If you cannot accept an external event immediately, then some kind of resistance will come up. And there may be some external events you cannot accept at all.
Resistance is weakness and fear masquerading as strength. What the ego sees as weakness is your Being in its purity, innocence, and power. What it sees as strength is weakness.
Surrender is the inner transition from resistance to acceptance, from no to yes.
Acceptance of what is immediately frees you from mind identification and thus reconnects you with Being. Resistance is the mind.
The most powerful state for a human to be in is the state of embracing completely the reality of what is - Now. It is to say "Yes" to life, which is now and always now. There is a vast power in that "Yes," that state of inner non-resistance to what is.
It is much more likely that help comes in when what you are doing is done while you are in a state of inner peace, rather than resistance.
Resistance keeps you stuck. Surrender immediately opens you to the greater intelligence that is vaster than the human mind, and it can then express itself through you. So through surrender often you find circumstances changing.
Whatever you accept completely will take you to peace, including the acceptance that you cannot accept, that you are in resistance.
What could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to something that already is?
The intensity of the pain depends on the degree of resistance to the present moment.