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Dysfunctional Family Christmas: The Serenity Prayer For The Holidays

by Karla Downing  
12/20/2012 / Relationships

Dysfunctional family Christmas' can be difficult, making the Serenity Prayer a perfect tool. The Serenity Prayer is a perfect tool. Holidays bring up memories of hurts, loss, pain, and bad times. Holidays also come with expectations for the perfect loving moments with family. If you have a difficult relationship, the holidays will force you to deal with that relationship in some way. You may have to spend time with a difficult loved one or extended family. You may have to spend your holidays without seeing a loved one. You may be dealing with stressful financial, health, or relationship issues. Or, you may be spending your holiday alone due to a divorce.

The Serenity Prayer (believed to have been written and delivered in a sermon in 1943 by Reinhold Niebuhr, an ordained pastor in the Evangelical Church) offers a simple solution for whatever difficult relationship situations you are dealing with during this holiday season. It reads:

GOD GRANT ME THE SERENITY TO ACCEPT THE THINGS I CANNOT CHANGE, COURAGE TO CHANGE THE THINGS I CAN, AND THE WISDOM TO KNOW THE DIFFERENCE.

Let's break down the Serenity Prayer to see what it is saying:

1. You are asking God to grant you serenity. Getting a grant requires action on your part.
2. You need to do something to become "serene." One of the definitions of "serene" is "to be marked by utter calm and tranquility." Another is "to be clear and free of storms or unpleasant change."
3. So the key is learning how to be serene. How does one become serene? Simply by accepting the things you cannot change. Acceptance brings instant calmness into your life. You prevent the storms and turmoil that are the result of trying to force change or from trying to fight reality. When we are not accepting the things we cannot change and instead wanting them to be different, we have the opposite of peace and tranquility; we have volatility, dysfunction, impulsivity, unrest, anger, and all kinds of troublesome emotions.
4. You also need the courage to change the things you can. This gives you power over your life, rather than keeping you feeling victimized by others. When you take the initiative to make the changes you can make, it will give you peace.
5. Why does it take wisdom to know the difference? Because people, relationships, and situations are complicated and get more complicated with addictions, dysfunction, divorce, step-families, financial problems, mental illness, and other problems. "Wisdom" is the ability to discern what is right. God grants us wisdom when we ask for it.

So how can you apply the Serenity Prayer to make your holidays happier and calmer? You ask God to help you accept people, places, and things as they are. You stop wishing they were different for today. You stop figuring out how to make them different. You accept all the people in your life for who they are. You then look at yourself and see what you can do for yourself to make the holidays better, and then-you do it.

This may mean not spending time with your family, leaving the family party when things get uncomfortable, saying no to things you don't want to do, letting go of guilt for not pleasing people, doing what you like to do instead of what you have to do, and stepping back from family drama by not getting involved. You don't have to have a dysfunctional family Christmas. God is waiting to grant you serenity-all you have to do is ask, accept, and act.


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Next, if you need more practical tips and Biblical truths to help you change your relationships, get my FREE "15-Day Relationship Challenge" designed to give you back the power over your life.

Just click here: http://www.Free15dayChallenge.com

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