(this is the third post in the serenity prayer series)

There are times when pain whispers, and there are times when pain howls.

Tonight, the pain is howling.

It is all I can hear—drowning out the movie, drowning out my children, drowning out my own thoughts—only pain, pain, PAIN, PAIN, PAIN—constant and cacophonous, its voice shrill and commanding, its forceful grip bringing me near tears that would only make matters worse.

And amid the internal bedlam—amid the howling and the private pleading and the hidden fit-throwing—I come face to face with the difficulty of accepting that which I cannot change.

And it really torques me off.

REALLY. TORQUES. ME. OFF.

It is no wonder, in Kubler-Rosses theory of the grief cycle, that the anger and bargaining stages are so closely situated.  Because it has been my observation in twenty years of counseling others and many more years of my own life than I’d care to count that when one has exhausted all avenues of hope and finds at the end of themselves and all their best efforts and resources that they cannot FIX IT, acceptance is not the next logical step in the progression.

Anger is.

Quickly followed by depression when anger’s fuel is spent and its blaze fades to ash and soot.

David Benner, internationally renowned Christian psychologist and theologian and one of my all-time favorite authors, writes, in his fabulous book Desiring God’s Will, that:

In each of us there lives a two-year-old with clenched fists, gritted teeth and defiance blazing in his or her eyes.  We differ only in terms of how much life this two-year-old still has and how she or he expresses that vigor. 

I could not possibly agree more.  Because I know this toddler—in fact, I know her a bit too well, I’m embarrassed to admit.  And there are times, believe it or not, when the squalling of this internal toddler drowns out even the pain.

And THAT is NO SMALL TASK.

It goes without saying, of course, that there are things in our lives we can change and there are things in our lives we cannot.  Sometimes, it is obvious which is which.  Sometimes, not so much.  Sometimes, we require greater wisdom to discern the difference, but that is, alas, another topic for a later post.

Given, for instance, that I have had these chronic headaches since childhood, it’s fairly clear this is something I cannot change, not that I don’t keep trying.  I have been able to impact them to a certain degree, but I’ve not been able, no matter how hard I’ve tried or how much I desired it, to make them go away.  Medications, supplements, essential oils, neti pots, nasal sprays, surgeries, chiropractic care, weird diets, massage—if they were going to go away, they’d be gone by now.

But they aren’t.

So the pain is here to stay—as is the extra weight put on compliments of the one medication that actually does diminish them but not defeat them.  And I do my best—as we all do with the lots in life we’ve been given—to live with it and live around it.

Until there are days like today.  And yesterday.  And the day before.

And on THOSE days, I am reminded that living with pain is not the same as accepting it and abiding with it peaceably.

Because TODAY I have work to do and writing to accomplish and children that need played with and a body that needs to move and a husband who needs at least a shred of attention but I’m permanently yoked with this debilitating pain that refuses to play nice and my inner two-year-old is JUST NOT HAVING IT.

I do not want this.  I do NOT. WANT. THIS.

And, yet, here I am.

So now what?

Benner makes it plain, even for a toddler like me:

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

Plain, but not simple.  At least not for one who is prone to angry railing against that with which has been chosen for me.

Lord, grant me the serenity to accept that which I cannot change…

It is a bold prayer, is it not?

But then Benner gets cocky when he goes and takes it up a notch, pointing us not just toward acceptance but a full-out embrace of that which we do not desire—of that which pains us, that which limits us, that which burdens us, bullies us, breaks us.  Not just living in proximity with it, sharing space but avoiding one another, pretending the other doesn’t exist in order to live in harmony—NO. Taking it into our arms, pulling it close to our bodies, wrapping our arms around it with its stench and its sharp edges and its intrusive limbs and its mocking sneer.

Can you embrace that which you cannot change?

But, of course, that is why we pray the prayer.

If I were to be honest, I am finding that I fight praying this prayer—it is becoming clearer to me with age—because I am quick to confuse acceptance with resignation and embrace with forced affection.

And neither are things I’m terribly fond of.

I struggle to accept the pain and the fatigue and the weight and the depression because I don’t want to give up.  To give in.  To let them win.  I don’t want to submit to them.  To admit they have the upper hand.   To yield to their control.  I don’t want to give up hope.  To admit this is as good as it gets.  To hold hands with them and sing kumbaya.  I cannot say it any more plainly: I don’t want this to be the trajectory of my life. 

And to accept it—in some twisted alternate reality in somewhere in my mind—means to resign myself to it.

And, in case I haven’t made myself clear, I really, really, REALLY don’t want to.

We read in Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians that he, likewise, had a “that which I do not want” in his life.   A burden to bear.  A limiting factor.  An unwelcomed guest.  A “thorn in his flesh” for which he prayed to be removed.

And we read, as well, that God said no.

Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me.  Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me.  But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.  That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

2 Corinthians 12:7-10, NIV

Accept.  Embrace.  Boast about.  Delight in.

The bar keeps getting reset, higher and higher.

There is something better than relief. Better than getting what we want.  Better than NOT getting what we want.  Better than trudging along, day by day, gritting our teeth and bearing that which we’ve been given to bear.

My grace is sufficient. 

There is GRACE.

The serenity to accept that which I cannot change.

How do we live this way?  How do we find our way to this enoughness of grace?

We find it when, instead of wrestling with resignation—instead of clinging desperately to our own will with clutchy-grabby-two-year-old hands, sticky with self-indulgence—we learn deep in our tantrum-throwing hearts the most terrible-wonderful way of surrender.

Grace, like all gifts, only comes to open hands.

Join me, next time, and we will explore further this path of surrender—learning what it means, in the words of David Benner, to willingly make …a choice of openness, a choice of abandonment of self-determination, a choice of cooperation with God. 

Learning what it means to let our we-know-best life go,

and, in doing so,

discover that we’ve gained so much more than we’ve lost.

See you next time…

acceptance chronic pain faith grace pain serenity serenity prayer trust