Acceptance

As I wrote out the Serenity Prayer this morning, the word Accept jumped off the page like a beacon and I knew that I had work to do around accepting the things I could not change.  As the word flashed in neon across my consciousness, it brought back a lesson that my most awesome acupuncturist had tried to impart when I was moaning about something that my ex had done.

He told me that I didn’t need to forgive, I just needed to Accept that my ex was who he was period. Full stop. No agonizing over excuses, no trying to force myself to forgive, no hoping he’ll change, etc. Just ACCEPT. At the time I heard it intellectually, but my heart wasn’t ready to believe it. However, this morning as I was writing out the Serenity Prayer, something clicked and I accepted he was who he was and he had done what he’d done. There was NOTHING I could do to change it and struggling to change the past or him was futile.

As I wrote out a list of what I needed to ACCEPT because I could not change it, I wrote out something that’s very near and dear to my heart that I know I cannot change. I want to and I’ve put energy into changing it, but at the end of the day I cannot change it. As that acceptance sunk into my soul, I got a message from my guides that while I could not change it, they could. So I will keep praying for serenity and continue to turn it over all the while knowing that when the time is right, the situation will change.  I also know that I have to accept that while it will change, it might not change the way that I want it to change.

Another situation I’ve realized that I just have to accept is that my company doesn’t reimburse me for expenses in as timely a manner as I would like.  I just started a new project and I’ve traveled for four weeks and spent almost $5k without seeing a penny in reimbursements.  A large part of the problem is that the go ahead was given for me to start working without a signed contract so that delayed reimbursements by two weeks.  Then it took a week to set up the contract in the system, which is within the standard service level agreement and isn’t horribly long.  Then my expense reports had to be approved and, when I take myself out of victim mode, I have to admit went fairly quickly.  Now it is just waiting for the payment run which will take place in the next few days.  When I look at it rationally from a business perspective, it makes sense why it took so long, but when I look at it from an “oh my god, I can’t afford this” perspective, I freak out.  At the end of the day, I’ve realized that I can choose to get all swirly about it or I can choose to consciously prepare for it and make sure I have more money on my credit cards for the next time I start a new project.

Acceptance is hard because it means accepting that I am not Queen Almighty of the Universe and that the world doesn’t just change because I want it to.  It means that I am a part of the universe and I need to accept both the parts of the universe that I like and those that are pretty rotten.  The good thing is that by accepting the parts of the universe that are pretty rotten, I can move on with my life and, when appropriate, make plans to work around those nasty bits of life.