(this is the fourth post in the Serenity Prayer series)

There is a book I love—if you’ve known me very long at all you’ve heard me blather on about it—that has revealed to me, over the years, almost as much about myself and my spiritual walk as the Bible, itself, has.

My paperback copy of Hind’s Feet on High Places needs its binding taped—its yellowed pages barely maintaining unified and orderly connection to its spine, its cover worn and bent and similarly close to separation.  As I do my best reading with a pen, the pages are filled with years of commentary and conversation in various colors of ink, a record of my own journey to the High Places.

On one particular page, my scrawling in the margin reveals my tendency towards protestation when the path is not one of my choosing.  The main character, Much Afraid, is on a journey of spiritual transformation—one which the Shepherd promises will lead her to the High Places where all that cripples and disfigures will be forever transformed into Grace and Glory.  Such a journey, she quickly discovers, is not for the faint of heart—but that is, of course, the whole point of the story.  Such a journey cannot be made alone.

On this particular page—dog-eared and circled and underlined and starred—we find Much Afraid a few days into her journey and a bit worse for wear, having already had a difficult encounter with Pride that left her limping worse than ever before.  She has come what seems a very long way, and the path to the High Places seems to grow shorter with every step.  Until, that is, she comes over the next bend.

Coming to a complete halt, Much Afraid looks down in dismay as the steep path prepares to lead her straight down into a vast, endless desert with the High Places at her back.  She tearfully protests, knowing this can’t possibly be the way because the Shepherd promised to take her to the High Places, not lead her away from them.  But, having called on the Shepherd to come to her in her distress, she learns that this is, indeed, the intended path.  And it is almost more than she can take.

Much Afraid sank on her knees at his feet, almost overwhelmed.  He was leading her away from her heart’s desire altogether and gave no promise at all as to when he would bring her back.  As she looked out over what seemed an endless desert, the only path she could see led farther and farther away from the High places, and it was all desert.

Then he answered, “Much Afraid, do you love me enough to accept the postponement and the apparent contradiction of the promise, and to go down there with me into the desert?”

She was still crouching at his feet, sobbing as if her heart would break, but now she looked up through her tears, caught his hand in her, and said, trembling, “I do love you…I will go down with you into the wilderness, right away from the promise, if you really wish it. Even if you cannot tell me why it has to be, I will go with you, for you know I do love you and you have the right to chose for me anything you please. 

Hannah Hurnard, Hind’s Feet on High Places

And, with that, they begin their detour through the desert.

Oh, if only trust-full surrender came as easily to me as it did poor Much Afraid.

You are now wondering, of course, what I’d written in the margins of this page so many years ago that has to do with accepting that which we cannot change.

TBH, I was hoping you’d forgotten.

What is written in the margin, by a younger, less certain hand, reveals much more about my spiritual journey than I’d sometimes care to admit.  Perhaps because these older hands, now at keys rather than clutching a pen, still struggle to put to paper a more trusting and willing response.  And that is not is not something I’m particularly proud of.

Written in blue ink, sideways down the edge of the page, is the evidence of a heart that has more often than not struggled to yield to the life I’ve been given:

If that were me, I’d still be standing there, kicking and screaming like a toddler—NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

When living with a chronic issue—pain, fatigue, depression, cancer, infertility, singleness, addiction, a difficult marriage—we find ourselves on a path not entirely of our own choosing.  A difficult path, often away from that which we desire, that which we think we deserve, that which we think we’ve heard from the Lord about our calling, our future, our path.

And that can be difficult to deal with sometimes.  But while we can’t always choose what happens to us, we CAN choose how we respond to it.  We talked, in the previous post, about having two possible choices when faced with such situations:

We must… be prepared to embrace things we would never choose.  Being unable to change these things, we have only two choices: to rail against them in anger or embrace them and turn to God for help in coping with them and meeting Jesus in them… Taking up our cross requires that we accept the realities of our life that we wish were otherwise.   

David Benner, Desiring God’s Will

The wiser of the two is almost always the harder choice, as well.

We’re talking again, this week, about acceptance. The serenity to accept the things I cannot change…  To endure without protest or reaction.  To reconcile oneself to. To accede to.

But you’ll notice that “accept” is not the word Benner uses in the above passage. Nor is it the word Eugene Peterson uses in The Message as he paraphrases Matthew:

Then Jesus went to work on his disciples. “Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You’re not in the driver’s seat; I am. Don’t run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I’ll show you how. Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to finding yourself, your true self. What kind of deal is it to get everything you want but lose yourself? What could you ever trade your soul for?  Matthew 16:24-26 (emphasis mine)

The words of Benner and the words of Christ as interpreted by Peterson indicate to us that God doesn’t desire mere acceptance that smacks of resignation.  God wants something even further.  He wants more than begrudging acquiescence.  Much more.  More, even, than willing surrender.  More than devoted obedience or submissive consent—though these are all good and biblical things.  What we can infer—if we even need to call it an inference given that it’s pretty plainly stated—from the call for us to “rejoice in our suffering” is that what he MOST wants from us is for us to full-out EMBRACE that which we cannot change.

