Pondering the Art of Acceptance

I managed longer walk again yesterday.  I've been struggling a lot with exhaustion lately.  

I am thinking about the art of acceptance that comes in the process of grief and loss; the art of acceptance in the process of getting past trauma.  Plus the acceptance of the brokenness of us all as human beings living in a confused world.  Forgiveness comes with acceptance... 

This video was really striking to me about how to live and move on from things: 

How to BE PRESENT. 

How to let go of the Past & how to live in the Present

Also these quotes I found worth pondering.  The first one is Madeleine writing about some people who maligned and attacked her writing.

"Can one be a Christian with a heart full of hate? I know that when hate flickers in my heart Christ cannot come in. So, as I pray for compassion and understanding for myself, I pray for compassion and understanding for these poor women. If they deny themselves the richness of love, they are indeed poor!" -- Madeleine L'Engle from Penguins and Golden Calves

from Fr Stephen Freeman:

"Subjectivity itself, the world as we experience it inside our heads, is notoriously changeable and fails every test of reliability. It is the chimera of our existence, and can never be its foundation.

Years ago, when I was in college, I suffered a severe bout of depression. I was hospitalized for a week. After the hospital, I “white-knuckled” my way through the world and found a path back to sanity. One of those paths was to distrust my subjective experience. Nothing “sounded like fun” (that’s the nature of depression). But I reasoned that I needed to have fun and decided to treat fun as an objective activity. My now-wife and I began doing things that were the “kind of things people do for fun,” in an effort to teach my brain and body how to do something they had lost. It was very therapeutic." 

From: When Miracles Ceased by Fr Stephen Freeman 

I am slowly coming to terms with various things I have suffered in the last year and a half.  The losses.  The months of illness.  My father-confessor's retirement and leaving when I was still in and out of memory loss.  

Today we are remembering a Monk from Optina who became a Saint and this line from the online telling of his life really struck me:

"While he managed to preserve a radiant peace during which many of his spiritual children visited him, his life was difficult and full of threats from the Soviet authorities including threats of deportation to Kamchatka."  - Nectarius of Optina (emphasis mine)

Such a good reminder that with Christ is peace, even in the midst of great difficulties. 

I am praying that I can grow in this.  I think part of it for me really is the acceptance of difficulties, of one's losses, of differences in points of view.  

This prayer I find helpful: "nor do we know what to do, but our eyes are upon You.” from HERE.

May God help us and have mercy on us.