Category: Spiritual Seeker

Assignment: Review the Step 3 Prayer:

“Higher Power, I have tried to control the uncontrollable for far too long. I ask that you take this burden from me. I acknowledge that my life is unmanageable. I ask for your care and guidance. Grant me honesty, courage, humility, and serenity, to face that which keeps me from you and others. I give this life to you, to do with as you will.”

What, if anything, about this prayer works for you?

I love the last part – what a combo of four things to ask for! Nothing there about specific outcomes for me or anybody else, and besides, the asking is just to bring me closer to God and others! That is a beautiful prayer and wish.

What, if anything, about this prayer do you resist?

I am still trying to manage my life and still trying to attain certain outcomes, for me and others.

Write your own version of this prayer, using as little or as much of the original as you choose.

Great Spirit,

Here I am again, at the point where my attempts to control always bring me, a place of fatique and frustration and despair. It’s a hard place but one of remembering: I cannot do this! And trying to do what I can’t is making me miserable. Please help me to remember this at all times: that you are in charge, that life is what it is, and all I can control is how I respond. Please help me stay honest with myself and others, so that I may humbly align my truth with yours, then speak and live it fully. All I want is deep, sincere connection with you, my true self, and the world around me.

Back into the workbook on a gray, rainy day:

Look up the words, write out the definitions that you find to be significant, and write what each word means to you.

• Decision: Something somebody has chosen, firmness in choosing something, process of choosing. These three things go together well: I am choosing something, based firmly in my truth, and I am always in the process of making a decision. Even when I think I didn’t make a decision, like when an external event occurs, I still decide how to respond, and that process can be brought into the light so I can see which (un)truth I am basing my decision on.

• Will: Part of the mind that makes decisions, the power to decide, the process of making decisions, determination, desire, something that somebody wants to happen. These all go together to shed light on the process of me exercising a power I possess to try to create what I want in the world. So if I look at what I have, I can see what I want, which is based on what I believe.
• Acceptance: Agreement to invitation or offer, act of willingly taking gift, willingness to believe, coming to terms with something. I like the “offer” aspect of this one. Life offers me a reality which I can willingly accept and come to terms with, but if I decide not to, that doesn’t change the reality or the offer. I can decide to pursue my will even when it’s out of acceptance with reality – but I will suffer.
• Faith: Belief or trust, trust in God, loyalty, without despair, without demanding proof. To me, this goes back to acceptance, in that I don’t insist that life conforms to what I want or believe (my will), but rather I choose to accept reality, to believe and trust in a greater/higher reality than mine, then align my will with that reality. This way, my decisions are based in reality and God’s will.