I really don’t like when stuff gets on my hands, especially sticky stuff. My wife, Brittany, teases me, telling me I didn’t play in dirt and get messy enough as a kid and that’s why I struggle to tolerate being messy as an adult. She’s probably right…and there’s still a part of me that hates getting sticky and messy.
One evening after my kids had gone to bed, I was using some putty to rehab my thumb from an injury I sustained while mountain biking a few months earlier. The physical therapist I had seen instructed me to strengthen my thumb by repetitively squeezing the putty several different ways.
Now you might think you know where this is going but no…the putty was not sticking to my hands because it’s putty, it doesn’t stick to anything. Or at least that’s what I thought.
After doing several repetitions of my thumb squeezes in my left hand, I looked down and to my dismay I realized that while the putty had not stuck to my fingers, it had in fact stuck to my silicone wedding ring I had recently begun wearing.
“No big deal, it should come off easily,” I thought to myself.
I began to try to rub the putty off the ring, but it wouldn’t come off, it just spread around even more. My dismay turned to horror at the thought of having a ring with putty on it. At this point, the part of me that hates being sticky and messy was trying to convince me that this was a really big deal and it would be this way forever and nothing would be able to change it.
“Okay, so it hasn’t come off yet. Let’s try some water and see if that helps.”
I got a wet rag and tried to scrub it off with that. No dice. At this point, I was beginning to feel pretty hopeless. The part of me that hates being sticky and messy was getting increasingly worked up.
Then, another thought entered my consciousness. It went something like this.
“Aaron, what if you just accepted your ring has putty on it and stopped resisting it?”
Immediately, the part of me that can’t stand being messy or sticky, or have a messy or sticky ring shot back incredulously… “What do you mean accept it and stop resisting? Impossible. This is not acceptable.”
The more grounded part of me who had made the alternative suggestion in the first place responded.
“I bet if you just let it be, the natural wear and tear, the natural friction of life will make it all go away and you won’t have to spend the next hour of your evening feverishly trying to scrub it off.”
Immediately after hearing this suggestion, I knew it was the truth. It was exactly what I needed to hear and exactly what I needed to do.
Whether it was the Holy Spirit within me, my own wisdom, or a combination of the two, what this voice was encouraging to me to do was practice acceptance.
What is acceptance?
According to Psychology Today, “Acceptance involves acknowledging and embracing the full range of your thoughts and emotions rather than trying to avoid, deny, or alter them.”
There exists a type of therapy, called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), specifically designed to help people learn to practice acceptance.
Psychology Today describes ACT this way, “We learn to stop avoiding, denying, and struggling with their inner emotions and, instead, accept that these deeper feelings are appropriate responses to certain situations that should not prevent them from moving forward in their lives. With this understanding, clients begin to accept their hardships and commit to making necessary changes in their behavior, regardless of what is going on in their lives and how they feel about it.”
Acceptance is something I have been learning to practice in my own healing journey. I’m also working with several clients who are learning to practice it as well. And here I was being faced with an opportunity to practice acceptance or resistance. Which would I choose?
This time around, I chose to accept the fact that my ring had putty on it and accept the fact that there is a part of me that is upset about it. I made the choice to accept what was true and not resist it. Then I moved on with my night.
And guess what? By the next day, all the putty was off my ring, and I didn’t have to do anything.
Sometimes, when we practice acceptance, things have a way of resolving themselves. Not always, but often. Sometimes we do need to bear down and push back against the proverbial “putty on the ring.”
What I believe is true is my best attempts to resist are often what keeps me from experiencing the change I’m looking for in the first place. What I was looking for wasn’t just having my ring free of putty, I was looking for a feeling of peace that I didn’t believe I could have while my ring was full of putty. What was true is that I could feel at peace even though my ring was fully of putty. The only way to do that was to practice acceptance.
Written by Aaron Wellman