Help Thanks Wow: Three Essential Prayers

by Anne Lamott

The Serenity Prayer is one of the most famous institutionalized prayers of the world, a Greatest Hits prayer. The best-known version says: “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.” There’s a slightly comic version—“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the weaponry to make the difference”—but let’s stick to the first. A sober friend from Texas said once that the three things I cannot change are the past, the truth, and you. I hate this insight so much. My experience is that when I use this prayer to God, I am at the same time alerting the person inside me that I need to rein myself. It is a reset button prayer. In certain ways it serves the same function that sitting down at my desk at the same time every day does for my creative self: it alerts my subconscious to the fact that it is time for it to kick in. It looks at its little watch and says, “Oh, for God’s sake, is it nine o’clock already?” It is prayer as memo to self.