by Cathy Vinson

There are times life gives us something so difficult to bear that it throws us into a state of shock, and we find immediate adjustment to the situation impossible. We just can't. It takes something for us to receive the new change, to believe it is now a present reality for us. It takes acceptance.

Acceptance might relate to the sudden death of a family member, a severed relationship where once there had been intimacy, a realizationship of deceit where once you trusted. It might involve an abrupt change in our surroundings and environment.

How does God relate to our seeming inability to adjust to the new reality put before us? Others are impatient, wanting us back on our feet and going forward. Is this what God is thinking?

I believe God has made a place of STANDING while we are in this awkward position, not unlike Christ's Gethsemane. At that place the foreboding pangs of the Cross had never seemed more real to Jesus. In fact, there the Cross was REAL although the wood had not yet touched Him. There Jesus straightforwardly faced its anguish. He saw the Cross that bid Him "Come and die." Jesus' response was, "My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death."

When we encounter the cross for us, our response will be similar: this is the place Christ shares our Gethsemane. The dread and travail are upon us, and we travail until we gain acceptance of what we must face. The road to Golgotha has the possiblity of being walked only after God has ministered acceptance at Gethsemane.

Many people are at this place. They have yet to get up and walk forward. Let's be patient with their process of acceptance. We can never know the dread of the cross they are being called to, and this is THEIR time. We may never know how similar to Jesus their deciding steps will be unless we give them space to recover their spirits.