The Sageness of the Serenity Prayer

In working with midlife and older age adults and their families for over a decade now, I have come to believe more and more in the eloquence and truth of the Serenity Prayer. I am not an AA member which is how, I think, most of us have heard of this prayer. But I have come to love it. It is written in large letters on a framed poster outside my office. More people have stopped on the way into a therapy session with me to stand before it and read it over and over. It creates an immediate opening for talking about what concerns people bring in to the session. For those of you who don’t know the prayer or don’t remember the words, it goes like this:

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.

In my counseling sessions, we remark on how we can often see a few things we can’t change. We can often see a few things we can change.  Those ends of the continuum are fewer and seem more black and white. But it’s that middle section – that wide grey confusing amorphous middle ground, i.e. “the wisdom to know the difference” is often what challenges us the most and forms the basis for many a counseling session.

The photo below is one I found online that many of my people relate to. It speaks to how little we are in control of the elements in our lives, and that “the wisdom to know the difference” may just entail hunkering down, saying a prayer and riding out the storm.