ACCEPTANCE

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.

(Reinhold Niebuhr)

A conversation with a friend last night led to a couple more timely reminders, such as Reinhold Niebuhr's Serenity Prayer, and the well-known passage on acceptance in AA's Big Book that I have added to the end of this post.

The wording is a little different than the reminders I wrote about in my previous post, but the message is the same. God is in control, and I need to trust Him instead of trying to do things my way. And I am trying, really I am, to let go and abandon myself to what He is doing in my life instead of trying to get Him to bless my attempts to make things happen the way I think they should.

My perspective is so limited. Only He sees the whole picture and knows the end from the beginning, which puts Him in a far better position than I am to know what really is best.

                Acceptance is the answer to ALL of my 

                problems today. When I am disturbed,

                it is because I find some person, place,

                thing, or situation--some fact of  my life--

                unacceptable to me, and I can find no

                serenity until I accept that person, place,

                thing, or situation as being exactly the

                way it is supposed to be at this moment.

                Nothing, absolutely nothing, happens in

                God's world by mistake.

                (The Big Book, p. 417)