The Blessings of Healthy Resignation

We often associate feelings of resignation as negatively inspired. But there is a very positive spin on resignation—that level of resigned acceptance that some things will never change. It is positive because we accept the things that cannot change and we move on into a better land; into an emotional destination where the vast plains before us are palatable both to the eye and to the foot.

All relationships get stifled in the minutia of life, where the actual purpose of life is missed. What television programs we like and don’t like, whether we do the housework or not to the definitive standards of one spouse or the other, and how to spend our time—these, and so many more, cause more relationship-stressing conflict than they ought.

Life must be more about the issues of life and death than the qualities and details of the insignificant things; sure, we may want our lives perfect. How often do we challenge that realistic goal?

Handling the Uncontrollables

There’s a blessing in resignation,

If it translates into bliss,

The kind that accepts,

When life is horribly amiss.

Life’s full of uncontrollables,

We know it to be true,

So hold on in faith,

When you’re feeling blue.

Handling the uncontrollable moments of life, including the many that occur every day, is made supremely easier when we take life in doses of low expectation, yet we can also thrive in expecting God to work beyond the realm of possibility.

This is the subtle difference. We don’t expect much from the world, but we do anticipate God can do anything.

Of course, there are poorer forms of resignation with which, through a lack of faith, to fall into. We need to sow into a form of resignation that expects little of life, yet simultaneously look for much from God; and be able to see the movement of the Spirit through life, and so believe.

What power does the depressed person have when they have this divine perspective?

They have a great deal of power, and the point is they have insight not in spite of, but because of their affliction. How God turns life upside down to grace the weak, yet hold back the strong. The person deep in their pride—with no reticence of depression—has no idea of, or access to, this power.

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It is a blessing of healthy resignation that we take our weaknesses as they truly are. Then we are becoming the people of God that God, himself, has called us to be.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.