Blog

June 12-15^th, 2020

The Serenity Prayer: 

God, grand me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.

The courage to change the things I can.

And the wisdom to know the difference.

      So, during a zoom meeting with my sponsees and my life- long friend in recovery, we were discussing some pages we read in Chapter three of the Living Clean: The Journey continues book in NA.   During our analogies and discussions my life long friend brought how the Serenity Prayer was such a huge part of her recovery in the beginning and in fact still is.  She jarred some memories for me when she was sharing that and I made a comment about how I too really hung onto and used the Serenity Prayer in my early days. We all ended up having a pretty deep discussion about the Serenity prayer.

     As I too shared with them that I used the Serenity Prayer all the time when I was new.  I relied on it.  Most of the time, I didn’t even really know how it worked. Yet it did work very well for me.  It took time to “get it” and in retrospect I see I had the blind faith of a newcomer.  Which was of course my saving grace.  That is the kind of faith, willingness and trusting that only a person who is as desperate as the dying can be has.

     Later that evening after our meeting I was scrolling through Facebook and one of my beautiful nieces has posted a picture of the Serenity Prayer, I call that Synchronicity. We all seemed to be in alignment and not only that our discussion of this little prayer made me realize just how powerful it is and how often I default to it in my life. 

     I told them about how my husband and I took a trip a couple of summers ago with our little grandson, we drove close to eight thousand miles. Plus flew another two thousand round trip.  And in all that time, as we rode along together and were constantly with each other for three weeks, no breaks, it sometimes got very touchy and crowded in that car. When I felt irritated, I would just start saying the Serenity Prayer or sing a little song about “God is so good”.  Well, my little grandson was right there, paying attention and so he too would say the Serenity Prayer when he felt irritated or upset.  To this day, he still does!  😊

     It’s a powerful little pack of words, and when you say them with sincerity, truth, wanting and desire, it works! As I said before, this prayer saved my life, but it also saved those around me.  If I was feeling like choking, slapping or running someone over (I had issues when I got here) I would try that silly little prayer and voila, nobody got hurt.  No charges had to be pressed against me and I saved myself from having to make amends to many people I would have rather not.  So, yay! 

      Now, just for the fun of it, let’s look at why that tiny little prayer is so powerful. 

First word: God.  – Well, there ya go.  Let’s just real quick turn to the master of the universe and get His ear.  Right there, we’re inviting Him into our life, into our situation. 

*  Grant me– a grant is a gift, it’s free and once given to me, it’s mine.

*The Serenity.  – The state of being calm, peaceful and untroubled.  Wow! Yes! That sounds like utopia to me, who wouldn’t want that?  Well, when I was new, or more to the point, when I was still in my active addiction, Chaos was the name of the game. To start asking for the opposite and move toward calmness and peace in my life was totally against all I had been, but yet, it was a very deep desire, a buried desire that began to surface in recovery.

* to accept. –  there’s another word that was pretty foreign to me.  I did not accept very many things very easily, especially when it went against my grain.  I’d rather have cussed someone out and confronted and challenged than to accept a situation I knew I couldn’t control.  Of course, I have no control over people, places and things.  But Lord didn’t I try! I tried to hang onto the illusions I had built in my crazy mind and tried to hang onto them into my recovery.  Acceptance was the same as surrender, and that was not in my vocabulary either. It’s like, everything I let go of, especially in them early years, had claws marks all over it. 

* The things– uh, yep, the things really means everything!  Just know that.  As I just said, all people, places and things.  Pretty much none of my business.  I can’t make others behave the way I want them too, you do know that I have tried, again and again and it only makes us all upset and miserable!  So, let it go girl! I’d even try to control my husband and my kids and all kids of other people, even in traffic, in lines at stores, the list goes on and on.  Boy did my life get better when I gave up that battle!

*I cannot change.  Just as I said, couldn’t control or change none of them!  The war is over, I surrendered.

*The courage:  Ok, so now where did that come from?  I thought I had courage, but it wasn’t courage at all, it was better known as stupidity.  I would chase people down in cars, jump out and challenge them, not know who they were, what weapons they had in the car.  What if they were stupider than me? 

     One time, alone, in a very seedy bar, in the very bad part of a big city that I was not living in, I knew this guy was gonna try to hurt me. (trust me, you just know).  So, what did I do ? instead of asking the bartender for help, or trying to leave without him noticing I reached in my bag and held my hand in there, held onto my comb (this was way before cell phones), and stared him down with a challenging look.  The whole jest was meant to send the message to him that I would shoot him, right now.  Well, you know it was a bluff, I didn’t have a gun, I didn’t have any money, I didn’t have any sense!  That is not courage, that is insanity- and I lived on it. 

     True courage is so opposite of everything I was. True courage is admitting when you’re wrong, true courage is telling the truth, no matter how much trouble or how much embarrassment it causes you.  True courage is sticking it out with loved ones who are going through a rough time or illness and you stand by them no matter what.  Kinda like that richer or poorer, better or worse, sickness or in health thing.  True courage is standing up for yourself when the situation calls for me, in a calm and kind way, if at all possible. You all know what true courage is and it’s not always easy to muster up, especially right on the spot.  For me, it’s often the courage to just keep my mouth shut!   This kind of courage has to come to me from a source that is much greater than myself, that’s why we call upon God at the very first of this prayer.

* to change the things I can.  The problem with this part is, I do not always know what it is I can and cannot change.  Well, I didn’t use to know.  I have a pretty good idea now. It’s me.  I can only change me, and that of course is only by surrender and allowing God to change me.  Only my Higher Power has this ability, if I were so smart, I’d have never ended up here to begin with! 

* and the wisdom– Which means “the quality of having experience, knowledge and good judgment”.  Again, this is a gift from our Higher Power because we are asking in all sincerity to possess this knowledge, right there, right then. 

*to know the difference.   I wonder why the writer of this prayer put that in there?  Because they were probably divinely inspired to write this poem so the Spirit knew that we would need to know there is indeed a difference between what we can and can’t change.  Very simply we always say “me”- that’s what I can change. And “You”, that’s what I can’t change.  But really it goes much deeper than that. There’s so much more than you that I cannot change.  Like, the whole world.  I can pray and ask God for direction on how I can be a part of changing the world for the better, and so I can do that.  Give a homeless person a meal, a blanket.  Twelve step a newcomer, help a friend who needs a tire fixed or a babysitter.  These are small, seemingly insignificant acts, but to them, at that moment, they are huge, they are important.  I can do what I can.  But I have to know my limits and try to stay humble in the process and not act like I can fix the entire homeless problem all by myself or get everyone clean who is using.   But I can talk to the newcomer that is sitting in front of me at a meeting or standing outside smoking. 

     For such a little prayer, this is the most I’ve ever written. And believe me, I could go on.  I think you all get the point.  This is something valuable to ingrain into ourselves so we can easily call on it at a moments notice, it packs a powerful punch, so you don’t have to. 

Question of the week:   What do you think of the Serenity Prayer? Is it working for you?