Lord, 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...
Me too.
Thank you for pointing this aspect out.
It has been a staple in my life for many years, but really came to take on a whole new meaning once I seriously started investigating my self as trans...
I've had that in my room for a few years and reading that just now with your question made me see it in a whole new way than i did when i bought it. i think i found it so important before as God supporting me when my family was denying and hating that i had a girlfriend, i found it pretty cool then but i didn't get it fully and now the relevance is obviously about me being trans and i feel it makes way more sense. the way it happens to be worded. to accept the things i cannot change, the courage to change the things i can and the wisdom to know the difference. i know exactly what it's talking about. thanks for posting this! that was an eye opener! ;D
I feel so happy to have it help. I agree that there is something about it and how it's worded, that inherently lends itself to trasnsgender's perfectly. I just never saw it until I started the road to transition.
It is something I reached for an awful lot when I looked around and found family and friends gone. And I've shared it with my kids and anyone who is struggling with the question, "WHY?"
I wrote this for myself and a therapist, and also one of my Alcoholics Anonymous friends back at the time I started my hormones.
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I faced a challenge to the very core of my life,
a demand for change as toll for hope of daily sanity as I go forward.
"GOD, grant me the SERENITY to accept the things I cannot change, The COURAGE to
change what I am able, and the Wisdom to know the difference."
"Light three lamps and place them in a triangle around you" came the voice. And so I lit three
lamps as the darkness of my challenge closed around me.
"Stand now within the center of the lights" I was commanded. From the center of this place
I found that I could only see two lamps wherever I looked. "Keep the light of wisdom
in your sight at all times, and pray again!!" came the command!!
The light of WISDOM now glowed with a yellow-green hue, and to its left the flame of
Acceptance pulled my eye to it. YES, the WISDOM said, you cannot make the change
you face!!
And then it seemed to me the flame of WISDOM spoke aloud "Indeed, I am the wisdom of the
WORLD. For you to make this change you will go against god and all that your fellow
people believe. You will be DAMNED if you make it."
In the light of the flame I saw faces turned to me in scorn for the shame my choice
would give to them, or so it seemed. .
So, mightily, I prayed that serenity would come in the flame of Acceptance. I could not
go against the WISDOM of the world.
Instead of Serenity though, a tempest filled with doubt and fear and loathing for my
very being filled me and kept me helpless.
I prayed for Acceptance Of What I Could Not Change unceasingly that hour and the flame
of WORLDLY WISDOM blazed the higher with each utterance of the prayer.
"Accept that you are horrible!! Accept that you cannot live in fullness of peace.
Accept that your Sanity will be destroyed!"
Shaken and heartbroken I prayed again, and then the WISDOM flared out as if to
take me gleefully to its torment. I shut my eyes, even the ones of my heart!!
I was damned and to be consumed by the WISDOM of the WORLD, and then the flame
fell back into itself after taking with it the light of ACCEPTANCE.
I waited for the darkness, a great and threatening darkness to descend
on the place where I now was. I longed for the darkness and death.
Dimly, through closed eyes, I sensed a small feeble light still in the place I was
now imprisoned for eternity.
Where was that light? It was coming now, the rose gold of new dawn. What light was
this to be? To find it I would have to turn!
As I had been commanded, I kept the light of WISDOM in my eye. A lamp now
giving the feeble faltering glow of a sullen wick that was not drawing oil.
I saw the lamp I had forgotten, the one whose name was COURAGE to make my
change.
As I now watched, the lamp of COURAGE reached out its light and nourished
the flame of WISDOM with its own rose-gold, but now the WISDOM
took on the look of bright yellows, blues and violets of SERENITY.
I had sought GODs' help by the light of the worlds wisdom in which SERENITY
cannot be seen.
I now can see the course of change that I must take, and in COURAGE also LIVES
the SERENITY I long for.
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The peace of the Lord be always with you.