Accept, Let Go, Have Faith

"Accept what is, let go of what was, and have faith in what will be"

- Sonia Ricotti

This quote is one of many that hit home for me. So often, I find myself unable to accept, let go, and have faith. I constantly want to know why things happen and what will happen in the future. I feel like many people are in the same boat as me. Accepting, letting go, and having faith can be extremely hard, but the payoff is great.

Accepting what is can be difficult for various reasons. For one, accepting something means to acknowledge that we are not in control of it. Secondly, it means to recognize that we cannot change something- whether it is someone's mind or the aftermath/result of a given event. Simply put, acceptance is to realize and have peace with the fact that we are not always in control and we cannot always change things. The way I view acceptance is this: even though I want things to go according to my plan, God's plan is so much greater. Who am I to question God's plan? To me personally, acceptance is to have the realization that "what is" is in line with God's perfect plan.

Of the three, I would have to say that letting go is the hardest thing for me. So often, I want to hold onto things for honestly the dumbest reasons. For example, I don't want to let go because "I just spent so much time investing in it." Or maybe because "I refuse to accept that this was just a season." Letting go of people is one of the hardest things for me, because I hate that some people are just in your life for a season. Sometimes, people come into your life, serve their purpose, and then they leave. And that's just the end of it. Sometimes, we invest a ton of time into something, but we never get to see the payoff or the end result. Likewise, sometimes we only get to plant seeds- not reap the harvest. We have to ACCEPT that. A major part of letting go is acceptance, so once we get the hang of that- we can learn to let go.

Have faith. It sounds easy, right? We say it all the time. Having a bad day? Have faith, it'll get better. School getting hard? Have faith, it'll get easier. So often, we tell people to have faith. So often, people tell us to have faith. It's so much easier said than done. Having faith means to both accept and let go. Having faith means to know that God "will," not that God can just "can."

"A future awaits those who seek peace."

- Psalm 37:37