Is Acceptance the Same as Resignation?

Is acceptance the same as resignation? If I stop beating myself up, am I doomed?

I often run into these questions in the therapy room. We get acceptance and resignation confused.  And that’s understandable. We are afraid to accept our failings or our pain because we wonder if we will be this way forever, if we are resigning ourselves to them.  But often the very thing we fear will enslave us may actually unlock us.   

Many of us are familiar with the story book Corduroy.  We watch a little girl, Lisa, wanting to buy a teddy bear. Her mother, tired, says she has spent enough money already and besides, the bear is missing a button…he doesn’t even look new.  

Surprised by the news that he is lacking something, Corduroy (the bear) begins his journey to find his lost button.  Lisa though, thinking quite differently, saves her own money and brings the little bear with one missing button, home.  

My favorite part of the book is when Lisa sits him on her lap and begins to sew a new button on his overalls. ‘“I like you the way you are,” she says, “but you’ll be more comfortable with your shoulder strap fastened.”’  I just imagine how relieved Corduroy must feel when the one thing he thought had counted him out from being bought, was warmly embraced and viewed with not only the acceptance and compassion, but also with action.  It is a beautiful and warm illustration of how unconditional acceptance does not mean resignation and stagnation, but instead embracing and guiding.  

When we are accepted and welcomed as we are, we are free to change.

This gentle embrace the little girl Lisa models with Corduroy the bear is a picture of welcome.  “Welcome” brings us into a warm home, sits us down, and loves us just as we are right now…it isn’t harsh or critical. The fear of judgment that keeps us in hiding, or in a state of running, for fear of harsh rejection, is the opposite of this welcoming embrace.

But, this kind of welcoming love is too powerful to leave us the way it finds us.  Author Anne Lamott explains this idea in terms of grace, “I do not understand the mystery of grace - only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.”

The warmth this little children’s book illustrates, that Anne Lamott grapples to explain, is the kindness of grace, what I believe is like God’s grace, and is how I would hope we can learn to treat ourselves. This is how I would hope I could learn to treat myself and others.

Far too often instead, our internal critic, the echo of real harsh voices, including our own, slams us with a list of our flaws. The critic does not welcome us gently.  We are blamed and ridiculed for the missing button on our overalls.  Or the button about to pop on our pants.  

Some of us have gotten so used to our internal critic that we start to believe it is right. We often believe if we let go of that voice, that shame, we will be completely out of control. But it turns out instead that shame is a terrible motivator.  It is a depressor.  And so often we are hearing (and repeating)  “our” shame, while trying to change - a combination that does not work. 

We often think if we stop being hard on ourselves we will become a lazy, selfish, out-of-control version of ourselves.  But this is actually not true. We are not great because we are hard on ourselves; we are great in spite of being so hard on ourselves.  

But grace, welcome, and acceptance offer another way.  Grace doesn't criticize and belittle.  It draws us in. It sits us down in a warm and safe place.  It brushes the hair out of our eyes; it gently holds our hands. It looks in our eyes, first accepting us the way we are now.  

But grace does not always leave us the same, because it is just too powerful to do that.  Grace, welcome, and acceptance are not stagnant; they are moving powerful forces, that when encountered and understood can be transformative.  

And so no, acceptance is not the same as resignation.  It is much more powerful than that.  Acceptance allows us to see our flaws, feel our pain, and to be held by grace, and that is the greatest change agent of all.