If you want to subscribe to LOL Sober, hit the purple button below. I’m mostly publishing free pieces but I am hoping to generate a few bucks to pay for my web site and some other costs. Paid subscribers do have access to frequent premium pieces—such as THIS comedy special about my 10 favorite addiction/sobriety jokes!
I went to a meeting this week where we read from Living Sober, and we were on a chapter that unpacked the Serenity Prayer. It was an eye-opening experience, at the exact time when I needed to sit with the serenity prayer.
It hit me during the meeting how much I tend to quickly summarize the serenity prayer. It’s not that I don’t love the serenity prayer—I do. But I often truncate the meaning of it, which diminishes its usefulness to me. I often just summarize it in my head as, “Acceptance is the answer.” Which is absolutely one of the keys to a happy life.
But something changed for me that day. I sat with the serenity prayer for an hour, going over it repeatedly and listening to others share as realized a startling truth—the serenity prayer isn’t just words that boil down to acceptance being the answer. It is a cheat code with multiple action steps that I need to take in order for it to become true. I also realized for the first time that it is exactly 25 words long, and that those 25 words are worth millions and millions of words.
Let me just include the serenity prayer here for practical purposes:
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.
First and foremost, I never noticed that there is a command in the first sentence—I need to ask God for the serenity. Think about that for a second: I can’t just roll into figuring out what I can control and what I can’t. I need to work for serenity first.
That is a huge thing. In fact, it might be the most important thing. When I say the serenity prayer, I’m usually not in a great head space and I haven’t done anything to achieve serenity before unpacking everything else.
For me, that means I need to ask God directly to be granted serenity, then I need to do all of the things that are available to me to get to a serene place. That’s getting to meetings, calling other addicts, going for a walk, going to the gym, meditating, taking a nap, etc. That’s real work—just saying “grant me the serenity” to God isn’t the answer. I never have said the serenity prayer and been immediately plowed over by a dumptruck full of serenity. I need to chip in and do some work too. And remember, I can’t really do anything else related to acceptance until I am serene. It’s a little bit like buying books for a college class when you haven’t been accepted into the college. The cart is in front of the horse.
OK, so I need to get to a serene place before anything else. For me, serenity isn’t instant. I’d say it is a minimum of about an hour away, which usually means that I can get there if I get to a meeting. Then I am feeling much more serene during a tough time.
Now I need to use that serenity to accept the things I cannot change. That means I need to do two followup things: I need to figure out what that list looks like, and I need to grind away at accepting those things. It’s not just the list—it’s getting to a place of acceptance of that list, too. And like serenity, acceptance is not something that many of us can just hit a button and achieve.
The next thing is the courage to change the things I can. Again, there are two actions there—I need to ask God for courage, then I need to do the work I need to do in order to change the things that I can.
It’s funny that the final thing is actually sort of one of the first things—wisdom to know the difference. I actually need the wisdom earlier in the process so that I can sort out what is changeable and what is not.
Last thing that hit me: The serenity prayer is 25 words. At meetings, we often say it and there are 27 words in it. Most people add “the” before courage and wisdom. That’s probably the second-biggest revelation that hit me during the meeting. But hey, saving two words every time ain’t nothing!
This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:
Three worldviews:
The pessimist’s: The cup is half empty.
The optimist’s: The cup is half full.
The alcoholic’s: Are you going to drink that?
(Credit: AA Grapevine, June 2001, Jana D. from Los Angeles, California)
Please spread the word to a sober friend! Find me on Substack… or Twitter… or Facebook… or Instagram… or YouTube. And introducing my web site, LOLsober.com.
