Acceptance Vs. Settling

Some people hate the thought of accepting problems and negative situations. They believe acceptance is the same as settling, giving-up.

Uh, wrong.

Acceptance is an important beginning. It's vital, actually.

An example? Arthritis runs in my dad's side of the family and in 2000 I began having some real problems with stiffness in nearly all my joints. I couldn't reach behind me to zip up dresses and Tom even had to button small cuff buttons for me. It was bad. Scary.

So, at first, I had to accept that the ol' family arthritis curse had caught up with me. My time had come--to lay down and give into arthritis? No way! But rather, to deal with it. To fight it. I'd watched far too many relatives lie down with it or park themselves beside medicine cabinets.

But acceptance had to come first. Otherwise? Otherwise I'd have continued on in denial or ignorance, even. And people in denial do not make changes, but rather, they continue along their not-so-merry way living as they always have and eventually standing in the center of their consequences, paying awful prices.

So I began doing research--I went online and read and searched for possible causes and I found one. I found a study of 500,000 women who drank two or more cups of decaf coffee a day and huge amounts of them were coming down with early cases of rheumatoid arthritis. And most of those women came from families with arthritis in their bloodlines. But when they gave up the decaf, they were fine again!

Wow. Guess who was also drinking 2 cups of decaf a day? So immediately I gave it up and within 8 days I was back to normal. I felt wonderful and oh so relieved. And I still continue to make other dietary changes in this area--I've discovered, also, that the more dairy and sugar I eliminate, the freer my joints feel. And staying peaceful and forgiving and calm. Oh, the value of those.

Acceptance has been vital. Denial would have been tragic. But did I settle for the problem? Did I lie back and let it wash over me? Did I make allowances for it and give it a place in my home? No. I fought it.

And not with medications, may I add. And all these years and websites like Dr. Mercola's and Dr. Colbert's later, I'm more determined that medication for any of my aging problems will always be a final resort. First, I'll exhaust every natural remedy I can discover. 

And so far, I've successfully discovered natural ways to deal with each problem with aging that has popped up. Again, so far.

No to denial. Yes to acceptance. No to settling. And yes to discovery, to doing whatever I can, whatever God leads me to do.



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Here is one of the studies linking decaf with rheumatoid arthritis. It is not the study I saw ten years ago--I have since searched and searched for it but it appears to have been pulled as so many similar articles have been over the years. Naomi and I have watched this sort of thing happen over and over--the pulling, the hiding away of information which will affect sales of big companies--and have been shocked that such things take place in our Country all the time.


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"We don't know what we don't know." ... copied