Sometimes, the challenges of life maybe so difficult that it seems that there is no way out.Ī good prayer to pray at such times is the serenity prayer. What do you have the ability to change? What do you need to “let go of and let God” take care of? I would love to hear what you have to say.“ God, grant me the grace to accept with serenity the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, And wisdom to know the difference.”Īs we go through life, we are often bombarded on every side with all kinds of troubles. ![]() ![]() Perhaps journal your thoughts about the 4 examples above. I encourage you to think about where your power lies. I have the power to choose to live in darkness (fear) or light (love).I have the power to make decisions to do things differently (self care, career, parenting, relationships).I have the power to set limits and not accept unacceptable behavior (from myself or others).I have the power to change the way that I respond to life.I have discovered a few noteworthy things that I would like to pass on to you today that seem universal to most of us: And we delve into what aspect of “myself” do I actually have the ability to accept my power to change? Eventually, my client gets around to an answer that is some variation of “me?”. To which, I prod the client along to think some more about this very important issue: our ability to change and what that entails. ![]() Sometimes I get, the “deer caught in the headlights look”, another exasperated sigh or a defiant NOTHING. Now the response to this is often the lengthiest silence in the room for the day. I reflect, “if you are powerless over all of these things, which I am in agreement with, what then do you have the ability to exert your power over? What is in your power to change?” And I ask my clients to bring these areas of powerlessness into the room so that we can have the important discussion. And then the discussion begins: the job, the kids, the money situation, the spouse or the lack of a spouse, you name it, it gets mentioned. This is usually followed by the “eye roll” or the “chuckle”, occasionally the exasperated sigh. Those things that they would like to change but can’t seem to make progress with. It is a common occurrence that I ask my clients to share with me those things in their lives that they are powerless over. Hence, that “powerlessness idea” works well for all of us. From my perspective as a counselor, and a counselor who is a Christian at that, I think that we are all in recovery from something. Indeed, an important tenant of recovery programs is that people in recovery need to accept that they are utterly POWERLESS over people, places and things. Today I am going to focus on the line “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things that I can not change.” I think we can all be in agreement that there is A LOT that we need to accept that we can not change. So, I will write about this prayer (in its entirety-there is more to it than mentioned above) and I will tie in some themes and patterns I have seen in my counseling work that I often ponder as I recite this prayer, reflect on my coming work day and process the journey at days’ end. I always start my work day off reciting this prayer in its entirety and because of this, I thought that it would be a great way to “kick off” the first Blog series for Elevate Counseling Services. It starts out as follows: “God, Grant me the serenity to accept the things that I can not change, the courage to change the things that I can and the wisdom to know the difference.” The first few lines of the prayer are commonly recited at the beginning or close of 12 Step recovery meetings. I am guessing that most of us are familiar with the “Serenity Prayer”.
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