At the beginning of 2012, I happened upon a site that encouraged us to seek a word to focus on during the year. As the year progressed, we were to note how the word made changes in our lives, how we based our decisions on learning to live out the word, and what lessons we learned. As 2012 comes to a close, taking a mental inventory is a common occurrence, though for purposes of this post, the inventory will review how learning to accept played a role in the year.
If you have read my blog much in the past year, you'll notice that my word was ACCEPT. I have been working on learning how to accept myself, accept others, accept situations, and challenges. It certainly did not help matters that I was given a diagnosis of cancer just over a year ago. I have had to learn to accept that cancer is now a part of my daily life, as are CT scans, doctor's visits, and body awareness.
For a long time, I have struggled with acceptance. Acceptance of myself and feeling accepted by others has been a battle for most of my life. God and I have increasingly been working on this struggle for a few years now, though much of it culminated this year with one simple word of instruction, ACCEPT. I had to take a risk and learn to accept myself. I had to risk allowing others to accept me and show me their love. Throughout the year, the word accept has taken shape in various forms. Often it involved me taking the risk and stepping out when I normally would have shied back, fearing failure. To me, self confidence frequently translated into arrogance and being over-confident, ready to fall flat on my face. That scenario would only serve to prove that I was a failure as I had suspected anyway. Being instructed to learn how to accept has meant allowing for risks and not owning the fear. One thing that I did learn from having a cancer diagnosis, is that I need to live the life I am called to live for the time I have here. Is cancer going to kill me? I have no idea. No one knows how much time we have left on this earth. It could be days, weeks, months, or many years.
One of my jobs is to show others love and empathy. I get to do that in my job. I have always been pretty concerned that my career is moving so super quickly and I am not ready for what I am heading into. Though I am told by my clients and colleagues that I am naturally talented and skilled at what I do, I have always waited for the other shoe to drop. This year I have begun to listen to others. Not necessarily owning everything that is positive and disputing the negative. Just giving them equal credence. Self assessing my work, both skills and challenges, has not been easy, however looking at both parts has been helpful. Accepting that I can have skills as well as challenges continues to be a work in progress. I think I am getting a handle on it. I could go more into detail, but I believe I would lead myself down the road of challenges and that would defeat the purpose of this post, eh? Plus the sweet stuff just might make for good blogs in the future.
Another area that I have been evaluating have been my looks and my weight. Getting in shape would be a wonderful goal and it is a goal that may be on my list one of these days. Accepting that I will never be thin or drop dead beautiful was made easier when I discovered that so much weight had dropped off in the first surgery. My priority now is to become physically and emotionally healthy. When that becomes stable, I will hopefully be able to focus on the additional bonus of shape building. My first job? Accept WHO I am in all shapes and sizes and then move on from there.
Something else I have blogged about has been my struggle with music and singing. While this remains an area of uncertainty for me, apparently it continues to move forward. I accepted the challenge and was given an offer by a sweet man who was willing to provide me with some help and encouragement. Again, there are numerous questions in my head and fear of falling flat on my face, however he and several others have instructed that I am NOT to stop singing ever again. As I type this, I am awaiting a notification for my assignment to a worship team and soon hopefully being linked with the drama team. While this may be what is slated to fill the hole in my heart that I spoke about in an earlier post, my plan is to ride the wave. Accept the time and see what God does with this. Lord willing, He will allow me to be a part of leading others into His presence in worship.
These are just a few areas in my life in which the word ACCEPT has played a role in my life in 2012. I wonder what the word will be for 2013. For now, I think that learning to accept so many things will continue to circumvent my journey and help me become the woman God has created me to be.
