I was reading Betty Ford’s Betty: A Glad Awakening and the book taught me something (many things) I did not know. You guys probably all know this, but the Serenity Prayer (which truth be told has always seemed a bit basic to me) does not end where I thought it ended – at the part where we stop holding hands…. The long version makes more sense to me (although I definitely want to be more than “reasonably happy in this life”). The Serenity Prayer is the work of the Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr and the full version is:
The 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.
Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a
time; Accepting hardship
as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this
sinful world as it is, not
as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make
all things right if I
surrender to His will;
That I may be reasonably
happy in this life, and
supremely happy with Him forever in the next.
Amen
