Courage to Change

(I began composing this entry in May of 2020--just before I told my husband I wanted a divorce.  As things go, I became consumed by that process and in April of 2021, returning to the blog for probably the first time in almost a year, I finish :-))

I'm in the process of constructing another post specifically about the COVID-19 experience --because pandemic.  But I felt compelled to share on a narrower point that I can only imagine the whole world is facing in this moment-- change.

When is the best time for change?  I think the correct answer to this question is "When you are brave enough?"  None of us was brave in adjusting to pandemic conditions.  It's the same courage it takes to brace for a hurricane.  You do it out of survival.  I'm talking about elective change.  The kind of change it can take a lifetime to enact (or deny) because it entirely hinges on an active choice and consequential force of will.

Through the course of my life, I've generally allowed outside forces to direct my decisions and actions.  As a middle child of five, there was little opportunity to exert my will and be taken seriously.  I came to believe at a young age that decisions were best left to others.  As an adult, I can now see how protective that way of life was for me.  Nothing was ever truly my fault because (I told myself) I was always following someone else's plan.  If it went south--well, at least I couldn't claim "mastermind" status.  As an adult, I can also now see how much this modus operandi hinders me from coming into the fullness of my life and God's plan--the only one that works.

In a secret society I habitually frequent, we open (and sometimes close) meetings with the Serenity Prayer, originally composed by Reinhold Niebuhr in the early 1930s.

God, grant me the serenity

to accept the things I cannot change,

courage to change the things I can,

and the wisdom to know the difference.

I'm quite sure the timing was related to the state of the world during the Great Depression.  Those living between World Wars and in a time of utter economic collapse had no choice but to befriend acceptance --or just off themselves.  The prayer conflates character traits (serenity, courage, and wisdom) with actions (accept, change, know) to produce a handy, portable sanity saver for those in crisis.

Accept the things I cannot change:
Growing up as a middle child in a large family, I never felt I had any power over what was happening "out there."  Someone said "Be at this place, at this time, wearing something like this, and acting something like that," and I pretty much just went along.  We'll call it a survival skill.  It was part of my chameleon costume.  I'll adapt to you.  I'll become whatever it is you need to see to make our encounters as pleasant and conflict-free as possible.  Imagine my surprise, then, when I finally entered a recovery program and someone said, "Part of your problem is your failure to accept life on life's terms."  Whah?  All I do is accept and adapt.  Rinse and repeat. 

Well--not so, it turns out.  I have a major problem accepting what I cannot change--so much so that I would rather numb out to "life on life's terms" than accept things as they are.

Acceptance is a cornerstone of the spirituality I work daily to cultivate.  It is the founding principle of most eastern philosophies and fundamental to the notion of Christian Love.  How can I pretend to love God if I cannot accept His creation or His will?  That kind of conflict of interest can make people crazy, I'd wager.  In need of a step that can restore someone to sanity, even!
What are the things I cannot change today?

• other people (how they think, how they act, what they want, what they say -- none of it)
• a pandemic ravaging the physical, emotional, and spiritual state of the global body
• other people
• the cost of living in the San Francisco Bay Area
• other people (how they think, how they act, what they want, what they say --worth repeating)

Acceptance, like love and service and faith and hope, is a choice I make.  Therein lies my power.  I can choose to accept the things I cannot change and breathe easier as I trudge my way through that process.  Or.  I can fight and resist and kick and scream and cry and lie and steal and cheat and not be any better off, but have caused a lot more wreckage I will need to clean up eventually.  And once I can accept the things I do NOT want to accept -- only then am I free to make a change that might benefit me, and thus, those around me.

Change the things I can:

Three categories surface under this heading and within the realm of "the things I can [change]": Me, Myself, and I.  I struggle with this reality on a daily basis because I continue to bump into others' codependency (a fancy word for the spectrum of human control issues).  So the "changes" I believe I am effecting out there are a delusional fiction.  The only real change, in which I am in need and of which I am capable, is within me.  As the ubiquitous "they" proclaim: "It's an inside job."  

• I can change the way I perceive events.  
• I can change the way I react to the world.  
• I can change the food and media I choose to consume.  
• I can change the people with whom I surround myself.  
• I can change my daily schedule.  
• I can change my spending habits.  

And the most efficient and effective manner in which I come to make these changes exists in a daily prayer routine.  Herein only may I garner a wisdom to know the difference between those things I have a possibility of changing and those resembling a snowball's chance in hell.

Know the difference:

After a lifelong desire to never have a tattoo (primarily, I think, because I was inspired by nothing so much as to have a need to permanently ink it on my skin), I saw one on the inside of a woman's wrist and I immediately knew I needed to have it.  Two words.  Biblical in nature. Be still.  I have heard the quotation countless times, "Be still and know that I am God." The latter part of the excerpt always turned me away from it, but thereIN lies the difference--the knowing--between what I can and cannot change.  I am not God.  I never have been and I never will be.  Whatever God is, I am not it.  After all this time, I have come to know this.  My job, then, is to simply "be still" until I KNOW in which direction I am to walk.

A recent favorite author and fellow secret society member, Glennon Doyle, writes eloquently about knowing.  She devotes an entire chapter to it in Untamed (*shameless reading plug):

                 "[The sage wisdom here doesn't say] 'Poll your friends and know" or "Read books by experts                 and know' or "Scour the internet and know.'  It suggest[s] a different approach to                                           knowing:  Just. Stop.

                 StopMovingStopTalkingStopSearchingStopPanickingStopFlailing.

                 If you stop doing, you'll start knowing . . .

                 What I learned (even though I am afraid to say it) is that God lives in this deepness inside me."

My spiritual malady (otherwise known as the absence of a conscious contact with my higher power) is directly proportional to the amount of external sources from which I am seeking validation and guidance.  I do believe that it is healthy to consult others and bounce my ideas off of a sane and serene sounding board--but, at the end of the cliched day, it is MY life.  And no one can live it for me.  Terrifying :-)

Herein, however, is my saving awareness.  As Cat Stevens melodically sang, "The answer lies within, so why not take a look now."