For those who have been affected by alcoholism, para-alcoholism, dysfunction and abuse, and seek recovery in twelve-step fellowships, the Serenity Prayer recited at the beginning of their meetings is an integral part of the process.

“The Serenity Prayer…represents a concentrated measure of serenity, humility, courage, wisdom, and spirituality in 25 words,” according to the textbook Adult Children of Alcoholics (World Service Organization, 2006, p. 274). “It’s a prayer that has anchored 12-step meetings and 12-step fellowship development for decades around the world. It’s a proven prayer that makes anyone who hears it pause.”

It is both soul food and the antidote and the opposite of the instability and chaos often found in many homes and, as an extension of them, in much of the world today.

Its recitation in recovery-based gatherings serves four fundamental purposes.

1). It establishes a connection with God or a Higher Power of the person’s understanding.

two). It ensures that all attendees are similarly linked and, as a result, are connected to each other.

3). It allows God to assess both individual and collective difficulties and determine consensus thinking, if necessary.

4). It allows you, during individual actions, to lift and dissolve incidents and problem areas in a person’s life, gradually restoring his soul to wholeness.

Because alcoholism and its many psychological, emotional, and spiritual manifestations are too powerful for the individual to triumph over, and because God is so much greater than that disease, and everything else, for that matter, healing alone can begin in His care, when all are commonly connected. As a result, that healing depends first and foremost on surrender to Him.

The first three lines of the prayer provide a road map to the state of serenity, sometimes impossible to achieve.

The first, the plea for serenity to “accept the things I cannot change,” puts a person’s capacity and place in the world into perspective. Although he may believe that he has the cornerstone of truth and that he could “shape the world if he would only listen to me and take my advice”, the person is, in the end, constrained by his own finite capacities, views, and interpretations. His influence, as a result of this condition, is very limited.

The second line, in which a person prays for “the courage to change the things I can”, indicates that he has certain abilities and strengths to change himself and the way he sees others and circumstances, especially with the help from a Higher Power.

“Al-Anon helps me accept what I cannot change and change what I can,” one member shares in his text Courage to Change (Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, Inc., 1992, p. 284). “I can’t control how alcoholism has affected my life, I can’t control another person, and I can’t make life go according to my plans.”

Serenity results from the “wisdom to recognize the difference”. It is calming and complete, in itself. It creates a new way of thinking, and a new way of thinking creates serenity. It is an inside job. It is the equivalent of self-acceptance, self-harmony, and self-peace. And it is realizing that anything that has already happened, whether the person was the cause or the recipient of it, cannot be changed, no matter what they do now.

But the entire Serenity Prayer, which is rarely read in twelve-step meetings, indicates that this state should not only be sought by those who have been exposed to family dysfunction and difficulties, but by anyone who is part of the family. human race and struggle to understand and accept it. He advocates living one day at a time and enjoying one moment at a time, but “taking…this sinful world as it is (and) not as I want it.”

“The serenity prayer helped me believe that serenity, courage, and wisdom were attainable,” another Al-Anon member shared in his book Hope for Today (Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, Inc, 2002, p . two). “It reinforced my belief in God and gave me hope for a brighter future… (This) can bring light to the parts of myself that are still clouded by my past.”

The Bible says that “as you think, so you are”. If you can do it calmly, you will be able to see the world better in this state, since so much of it exists within you.

Article sources:

Adult children of alcoholics. Torrance, California: World Service Organization, 2006.

Courage to change. Virginia Beach, Virginia: Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, Inc., 1992.

Hope for today. Virginia Beach, Virginia: Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, Inc., 2002.