Not My Will—Radical Acceptance
Listen: “Everybody Hurts” by REM
On Thursday, April 14, 2022 I was having shoulder surgery on my torn rotator cuff. I was truly dreading the surgery. I was having a hard time accepting the reality of another painful event in my life. The last three years have been a series of painful events and experiences in my life—emotionally, spiritually, and physically.
My surgery occurred on Thursday of Holy Week 2022, a day when Christians around the world were remembering the events of Jesus’ life the night before he was crucified by the Roman government. The Holy Thursday events in Jesus’ life included the Last Supper, Washing of the Feet, Judas’ betrayal, and Jesus’ late night prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives.
Jesus was dreading his own crucifixion. While Jesus was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, he uttered perhaps his second most famous prayer. His most famous prayer being the Lord’s Prayer also known as the Our Father Prayer. Both prayers make reference to God’s will, but they are in stark contrast to each other. The prayer Jesus uttered in the Garden of Gethsemane regarding God’s will was a prayer of surrender or radical acceptance. The prayer Jesus modeled in the Lord’s Prayer regarding God’s will was a prayer of action.
The prayer Jesus taught us to pray in the Lord’s Prayer regarding God’s will is: “Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). Jesus did not intend for us to merely repeat these words, and then do nothing. Jesus intended us to pray and take action, actually partnering with God in the work of his kingdom. When we pray and take action to create a more loving world, we are bringing a touch of heaven to earth. When we practice a lifestyle which contributes love, grace, beauty, creativity, forgiveness, recovery, gratitude, healing, inclusion, generosity, and justice, we are, in effect, becoming a part of the answer to the prayer: “Your kingdom come. Your will be done.” It’s a prayer which calls for action and participation.
The prayer Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane regarding God’s will is not a prayer of action, but a prayer of surrender or radical acceptance. Jesus was undergoing enormous stress. He was facing the brutal, almost assured, torturous end to his own life by Roman crucifixion. So Jesus prayed, “Father, if you are willing, please take this cup of suffering away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine” (Luke 22:42; NLT). Not my will. Not the way I want it. Not the way I wish it was, but the way it actually is. Ouch!
For those of you who might wrestle with the concept of “God” or “God’s will” (I certainly do), you might think in terms of accepting reality as it is. No one escapes painful experiences in this life. In order to recover, grow, and flourish with mental and emotional health, we must learn to stop fighting reality, stop throwing fits because reality is not the way we want it, and let go of anger and bitterness.
This is not easy work for anyone. We tend to go down a rabbit hole of “what ifs” and “if onlys,” wishing we could change something or someone. Blaming others. Blaming ourselves. Resisting our own reality. I remember one of my dad’s mantras which he said to me when I was young (And old! My dad just turned 87 and still gives good advice) and making “if only” excuses—“If a bullfrog had wings, he wouldn’t bump his ass every time he hopped.”
One of my favorite authors, Richard Rohr, wrote a book on the Twelve Steps of AA entitled Breathing Under Water. In his chapter on the third step of AA (“Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand God”), Rohr says:
How long it takes each of us to just accept—to accept what is, to accept ourselves, others, the past, our own mistakes, and the imperfection and idiosyncrasies of almost everything. It reveals our basic resistance to life, a terrible contraction at our core or, as Henri Nouwen, a Catholic priest and writer, told me personally once, “our endless capacity for self loathing.” Acceptance is not our mode nearly as much as aggression, resistance, fight, or flight.
Marsha Linehan, founder of the DBT therapy model, names seven reasons why we need to accept reality (from DBT Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets, Second Edition):
Rejecting reality does not change reality.
Changing reality requires first accepting reality.
Pain can’t be avoided; it is nature’s way of signaling that something is wrong.
Rejecting reality turns pain into suffering.
Refusing to accept reality can keep you stuck in unhappiness, bitterness, anger, sadness, shame, or other painful emotions.
Acceptance may lead to sadness, but deep calmness usually follows.
The path out of hell is through misery. By refusing to accept the misery that is part of climbing out of hell, you fall back into hell.
So we find in Jesus’ teaching and practice of prayer two kinds of prayers regarding God’s will which are in dialectical opposition—one involves action and one involves surrender. I think American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr captured this dialectical opposition beautifully in another famous prayer—The Serenity Prayer. “God, grant me the serenity to accept the thing I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”
Shalom
©realfredherron, 2022
