The Serenity Prayer has the potential of changing our lives concretely. The hardest part is remembering to rely on it. What the prayer offers is an opportunity to quiet our minds long enough to sense what our Higher Power wishes for us. In the stillness, we'll find strength to change what we need to change.
It's not unusual to think that everyone but us needs to change. Ask around at meetings. All will agree that we came to our first meeting thinking we'd learn how to get other people to change, certain that would make us happy. But that's not how happiness comes, and we're lucky for that. If our happiness were tied to what others did, we'd always be in their control. What a bleak existence that might be!
The happiness we deserve will come when we do two things: first, take the power that is ours through becoming willing to accept others as they are and second, make a commitment to change what we need to change and then follow through. Using the Serenity Prayer puts us in charge of our own happiness.
I will find as much happiness as I want today. The Serenity Prayer, used often, will be the key.
The Serenity Prayer was the primary topic of our outpatient group last night. We deconstructed those simple yet profound lines like Ancient Lit majors unlocking The Odyssey.
I walked away from the session feeling that the Serenity Prayer allows me to begin recovery as a completely passive vessel attempting no affect on my environment whatsoever and slowly progress, via safely earned wisdom, into a more active and effective human in God's time and under God's guidance.