept the fact that this person is holding something that can kill you in a second and that it might be better to just accept the fact that you are at a disadvantage, to say the least, and conclude that the twenty dollars and the bank card in your wallet or purse is not worth your life? I’d say that is a good time to get some acceptance of your situation.

Now… Take that same scenario, but this time imagine that the person approaches you and announces that they are about to shoot you and take your money. That might not be a good time to accept your present circumstance. That’s probably a good time to put up a fight.

Let’s leave the dramatic hypothetical situations aside. Here’s a more common problem. Too often we struggle with things that we have little or no control over. Specifically, we often try and manipulate or control the actions of others or of situations that we have little or no control over. In the meantime, we ignore the one person we can exert control over. You guessed it – ourselves!

We are so quick to say, “So-and-so made me mad!” or “If it wasn’t for so-and-so, I wouldn’t have ever done that incredibly stupid thing that I did!”

Please!

We surrender the reigns to our life over to others and complain that things aren’t going the way we want them to!

I’ve been practicing acceptance. I’m not getting any younger. I don’t need to be creating stress for myself because I can’t accept what appears to be God’s will. I’m not omniscient. I don’t know what tomorrow holds or if I’ll even be here to see it. I do know that all of the major changes in my life for the better were changes that I never would have imagined making on my own. They came because I tried to wrestle my life to where I wanted it to be and then I had a moment of clarity (the Voice of God?) and did something totally out of character that wound up saving my ass. I mean, quite honestly, if I had only followed my own bright ideas for the last twenty years I’d probably be dead or in jail. So when something happens that I don’t like or wasn’t expecting and I find that there is little or nothing that I can really do to change it, I am trying to try not to change it. I am working at acceptance because I know very little and I believe that my God knows all. I’ma let Him handle it.


Note: Due to some of those circumstances that I don’t really like, but can do little to nothing about right now, I have to write and post my blathering from work right now. Consequently, my incredible talents might not be quite what they would normally be. Please forgive me.