Acceptance

Serenity Prayer

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
the courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;

Taking, as He did, this sinful world
As it is, not as I would have it;

Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will;

That I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with Him
forever in the next.
Amen.

~ Reinhold Niebuhr

As I was pondering the latest lesson that God has been teaching me about acceptance, this Serenity Prayer came to my mind. When I first starting thinking about it, the first line about accepting the things I cannot change seemed to really fit with what I've been reflecting on the past few days. I looked it up to find out who wrote it because I wanted to include it in my blog entry, and I had no idea there was more to it! I had never read nor heard the rest of the prayer before. I really like it, especially what the author says about taking this world as it is... "not as I would have it"... and surrenduring to God's Will.

I actually looked up the word "serenity" on dictionary.com, too, because I was curious about the official definition. It comes from the word "serene": calm, peaceful, or tranquil; unruffled. So that makes so much sense to me... asking God for peace to accept the things I cannot change. And when I think about the things I can't change and what that means, they are things I have no control over, the things that God controls, the things that are part of His Will. So then I'm actually accepting His control, trusting His Will, and I'm at complete peace with it. Interesting how this all came together for me this past week.

Last week we drove out to Virginia for a week to visit family. I was really looking forward to the trip, which has been about a year in the making. My aunt and uncle have recently retired to a lake house and I was just really looking forward to some quality time with them and with my sister and her husband who live about an hour from my aunt and uncle. I planned to go in late May thinking the weather would be really good and warm at that time there, perfect for doing lake things. I was watching the weather forecast the whole week before, each day hoping it would change. There was nothing but rain and cool temperatures forecasted for our vacation destination. Boo!

I don't know how I came to this state of being, but instead of getting upset and disappointed that the weather could very well "ruin" our vacation, I just had this odd sense of acceptance. And not just acceptance... but peace. Although ideally I would have planned the weather differently, I just had this trust that God had something wonderful planned for us, and that our time in Virginia would be good, no matter what the weather brought.

It was strange that I was viewing things this way, because normally the weather really affects me, as I think it does a lot of people. And I realized on this trip how much of a dependency it is in my life! And it felt good to break down that dependency a little bit by just accepting whatever it was going to be.

The day we got to my sister's house, where we would stay for the weekend, it was cloudy and misty, not what I would consider nice at all. But the temperature was warm, and despite the bits of mist and rain on and off, we still got the kids outside with their balls and ended up having a lot of fun! Benjamin even said to my sister, "This is the best time ever!" I was pleasantly surprised! That night we had a fire outside and cooked hot dogs and smores, and just had such a nice time being together, and watching the boys experience something new. And the next day, again forecasted to rain, turned out to be gorgeous. We took the boys to the park and soaked in some excellent sunshine all afternoon. The only time it rained was on our way home from the park!

The rest of the week was more of the same... every day was just filled with God's unexpected blessings and surprises! It hardly rained at all. I'm still in awe and having a hard time putting it all into words. And I know if I could put it all into words this blog entry would take hours to write! But I guess the lesson I'm thinking that I'm learning is that I don't know if I could have recognized God's blessings this past week if I hadn't been accepting of my perceived circumstances. I wouldn't have been open to His Will because my focus would have been on those things that I can't change, like the weather.

There are so many ways that I can apply this lesson to my life, I feel like this past week I was just barely scratching the surface. And it's exciting! I even found myself applying it to my attempt at quitting smoking. I've been able to accept the fact that quitting is going to be hard. In the past I've tried doing different things like wearing the patch and chewing gum and changing my focus when I'm having a craving in order to make the quitting process easier. But there's just nothing easy about it. So instead of wishing it were easier and wishing the cravings away, I'm trying to just accept it for what it is. It's hard. It sucks. I'm probably going to be crabby and impatient for a few days. And I might break and fail a few times. And I accept that. And I welcome it. Because I know experiencing that hardship is the "pathway to peace".

