Day 74. I have chosen to live intentionally toward the goals, dreams and desires God has placed on my heart for the last 90 days of this year, pressing past fear, excuses and discomfort toward fullness of life as we countdown to 2020. This post reflects on yesterday’s goal. Day 74: accepting what is.
Cleaning, organizing, purging, reordering, assessing warm clothes, getting ready for winter that was how I was to spend Saturday, but insomnia kept me tossing and turning engaged in a battle in my mind. I wanted to control that which I cannot. I wanted to ensure other’s understood my love, my heart and goodwill, which had already been received, and now, of no doing of my own, had been brought into question. I wanted to press and prove who I was, but I had nothing to prove. I had already lived and loved well, and now, it was up to them to determine if they would receive their experience as true. The battle raged until 5:00a.m. when my body said, “Stop! Enough!”
Stop! When I said, “Go!” My body said, “Stop!” My day of planned productivity found me crashing into naps in the middle of conversations, reorganizing, reading, writing and perseverating on that which had kept me tossing and turning the night before. Again and again, a nap interrupted that which my mind would not let go, “Stop! Enough!” I would awaken and remind myself, “I have lived and loved well, it is up to them to receive their experience as true.”
As I sat in this power struggle, my years working alongside those in recovery ignited the mantra, “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.” Yes, God. This. I needed this.
Recovering addicts understand power in a way I have witnessed in few others. Each day, they live in the keen awareness of these power dynamics. With presence and mindfulness, they intentionally choose to assess and act on their power—what is theirs to own, what is not, what is theirs to control, what is not, what is theirs to hold on to or make right and what must be released. For today, another day, I choose to lean into the ways in which my recovering brothers and sisters have discipled me, and I hold on to these truths as I work out my own addiction to the opinions of others. I choose to accept the things I cannot change, in courage, change that which I can, and pray through it all, God will give me the wisdom to know the difference.
ACTION STEPS: Often in life, exhaustion and burnout come because we are taking ownership and responsibility for that which is not ours to own. Are you owning more than you ought in this season? Are you seeking to control things that were never yours to control? Are you expending energy trying to rectify things you truly have no power over? You cannot do other’s emotional, physical or soul work for them.
Spend time praying Niebuhr’s Prayer for Serenity, sometimes referred to as the AA prayer, and invite God to help you to know where your power begins and ends and what you must trust to God.
Prayer for Serenity
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.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Picture credit, James Coleman.