Surrender to Serenity
“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.”
These are the famous first words of Reinhold Niebuhr’s Serenity Prayer, and when I was a little girl, my mom believed it to be her personal duty to speak these words into my life. Like any good people-pleaser, I first met her efforts with a sense of gratitude, but over time the prideful, control-freak within me couldn’t help but roll her eyes and eventually grit her teeth in disgust.
Aside from the call for courage, I had very little respect for the invocation’s requests. The entire concept of serenity was all too uncalculated, and it felt like I was asking God for life to be a frolic as opposed to a fight, and I was fighter. Then to ask for something trivial like “acceptance” seemed as if I was admitting defeat before ever climbing into the ring. However, the ultimate cherry of stupidity on top was to go on and state that “I didn’t know” which fights were mine to engage in from the beginning. Simply stated, it was all too weak for me, and I was determined to discover the cheat codes for navigating change without ever releasing control.
Unfortunately, the only true hack I found to be productive in this endeavor was maintaining high levels of stress and anxiety. As long as I remained uptight and upheld a constant sense of urgency, I could often find a way to gain a sense of control within the unknown, but after a few years of that rigid reality, the call to serenity felt like a vacation I might need to book.
The story of my life eventually unveils a God-given mandate to surrender. Which was an extremely unnatural process for the warrior within me to endure, as the weapons of pride and performance were no longer useful to me in this pursuit. The only arms I was now allowed to bear were those of humility and vulnerability; both of which felt like I was surviving surgery without proper anesthetic. Yet overtime, I came to understand the virtue of serenity to be that of God’s peace, and nothing has ever resonated deeper within my soul than this. If you are a person who struggles to grapple with things like acceptance and change, it may be time to find a safe space to learn the art of surrender, and I would be more than happy to help. But in the meantime, I will leave you with the full breadth of Reinhold Niebuhr’s Serenity Prayer:
“God, grant 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. Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time; accepting hardship as a pathway to peace; taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it; trusting that You will make all things right if I surrender to Your will; so that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with You forever in the next. Amen.”
Also, thanks mom. I love you.