Letter to Acceptance

Written Nov. 17, 2010

Dear Acceptance,

The definition to “acceptance” is the act of taking or receiving something offered; the act of believing.  I am having a hard time accepting several things in my life and I really cannot go on until I do.

Twenty  years ago I became very ill with CFS.  Life as I knew it came to a very sudden halt.  I didn’t know what was happening to me and I for sure didn’t like it.  I became someone that I didn’t know or like and that scared me more than anything.  All I wanted was to get back to being the person that I was.  To this day,  I am still ashamed of this person that I have become because when people ask me to do something that I know I cannot do and I have to say no, it makes me feel so inferior.  The other me would have loved to have done those things, but the person I am now knows that it would be very hard on me in several ways.  I have missed out on so many wonderful things in all these years and I know now that it actually grieves me every time I have to say no.  I still haven’t accepted CFS as a part of my life and I haven’t accepted this person that I have become.

Six and a half years ago, my husband came home with a terminal diagnosis.  We both refused to accept that and began doing all that we could find out what to do to help his body heal.  Everything went fine until a little over a year ago when suddenly his body began to deteriorate.  Still we refused to accept what was happening.  I think now that he may have finally accepted it near the end of his life because he asked me if I was going to be alright.  There was no way in this world that I could even entertain the idea that he was dying and no way was I going to accept that possibility.  I couldn’t answer his question and gave him a look that must have said, “Don’t ask me something like that!”  A week later his heart suddenly and unexpectedly stopped and the ICU nurse that was with him told me that right before that happened he had the most peaceful look on his face.  He had accepted God’s will.

Now he’s been gone for a year and I am still having a hard time accepting what happened because it wasn’t my will.

Less than two months later my mother went to heaven.  Up to the last week of her life, she had not accepted all of her illnesses and was believing that God was going to heal her.  I think that she finally got to the point of acceptance because she was just too tired to keep fighting.  One day in that last two weeks of her life she called to tell me that she had asked God to take her on home and said that she knew it wasn’t a good time for me.  Then she asked me what I thought about that.   Again, I couldn’t answer her question, but this time I cried.  I knew how very hard she had been fighting for so long and I could see that her body was tired.  It was hurting me so badly to see her struggle, but I didn’t want to let her go.  She was my Mama and the greatest source of encouragement and spiritual help that I had in my life outside of my husband.  The morning of the day she went to heaven, she had the most peaceful, beautiful smile on her face as her eyes kept going back and forth, back and forth looking up at something on the ceiling as if she just could not get enough of what she was seeing.  She had accepted God’s will and I believe God was allowing her to see into heaven.

Two months later my daddy went to heaven.  He willed himself to die because he couldn’t bear to live without my mother.  He died of a broken heart.  They were born next door to each other and had always been together for their entire 78 years being married 59 of those years.  Daddy had no brothers or sisters.  My mother was his everything here on this earth.  I had thought that Daddy and I would go through the grieving process together and he would be with me for awhile longer, but that didn’t happen.  It was pure torture to watch him give up on life and sit there begging God aloud saying over and over and over, “PLEASE GOD, take me home!!  PLEASE GOD, take me home!!!”  I couldn’t bear it.

By this time I was in such a state of disbelief that I could lose the 3 people in my life who loved me the most and acceptance has still not come.  It’s just hard for me to accept that God pulled the rug out from under me like that and that this is a good plan for me.

I don’t know how to make acceptance come so that I can quit struggling and go on with my life.

God, I don’t know how to accept that Your way is the best way.  I just can’t see it, Lord.  You made me to be a very sensitive person and to have taken my husband, my mom, and my dad one after another in such a short time – to have taken my complete support system here on earth – it just seems like the worst thing that You could have done to me.  It doesn’t say love, God.  It doesn’t feel like love. 

I can’t figure it out.  I accept that You love me because You sent Your precious only Son to die on the cross for my sins so that I could have the gift of salvation.  I accepted that gift when I was 9 years old.  But, how is CFS and the deaths of the three people who loved me the most the best for me?

You are going to somehow have to help me accept this, Lord, because I just don’t know how to do it and I’m too tired and confused to figure it out.  I know that I’m just hitting at air and I’m using up so much energy doing that.  Help me to take off my boxing gloves and lay them at Your feet in acceptance of it all.