Accepting What Is

Speaking as a recovering control freak accepting what is has been the hardest to conquer of all the lessons on my personal list of life challenges.

Lately I seem to be making progress, which in turn is lessening the stress I have cooked up for myself most of my adult life. I have found that when I stop trying to make things as I wish them to be and not as they really are it intercepts the negative energy which always leads directly to unhappiness. If I had learned that a whole lot sooner I could have saved myself a ton of pain and tears.

Just this last weekend I had a real life experience proving this fact. Due to circumstances I had been deprived of seeing my grandson most of the summer. It made me very unhappy because we both really enjoy our time together. I finally realized that there was nothing I could do about it and stopped focusing on it.

Surprise surprise! My little man stopped by Friday night because he had a school fundraiser he wanted to interest me in. Of course, I ordered something because it helps with their field trips. I didn't expect to see him again, but Saturday morning he stopped by and asked, "Grandma can I stay until noon?" Now, what do you think I said? The positive energy wasn't over yet because about 5:30 Sunday evening he again appeared at my front door and announced, "My mom said I can stay until 7:30."

We decided to go to the Riverwalk, a favorite spot for both of us. I believe my change of focus had a lot to do with what happened. When I accepted what is things got better.

Lately I have been having a terrible time with my blood pressure. Until about six years ago it was very low and then something happened (age I guess) and I have been taking medication every since. I detest the word hypertension and must admit I did every thing I could to make myself believe it did not apply to me. It simply was not acceptable because it meant there was something wrong with me. I do everything I can to stay healthy and this just wasn't fair!

I have finally decided to knock it off and accept the fact that it does apply to me. Resisting is just making it worse and causing me to focus on the very thing that I want to go away. It was pointed out to me that possibly I should be grateful that there was something I could take for hypertension. There are a lot of things I could have that there is no help for. I look around at people my age and see that I am very healthy, mostly because of the manner in which I live my
life. It is of course, possible that when I just accept what is instead of fighting it, my blood pressure will come down all by itself and my medication will then be reduced.

It appears I am getting better at accepting what is and I am going to stay on that path and see what other good things happen along the way.