PROCESS ACCEPTANCE

A longtime faithful neighbor of mine was sent home from a hospital visit last week on hospice.  She has been very sick since the Covid era.  I spoke to one of her daughters after she was released to come back home and what the future held for her and their family.    Knowing we all have the same promise of tomorrow, it would appear that her move to heaven would be closer than some others.  The daughter, who was a mere child who always smelled the cookies baking at my house when The Husband and I married and moved here, told me that the doctors told her mom it was time to "process acceptance". 

That really hit me when put that way.  Process acceptance.  Yes, I can see the necessity of that at The Neighbor's season of life now.  As I thought about it, I see that necessity for all of us in various areas.  As an adult child of aging, discontented parents,  I think my greatest challenge and painful thing is the fact that neither of them accept where they are at this season of their lives.  They want to be like they were thirty years ago.  Well most of us probably would want that as well, however, when I considered where I was thirty years ago, it was not so pretty.....a wife and mother in her late thirties struggling to live with a newly diagnosed connective tissue disease.  I recalled having to have help just getting out of bed and getting dressed in the morning.  Yes, I still have that disease but am grateful for remission as well as a desire to learn to live with it and not let that dictate my life.  I had to process acceptance of that disease.

We actually have to process acceptance of things on a daily basis totally not related to health.  There's all the inflation, finances, crime, bad decisions....the list goes on and on.  I will even go as far to say as we have to process acceptance of forgiveness to ourselves and to others. 

One of the most memorable prayers of peace I have of my lifetime is this one by St. Francis of Assisi:

"Lord grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, wisdom to change the things I can, and courage to know the difference." 

To that, I will say, "Amen and Amen".

Consider....