ACCEPTANCE IS THE KEY

Bogue Sound Waterway

I am at the beach.  The water and the sky were gray this morning.  Now the clouds are moving to make room for Carolina blue in shapes irregular peeking through haze.  Daylight but no sun even though it's noon.  Where I live at home in the woods every day is wonderful.  Where I live at the beach every day is wonderful.  There are just those times when every day is wonderful. 

It seems to me that acceptance is the key.  Accept that at home my house is old and the woods untidy with always a few downed trees.  Accept that here our beach is not fancy but rather that it's over the causeway from a small North Carolina town with an unpretentious waterfront.   Accept that I view the ocean over the trees, not ocean front, from the deck of another old house.  Perfect.  A house at the beach, on an island in North Carolina is wonderful beyond any dream I ever had growing up on a busy street in a St. Louis suburb in an almost-ramshackle house that I also thought was wonderful.  

But acceptance is more than that, more than the accoutrements of our lives.  Day-to-day I need to accept my own body, my soul, my very self.  We all do, at levels both simple and profound.  Our age, our hair, our weight, our talents, our minds, our shortcomings . . . what else?  Every one of us needs to accept ourself as we are today, not tomorrow, not when we are stronger or feel surer of ourselves or achieve this or that.   That is what loving ourselves means.  Loving as in "Love your neighbor as yourself. " Luke 10:27. If we accept our neighbors as they are, surely we can do the same for ourselves.  

Acceptance is acknowledging the reality of a situation.  I need to accept that my son died young, and I have.  I need to accept that someone I love has a mind that doesn't work as well as I (and maybe she) hoped, and I'm trying.  I need to accept that I have no control over things I wish hadn't happened.  Even the hardest of times we need to accept.   

Life batters indiscriminately.  The wounds we suffer may be visible or silent poundings of the heart.  We all have dark days when we feel anxious, fragile or frightened.  When we accept those days, they pass more quickly.  When we show ourselves love on those days, we heal faster.  For Christians, when we give our wounds to God, the relief is palpable, at least it seems that way to me.  My breath slows and I wonder why I spun my wheels so long.  I don't mean that the pain is gone but I do mean that it lifts.   

We all might tend to be Scrooges when it comes to accepting ourselves.  Not just the inconsequential but larger, even eternal.  When I remember how God accepts me--wobbling on my bike as I begin my ride at the beach, walking with an awkward gait and slow as I scan the horizon for dolphins, tripping over nothing as I drag brush in the woods, not giving my all when I should--then the day is one of those wonderful ones.  And they seem to happen so often.  More often than I could possibly deserve.  I hope for you too.   Nina Naomi