So can we be real about this for a moment?  Because it was one thing to consider the call to surrender readily to the presence of pain and illness.  To admit I have been “defeated” by the forces at play and will stop fighting that which is unchangeable.  To give up completely. To yield power and control to this other.  To give myself over to its authority in willing submission.  To consent to its presence.

But it is another all together to consider embracing it.

And with God being God, and all, I’m pretty sure he’s not referring merely to “willing and supportive acceptance and support.”  I’m pretty sure he means more than just “taking or receiving gladly or eagerly.”

I’m pretty sure he means that we are to take these sharp pieces and parts of our lives and stories that we would prefer to sand down or edit out and we are to take them into our arms affectionately and pull them close and encircle them with warmth and with fondness.

And that kinda sorta makes me crazy.

I’m just sayin’.

Earlier in her story, Much Afraid had been given two attendants for her journey—handmaidens selected just for her who would accompany her to the High Places and support her along the path.  She’d naively hoped—don’t we all hope this?—that she would be traveling with Joy and Peace, “to strengthen me and encourage me and help me along the way…” She was greatly distressed, however, to discover, when she met them, that they were not at all what she’d expected.

The Shepherd had chosen, not Joy and Peace, but Sorrow and her twin-sister Suffering as her only traveling companions.  Companions determined by the Shepherd to be “the very best possible guides” for her. Companions, large and looming, dressed in gray, with faces shrouded and a language unintelligible to Much Afraid’s ears.

And she almost doesn’t go.

Almost.

Fortunately for Much Afraid—and for those who might learn from her—she yields to the Shepherd’s will for her and sets off, with Sorrow and Suffering, to the High Places.

She has accepted her companions.

But she has not yet embraced them.

Embrace doesn’t come until later—and it costs her mightily that she does not do it sooner.

Having encountered a devious relative along the path, intent on regaining control and turning her back toward home, Much Afraid finds herself battered and bruised, mind, body, and spirit.  She calls out to the Shepherd, who comes to her rescue with a loving yet devastating reprimand:

“Much Afraid,” said the Shepherd, in a tone of gentle but firm rebuke, “why did you let Pride come up to you and take your hand?  If you had been holding the hands of your two helpers this never could have happened.”

For the first time, Much Afraid of her own free will held out both hands to her two companions, and they grasped her strongly, but never before had their hold upon her been so full of pain, so bitter with sorrow.

For a while after, she limped more painfully than ever she had since leaving the Valley.  Pride had trodden on her feet at the moment she called for help and left them more lame and sore than ever.

I have lingered on the beginning of this prayer—and will a bit longer—because it is arguably the most difficult part of the petition.  God, grant me the serenity to accept that which I cannot change…

When I first read Hind’s Feet on High Places, the internal distress I’d experienced since childhood had finally been given a name: Dysthymia.  A “mild but chronic form of clinical depression.”

At that time in my life, depression was wreaking havoc on many of my most important relationships.  It was wreaking havoc on my self-esteem.  It was wreaking havoc on my career.  It was wreaking havoc on my relationship with God.  It WAS. NOT. WELCOME. in my life, and there was not a darn thing you could have done to convince me its presence was the evidence of a loving God.

I reached the point, in my reading, at which Much Afraid learned Sorrow and Suffering were the companions the Shepherd had chosen for her, and I put the book down, and I didn’t pick it up for another five years.

I was unwilling—in my fear and anger and pain—to take depression by the hand.  To touch it, to feel its pulse, to draw it close enough that I could hear its heart beat.  Instead, I railed against it.  I beat it repeatedly.  I ignored it when it pleaded with me.  I fed it after midnight.

And I ended up “more lame and sore than ever.”

The reason we are called to embrace that which we would never choose is because that which we embrace changes us.

And when we refuse that embrace, when we keep our hands in our pockets and our feet dug firmly in to the shaky ground on which we stand, when we resist the precisely chosen instruments in the Master’s hand, at best we miss it and at worst we do ourselves infinitely more harm than good.

Trust me.  I know.

So the question, then, as I close, becomes not one of Why? but one of How?

HOW do we not just accept but embrace the things we cannot change?

It is a question psychologists have been trying to answer for decades, to limited success.

Fortunately, I believe Paul has some real answers for us, and we’re going to talk about them next time, in detail.

There is a path forward—and outstretched hands to keep us steady—but it is a journey that cannot be made out of compulsion.  We must set out willingly, or not at all.

We’re ready and raring to go.  I hope you’ll continue to join us.

accept acceptance change courage depression embrace faith god reflection serenity spiritual growth surrender