Serenity Prayer

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.

When I worked in the chemical dependency unit @ Mills Peninsula Hospital I'd hear this recited daily.  At this moment in my life, this prayer has become a powerful mantra that I have been reciting almost daily.  I am finding that there are many things in my life that I want to change, but cannot change and having to find some peace in that has been proving to be most difficult.  But I'm finding that when I can truly surrender to what is, everything just falls away and any ideas of how I want things to be cease to exist.  It's no surprise that this is all happening to me right now.  If this were to have happened to me years ago I would have completely fallen apart, as I'm sure I would've desperately clung onto fixed ideas and would've tried to control everything.  These past few years I have been given opportunities to practice "surrendering" and learning to not take who "I am" so seriously.  This has been a real difficult and arduous journey -- to break old habits and create new pathways is never an easy thing to do.  I still find myself struggling a lot, but I also know that all this has to be a process.  Some days are definitely better than others.  And all the in-between(s) are the juice of life where the extra sweetness of the nectar can be tasted if we can give ourselves permission to simply "be" -- free of judgments, free of labels, free of past imprisonments, free of being "full", and free of enslavement to doing.  I would like to see the world through the eyes of a child -- full of awe, wonder, curiosity.....and having an empty cup waiting to be filled.  Maybe I am delusional, but I truly think that it is possible to practice living this way.  After all, the moment is really all we have.  There is no point obsessing about the past or worrying about the future that has not yet come, if we can fully be present to the moment -- doing what we need to do will dictate what our future will be.  And I'm realizing just how tired I am at the moment so I will honor that, as I'm not sure how much of this blog even makes sense.  Until next time, love and peace.