We all bear many things we cannot change, whether these things are about us or about others. This is an inevitable part of being human. We are stuck in a life that in many ways doesn’t work, within the overall glory of a life that is, as we are walking miracles, an absolute miracle.
So, how exactly does grace work in helping us accept what we cannot change.
Well, it’s a miracle and for me at least that cannot easily be explained—the how. But what to do is different. The ‘what’ is easy to lay out.
It’s simply about being able to see and acknowledge the truth.
We see that something is a pattern, that it’s been a pattern for a long time, or that it’s become a pattern, and we should expect the pattern to continue.
This is not to say that patterns cannot be broken. We can all shift a few patterns in our lives, but to say that any of us can change all the problematic patterns in our lives is, I think, unrealistic, and I think it attempts to rob something from the difference between God and humanity to make us more equal than we are. Humanity is not in control. Humanity is also inherently flawed.
Discipleship and growth are not just about changing things up. It is just as much, perhaps even more, about finding the grace to accept the things we cannot change.
There is a great amount of freedom in receiving the grace that accepts what cannot be changed in either ourselves or others. This, I believe, is the first portal of forgiveness.
Now, this is not necessarily about putting up with those things that can’t be changed, especially as it pertains to others.
If we cannot bear what another person does to us, or their behaviour impacts us toxically, we need to change the situation, but first we must be decisive about accepting that we cannot change them.
Indeed, the crucial first step is acknowledging they won’t change, that we cannot expect them to change, and then from there, we have a decision to make. Put up with it or move on. My experience with toxic dynamics in relationships is they don’t get better without radical intervention, and so just about every time they get worse.
See what I mean about how necessary acceptance is.
And still so many decisions are incredibly hard to make because even in acceptance, there are significant downsides to good decisions.
People hang on for too long believing another person could change, and when they never do much damage has already been done. (Yet, I do know there are just as many striving for release and sadly they cannot seem to get free.)
Often, we can berate ourselves incessantly about a feature of ourselves that we cannot accept we can’t change. Maybe it’s how speak before we think, or perhaps it’s a habit we have that we hate, or it could a false narrative about our self-image that we think is true, but others say is not the case at all, but we cannot brings ourselves to see what they see. Or, there’s also the case of berating our situation for how perplexed we are that we cannot change it.
We disapprove of what we loath and despise about ourselves, but perhaps if we worked first on accepting what cannot at present be changed, we may find an easier, more innovative way to address the problem.
What we need first and foremost is the grace of Jesus’ love that helps us accept—be still and know that God is good—what we cannot change, and that that is okay. Then from that place of stillness often comes the miracle of movement—once we’ve taken the pressure down.
Change is not always about changing. Sometimes change is about accepting. And sometimes through acceptance, change then suddenly becomes possible. But acceptance comes first.
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