Even writing the word brings a whisper of calm in a chaotic time.

No wonder it opens a prayer that’s the watchword in addiction recovery.

     God 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.

I first heard these words some 33 years ago, long before our son was in kindergarten and more than a decade before I would grasp its true meaning.

It was at the opening of the drug treatment program in the health system where I spent most of my career.  The staff had  imprinted take-away magnets with the lines along with a hotline.

A senior staffer seemed surprised I hadn’t known the prayer.  After all, it was ingrained in them.

But why would I?

Until addiction uprooted my world there was never a question about serenity.  O sure.  There was stress.  And times when the inevitable push-pull of work and family and wanting to volunteer for too many causes I cared about – and still do – that life became hectic.

But never near the chaos that comes when you love someone with an addiction, when you turn into a one-person machine hell bent on fixing him or her, until you realize you can’t.

The next time I heard the prayer was at an Al-Anon meeting that flashed back to the treatment center’s opening years ago.  Ironically, my son was a patient at that center, midway on his journey.

Today, more than 13 years into Jacob’s recovery and 14 into mine, the Serenity prayer is even more relevant.

It’s that single word – among 25 –that says what we all seek…

Serenity.