Accepting is not resigning yourself

Faced with an illness or a blow that won't go away, we often confuse two very different things: resigning ourselves and accepting. Resignation is dropping your arms, stopping the fight to live, giving up everything as lost. Acceptance is looking reality in the eye, letting go of the fight against the impossible, and deciding what you do with what is in your hands. That is why accepting is not staying motionless. The person who accepts keeps choosing: how to live it, whom to lean on, what meaning to give it. It does not change the circumstance, but it doesn't let the circumstance change them in what matters. There is more strength there than in rebellion that only wears you down and leads nowhere. And from faith, acceptance has somewhere to rest: you are not releasing your life into a void, but into the hands of God. It is not surrendering to fate; it is trusting while you continue doing your part.