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”.
From the Serenity Prayer, Reinhold Niebuhr (1932)
My Journey with Sobriety Now 32 Years in the Making
The above quotation taken from the Serenity Prayer has been a cornerstone for recovery groups ever since the prayer was conceived by American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr in 1932. I can think of no other prayer in my own life that has been more helpful and a constant source of consolation and inner peace to me in navigating my own set of life and career challenges. I wasn’t aware of this healing prayer until I made a decision on January 1st of 1991 when following my Dad’s lead a year earlier I decided I would give up alcohol and my beverage of choice which was beer. I was a husband and father of two young daughters aged 5 and 3 with a newborn son ready to enter the world in just a few short months. I had a demanding job at the time as a financial analyst following my lifelong love affair of the automobile industry with a long commute and a very demanding travel schedule. I had always been aware of my extended family’s history of alcoholism and began to worry over my own unhealthy patterns of how I had been dealing with stress and knew in my heart that such patterns were not sustainable. So I promised myself that I would start my Lenten season in 1991 a little earlier than usual by giving up my cherished habit of drinking beer every day at days end and to see where this journey of faith might take me.
Eleven days into the experiment I knew I was on the right track when my wife and daughters sat down with me to sing me a Happy 36th Birthday. My daughters sat on my lap and my oldest turned to me and said “Daddy, aren’t you going to have your beer?” I knew in that instant that I was on the right track and was determined to stay on course. Although I never entered into any special recovery Program like Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), I did have my Dad and my Uncle Danny as my role models to lean on and they were just magnificent. Uncle Dan had initially showed me the way in 1985 when he made a life changing decision to refrain from alcohol. Whenever I would come to Wisconsin for my marketing trips, my Uncle Dan and his wife Kathy would always host me and his example made such a strong impression on me that I began to think more seriously that maybe I too should give up alcohol. On January 1, 1990, my wife and daughters and I drove up to see my parents where my Dad announced to everyone there that he was not going to drink beer anymore. Wow, I thought, is Dad really serious doing this at the age of 65? Dad and Uncle Danny’s example over the prior 6 years continued to sit with me all throughout 1990 and I continued to discern whether God was calling me to follow their example.
As I navigated those first few months of 1991 without my drink of choice, I felt a sense of relief when I successfully made it to that Easter Sunday on March 31st without having a beer. And then without any hesitation, I decided to take this new way of living as a blessing and a call from God to continue this journey of living without alcohol one day at a time. The extreme anxiety I had experienced in those early days of how giving up alcohol would somehow affect my career in a negative way especially for all those work situations where there was always the pressure and the temptation to drink with your coworkers and clients at a luncheon or dinner meeting — that just seemed to fade away with each passing year of living without alcohol. My incessant travel schedule that my position required as an analyst (about 100 days a year out of town) and then later on as a Director of Research didn’t seem to faze me in the way I had initially feared. Family members, my friends, and my colleagues alike embraced my decision and never once made me feel anything but accepted and loved. Somehow through all of the joys and challenges I have experienced since that fateful day of January 1, 1991 — the birth of my son; losing my coveted job on Wall Street that I loved so much in May of 2003 that defined my very identity; the pressure to find a new beginning and a new life at the age of 48; sending three awesome kids to college and graduate school and caring for my parents; celebrating the new gifts from God of becoming a Business School Dean for two institutions, an Executive and Career Coach with GetFive, and launching my own firm; the blessings of becoming a grandfather and finding new meaning and a calling as a Grief and Bereavement Counselor from having lost my brother as a teen, then my Dad, my Mom, my wife’s parents, and a brother and sister in law; new awareness and a calling to live in the “now” from having lived through COVID-19, facing my own mortality from some serious health issues of my own, and being more open, honest, and vulnerable about the anxiety and uncertainty that comes with entering the empty nest with my wife of 42 years — somehow through all of those experiences, my original 90 day experiment with sobriety survived and has turned into a life changing and affirming experience for me as I now enter my 32nd year of sobriety, something I never thought might be possible. What a gift and blessing that my experiment in January 1991 has through my journey provided me with a strong sense of spiritual serenity and of listening to God’s timely call to accept those things I know I cannot control and having the courage to change those things that I can change and to know that God has been walking with me every step of the way these past 32 years and will continue to walk with me in the future.
Discerning God’s Call of What to Accept and What to Change?
So what about you and your situation right now? Might there be something in your life that the Lord is asking you to change? Maybe it has something to do with your physical health, an addiction, your financial health, or maybe a relationship at home or at work and how you might change the way you approach that relationship? And might there also be a situation in your life where the Lord is telling you to accept the situation you may be dealing with, knowing that you can’t change it? Accepting it might lead you to an imperfect peace but maybe He is asking you to accept it where you are at this moment and to put your energies elsewhere. I pray the Serenity Prayer often and ask the Lord to help me discern those things I must accept and those things I want to change. It’s been a game changer for me and so give it a try if you can. Pray by saying “Lord Jesus Christ, living Son of the living God, help me to know what you want, to want what you want, and to do what you want. Help me discern what you want me to accept and what you want me to change.”
As always, wishing my fellow coaches, friends, and colleagues the gift of God’s abundant blessings and the spiritual serenity that only He can provide,
Dr. K