A Lesson in Faith

Back in January I wrote about a new year's resolution of sorts, a word that I decided to try to guide my life, my thoughts, my actions, and my reactions... faith. There were a few different words at the time that kept coming to my mind, but "faith" just stuck with me. I wasn't sure why, because I felt that I already had a pretty strong faith and I wondered what else God could possibly teach me about it. Maybe He would test it in some way? I supposed I would just go with it and find out.

The first few months of this year I didn't really feel like I was growing in faith at all and I wondered if I had chosen the right word. But in the past month or so, it's become much clearer. I realized that I didn't have as stong of a faith as I thought I did. I had what I would call a hopeful faith, a wishful faith. When I would pray, I would hope for God to answer. I wished God would answer. I knew He had the power to answer. But I didn't expect Him to answer. I didn't really trust Him as much as I thought I did. I would pray, but still carry the burdens, feeling like I was still in control, like I still had some sort of responsibility to answer my own prayers through my own actions. Perhaps I was also a bit impatient and didn't really know what it meant to be still and wait.

Through several different circumstances that have occured over the past couple months, God has really taught me that He does have complete control! And in His own perfect time, He does answer! So I've been slowly learning to really "let go, and let God." I know that's sort of a cliche, and it's something I've always tried to live by, but didn't truly know how. He's been teaching me more about faith through my study of Isaiah, and through the devotional I'm reading, "Streams in the Desert." There have been several entries that have helped me to realize what faith really is, one of which I wrote on my facebook page not too long ago. The entry was discussing passive faith versus active faith:

"Active faith gives thanks for a promise even though it is not yet performed, knowing that God's contracts are as good as cash." - Matthew Henry

That was something I'd never considered before... thanking God for a promise, for an answer, even before I receive it? Before I'm even able to see it and experience it??? It was at that moment that I realized my faith has been quite passive. And I had to make a decision. Am I going to continue to be passive in my faith, or active? When I make a request going forward, am I going to trust God completely, and give him thanks for His answers and promises at the same time as I make the request? This is a different concept for me, thanking God for something I have yet to receive, knowing and trusting 100% that He will come through in His own perfect way and time.

This past weekend was Emmaus Sunday, and as a deacon of the church it was my responsibility to coordinate the brunch following the service. Well, time just flew by and this day totally crept up on me. At the beginning of last week, I started to get so overwhelmed! I hadn't done anything to plan or prepare! The church would provide soup, but we needed people to make sandwiches, enough for an entire congregation! I had never planned a meal for that many people before. I had no idea what I was doing. I should have been planning weeks ahead of time, having sign-up sheets out. But here I was, 5 days before the event, and I had nothing. And so of course I started to doubt myself, and apparently doubting God in the process.

I started questioning, "What sort of deacon am I? God, are you sure you've placed me in the right position?" One particular night I just cried and doubted and felt like a complete failure. The next morning, I talked to the other deacon who was in charge of this brunch with me, and he was so calm about it, and he told me, "Hey, God will provide. Everything will be fine." After that I did feel some peace about it and realized, yeah, perhaps He will. I did make a few phone calls and an email was sent out asking people to help make the sandwiches, but we didn't get much response and several people I called weren't home. Again, I started to get a little nervous, but the words came back to me, "God will provide." And I went ahead and said my prayer of thanks.

That Sunday morning I arrived at church at 8:30 to start preparing the soups. As it got closer to the start of the service, people started trickling into the kitchen with platters of sandwiches. Before long, the fridge was completely full! I couldn't believe it! I was just in complete amazement at how food just started appearing! In addition, we had leftover food from a funeral reception the day before. As I started getting all of the sandwiches out and ready and placed everything on the table, I could barely fit it all, there was so much! And to think I was worried that it wouldn't be enough!

At some point in the middle of the bruch, my co-coordinator came up to me, pointed to the table of food, and whispered, "This is what happens when God provides." Um, yeah, you can say that again! And we joked that the lesson for that day should have been how Jesus feeds 5,000. We had more than enough, and plenty leftover for the youth group that evening, and some for the local shelter.

Wow. I suppose I chose the right word afterall, or God chose the word for me, because apparently He had some things to teach me about it. I'm expecting there will be more lessons to come.