Nitelite

Please God, today, this terrible morning;

Grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change

to know that my day and my morning belong to me regardless of his madness; to express love not because I wish to make him lean on me, but to love because that is an expression of my heart regardless of his own choices; please God, help me return my heart to peace and balance and my mind and eyes to " the brightly green of the trees and the true blue dream of the sky"; please God, help me to find the quiet place (which is probably not sobbing in the bathroom at work, even tho it is a fine bathroom) where I can find you, and in finding you, also hear the sweetness of peace that is our goft to you, and your gift to us

Please God, grant me the Courage to change the things I can


to bear his irrational anger, his flat voice, his depression; the startling chasm between the blonde haired child I held so tightly, whose bedroom was filled with stuffed teddy bears, who I brought home wearing a tiny teddy bear cap to this empty-eyed stranger; to appreciate and focus on the work which has always given me an alternative to anger and despair; to refuse to isolate myself; to be brave enough to take comfort from friends and people who could ease my pain; to not be drawn into the black hole of his addiction/madness, where there is no light; grant me, please, the courage to live my life and not his; dear God, you know I how deep my fears are, please shine into my heart so that I can find the light, like my favorite cowardly lion — and his, too, when he was still the straw-haired child - please on this dark,dark morning when his anger spat at me and it felt like poison, like what he has wrapped around my heart;
Dear God, it is so hard and I feel so small.

And grant me the wisdom to know the difference;

to better understand the disease process so that I may distinguish between character and drug-induced madness; to know that the mind and brain he started with is not the mind and brain he has now, after years of injecting and inhaling poisons; that he is not the self I had hoped he would be; that he is not going to have the life I had so hopefully nutrtured;
that love is deep in his bones but that does not mean he can find it or that i can draw it out; to know that he is on his own journey and I cannot force him onto another path of my choosing; that I, too, have my own journey and path and can only find the gifts that await me there if I stop trying to travel his and go back to my own; to distinguish between his needs and mine, and respect the relationship between him and the God of his understanding, who waits quietly for my son's own prayer for serenity, courage and wisdom.


And please understand when my serenity prayer drifts up to you from a bathroom stall...

Thank you all for listening and to contributing to this online fellowship, for your big shoulders and bigger hearts My tears have dried as I wrote this...and if they start again, at least there is a place where I can write and pray.

Love to all...Nitelite